TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
The 1657 Production of Francesco Cavalli's Artemisia
Hendrik Schulze
We know of a contract between Cavalli and the impresario Marco Faustini,
signed in 1658 (I-Vas, SGdSM b. 194, fol. 266-267), in which the composer
is required to compose three operas and to lead the rehearsals, changing
the parts, altering, making cuts and additions during the process (mutar
parte, alterar, sminuir et aggionger.) However, since the operas in question
are no longer extant or are preserved in fair copies only, we can’t trace
in their sources the process described in the contract. But the opera Artemisia
of 1657 – the first two acts of which survive in a compositional manuscript
that seems to have been used as Cavalli’s performing score as well – shows
a lot of traces exactly fitting the kind of work mentioned above. This
manuscript, by its alterations and additions, sheds light on questions
of dramaturgical and formal ideas of Cavalli and the librettist, Nicolo
Minato, as well as showing some of the circumstances of the performance,
details concerning instrumentation, singers, continuo practice, and cuts.
In it one can see several stages of the work process, composing, rehearsing,
and the actual performance. Research into these issues can help the scholar
to understand the conditions of opera production in seventeenth-century
Venice. On top of this purely scientific interest, such research may be
of practical value to the performer as well.
Last updated on 4 April 2000 by Yo
Tomita