TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
Murder in Armenia, and Voices in Opera Seria
Reinhard Strohm
How does an event become history? How, before that, do actions become an
event? If an event such as the assassination of the Armenian Prime Minister
on 28 October 1999 were to be turned into an opera seria in the Italian
manner, the manipulations required might illuminate what has come together
in an actual opera seria: events, plots, beliefs, authors, writers, performers,
patrons, listeners, and so on. Johann Adolf Hasse's "Zenobia" (Warsaw,
1763) on a dramma per musica by Pietro Metastasio based on an episode of
Armenian history, is used to trace the gathering of these various ingredients
- or indeed 'voices' - into a particular 'work' but also their partial
rejection, subsequent dispersal and failed connections. The relative status
of these 'voices' is assessed one by one, to establish their emergence
and perhaps disappearance in the process. This approach rides across the
'event' of the opera and, unlike the search for voices in a musical score
alone, recognises the living process.
Last updated on 22 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita