A Short History of Opera, fourth edition

NAPLES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY was as preeminent for its music as Venice had been in the seventeenth century.¹ Lalande wrote in 1769:

Music is the special triumph of the Neapolitans. It seems as if in that country the membranes of the eardrum are more taut, more harmonious, more sonorous than elsewhere in Europe. The whole nation sings; gesture, tone of voice, rhythm of syllables, the very conversation—all breathe music and harmony. Thus Naples is the principal source of Italian music, of great composers and excellent operas; it is there that Corelli, Vinci, Rinaldo [di Capua], Jommelli, Durante (learned in harmony above all the rest), Leo, Pergolesi, Galuppi, Perez, Terradeglias, and so many other famous composers have brought forth their masterpieces.²

Among the opera composers active at Naples immediately after the time of Alessandro Scarlatti were Leonardo Vinci (c. .1695–1730) and Leonardo Leo (1694–1744), two of the earliest composers of comic opera in Neapolitan dialect.³ Vinci is also one of the first in whose music the traits of the new opera seria are fully apparent. His dramma per musica operas were staged in Rome during Carnival and in Naples during the fall season in the years 1722 to 1730. His setting of Metastasio’s Siroe, re di Persia and Didone abbandonata led to a brief but fruitful period of collaboration between composer and librettist culminating in their production of Artaserse (1730), which became established as a repertory work. Example 13.1 shows the beginning (after an orchestral introduction) of a da capo aria from this opera, typical for its fresh, clear melody, simple harmonic vocabulary, and thin texture in the string orchestra, colored by a few passages from the horns, doubtless to suggest the rural landscape depicted in the text. One of Leo’s most successful serious operas was Demofoonte (1738), also based upon a libretto by Metastasio. Demofoonte was first staged in the Teatro San Bartolomeo in January 1735 as a pasticcio with only Act III by Leo. Three years later, Leo set Demofoonte in its entirety, retaining his original Act III, with the aria “Misero pargoletto,” which in later years was acclaimed for its dramatic pathos.

The immensely facile Nicola Porpora (1686–1768), the greatest singing teacher of his time, worked at Naples and Venice, and at various times also in Rome, London, Dresden, and Vienna.⁴ Charles Burney remarked about one of his arias that it seemed to have been composed “in a shivering fit,” so full was it of vocal pyrotechnics, but this probably does an injustice to Porpora, whose music, if not especially distinguished, is workmanlike and no more extreme in its demands on the singers than that of other composers of the time.⁵ His first operas were staged in Naples, but by 1714 he made his operatic debut at the Habsburg court in Vienna with Arianna e Teseo, performed in celebration of the emperor’s birthday. Additional imperial commissions followed; some were filled by full length operas; others by serenatas, such as Angelica (1720), staged at Naples’s Palazzo del Principe di Torella in honor of the emperor’s birthday. This serenata is of particular interest for two reasons: it is a setting of the first poem that Metastasio intended to be put to music and it marked Farinelli’s debut in an operatic role.

Porpora changed jobs fairly frequently, causing him to move from one city to another, all of which had the effect of spreading his fame throughout the important operatic centers of Italy. He also made his way to London, having been brought there to assist a newly formed opera company, the Opera of the Nobility, in its bid to rival Handel’s Italian company. The first work staged by the Opera of the Nobility was Porpora’s Arianna in Nasso (1733), and in the course of the next three years several more of his operas were presented by this company. The successful reception of Porpora’s works, including the pasticcios to which he contributed, can in large measure be attributed to the roster of famous singers who participated in these productions—Cuzzoni, Farinelli, and Senesino.

One of the very few Neapolitan opera composers in this period whose name and music are at all well known today is Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–36).⁶ Though remembered now chiefly for his Stabat Mater and his comic intermezzos, Pergolesi in his short lifetime also produced one of the finest opere serie of the early eighteenth century. This was L’Olimpiade (Rome, 1735), set to one of Metastasio’s most popular dramas.⁷ An aria from this opera (example 13.2) illustrates the “tenderness of sentiment…noble, attractive, enthusiastic feeling, an innocent, touching, childlike quality” that characterizes Pergolesi’s music.⁸ Note particularly the use of “Lombardic rhythm” in the melody at measure four and elsewhere, and the triplet divisions of the eighth-note beat, both typical of the style of this period.

Between 1732 and 1734, Pergolesi wrote three other opere serie (La Salustia, ll prigionier superbo, Adriano in Siria); despite their merit, they procured him little popular success among his contemporaries.⁹ Rather, it was his sacred and comic works, most especially La serva padrona, following its revival at Paris in 1752, that eventually brought him universal fame.¹⁰

One of the remarkable phenomena of the eighteenth century was the way Italian opera, both serious and comic, spread to every country of Europe. This movement involved the importation not only of scores and singers but frequently of composers as well. Italian-born or Italian-trained composers would go for a season, or for a few years, to a foreign city or court, where they would conduct their operas and compose new ones tailored to local requirements. For example, Attilio Ariosti (1666–1729) of Bologna worked at Berlin, Vienna, and London.¹¹ Giovanni Bononcini of Modena and his brother Antonio Maria Bononcini (1677–1726) worked in Vienna and London,¹² where Giovanni’s Il trionfo di Camilla, regina de’Volsci (1696) was one of the most popular works of the early eighteenth century; it was heard in Italian cities as late as 1715 and held the stage in London from 1706 until 1728.¹³ Camilla was first presented in the Teatro San Bartolomeo at Naples. The libretto by Silvio Stampiglia focuses on noble characters, but the serious scenes are enlivened by five that are comic. The role of Turno, one of the noble characters, was originally sung by a castrato. To heighten this singer’s presence in the opera, Bononcini positioned two of his arias as the final numbers of Acts I and II; he also involved him in four duets. Numerous performances of the Italian version of this opera were given throughout Italy before the work was staged at London, with an English text and with modifications to the musical score. The initial London production was negotiated on the part of Nicolas Haym, in his effort to accommodate the growing popularity of Italian opera in that city. Camilla was the fourth of nine Italian operas, presented in English-language versions, between 1705 and 1709. “Songs” from these operas were published by John Walsh for the enjoyment of amateur musicians. Much of the music of these nine operas, however, was not limited to what originally had been written by their composers. For example, the staging of Clotilda in 1709 bore little resemblance to Clotilde, a work composed by Francesco Conti for the Habsburg court in 1706, even though the overture was by Conti as were five of the “songs.” The remainder of the musical material for the 1709 pasticcio was presumably supplied by A. Scarlatti, G. Bononcini, Pollarolo, Gasparini, Albinoni, Fago, and Caldara.¹⁴

Giovanni Bononcini’s operas, of which more than two dozen are extant, were noted by contemporary critics for their tunefulness, for “melodies, the richest and sweetest that we know of,” and for recitatives that were expressive of the Italian language. The high regard with which Bononcini was held in Vienna was mirrored by the stipend he received, the largest granted to a composer during the reign of Leopold I.¹⁵ No less was the attention he received in London from audiences who came to see his productions over the course of two decades. The 1717 revival of Camilla, for example, was launched on the very same evening as the revival of Handel’s Rinaldo, with the former staged at Lincoln’s Inn Fields theater and the latter at the Haymarket. The overwhelming success of Camilla on that occasion caused the Haymarket to suspend its Italian opera offerings for more than two years. In fact, by this date, the “songs” from Camilla were so familiar to London audiences that this work had achieved a status equal to that later enjoyed by Gay’s popular ballad opera, The Beggar’s Opera.

In 1720 Bononcini was persuaded to relocate to London, as a composer for the Royal Academy of Music. For two seasons his music was enthusiastically received there, but changes in the political climate during 1722 caused him to depart for Paris for a brief sojourn. Within a year he returned to London to direct private performances of his works for the Duchess of Marlborough, a position he held until 1731. During this same period, he continued to compose operas for productions at the King’s Theater, among them Griselda (1722) and Astianatte (1727). He also witnessed a new production of his Camilla, in English, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on November 19, 1726, a further confirmation of the popularity of this composer.

As in the seventeenth century so in the eighteenth, the south German courts attracted many of the best Italian opera composers. During the reign of Charles VI at Vienna, the principal opera composers were Johann Josef Fux (1660–1741), Francesco Conti (1682–1732), and Antonio Caldara (c. 1670–1736). Conti came to Vienna from Florence in 1701 to serve the Habsburg court as a theorbist.¹⁶ Within a few years, he earned for himself the added position of court composer. More than half of Conti’s operas were composed for Carnival, a season over which he held a virtual monopoly on productions from 1714 to 1725. These operas were full-length three- or five-act works (with intermezzos); they enjoyed two or more performances per season and had numerous revivals at north German cities and courts. In contrast, his feste teatrali were usually one-act works, commissioned to celebrate a birthday or name-day of a member of the Habsburg family. This meant they were limited to a single performance and were designed solely to suit the taste of the person being honored.

One of Conti’s most successful operas was Don Chisciotte in Sierra Morena (Carnival, 1719), a tragicommedia per musica on a libretto by Pariati and Zeno after Cervantes.¹⁷ This opera is actually a satire on opera seria and its heroic arias. The title role was sung by Francesco Borosini, whose fine acting abilities and exceptional vocal talents were utilized by Conti in nineteen of his operatic works for the court. Borosini is usually classified as a tenor, but in several of Conti’s operas, including Don Chisciotte, his part spans both the tenor and bass clefs. In addition to Borosini’s baritone role, this opera also has two bass roles. The Don Chisciotte opera, together with his other tragicommedie, intermezzos, and comic scenes in his serious operas, exemplifies well the comic style (especially in the buffo bass roles) for which Conti was justly lauded by his contemporaries. Most of Conti’s librettos were provided by Pariati alone or in partnership with Zeno, but for his final operatic offering at the court, he set Issipile (1732) by Metastasio. The style of this libretto caused a notable change in Conti’s style of operatic composition. Gone is the spirit of experimentation that had characterized his other dramatic works. The emphasis has shifted from male to female voices (there is no bass role); the amount of accompanied recitative is increased considerably; and the scoring is limited to strings.

Caldara, a Venetian by birth and probably a pupil of Legrenzi, was appointed to the Habsburg court in 1716 and served as vize-Kapellmeister until 1736.¹⁸ During his tenure there, he set the librettos of Pariati, Zeno, and Metastasio, completing some thirty-five works for the Vienna stage. Most of his opera productions at the court, however, were commissioned for the birthday and name-day of Charles VI; they therefore exhibit a more conservative style, in keeping with the taste of the emperor. In those few works composed for Carnival and in those composed for the archiepiscopal court at Salzburg between 1716 and 1727, Caldara shows there is another side to his operatic writing. Freed from the constraints of the court’s ceremonial operas, these dramatic productions reveal a greater variety of structures and styles. No longer do the choruses play a central role nor do the overtures feature the two “trumpet choirs” (scored for clarini, trombe, and timpani)—a symbol of the two pillars of the emperor’s motto, “Fortitudine e Costantia.”—that were used in seven of the overtures that introduced his feste teatrali. Three of Caldara’s most successful operas for the court were I disingannati (commedia in musica, 1729), Adriano in Siria (1732), and L’Olimpiade (1733).¹⁹

In the music of Conti and Caldara, the change from Baroque to pre-classical traits is manifest. Most of Caldara’s operas, however, continued to retain something of the formal style, the magnificence of staging, and the participation of chorus and ballet, which characterized the ceremonial operas and feste teatrali of Fux, who served as Hofkapellmeister from 1713 to 1741.²⁰ Fux’s Costanza e fortezza was performed at Prague in 1723 to celebrate both the coronation of Charles VI and the birthday of the empress. Like Fux’s other operatic works of the 1720s, Costanza e fortezza is filled with elaborate scenic effects, machines, and choruses—in short, all the apparatus appropriate to festive occasions. The nature of these occasions, as well as Fux’s official position, dictated a conservative, somewhat stiff, old-fashioned style in his music; yet he was not without progressive traits. His earlier operas consist almost entirely of solo da capo numbers. Even in the later ceremonial works, the arias and ensembles are in the full da capo form characteristic of the eighteenth century; contrapuntal elements are present but not predominant and the general Baroque severity is lightened by graceful melodies and dance-like rhythms.²¹

The most thoroughly representative composer of Italian opera around the middle of the eighteenth century was not an Italian but a German, Johann Adolph Hasse (1699–1783).²² He began his musical career as a tenor singer at both the Hamburg and Brunswick opera houses. His first opera was produced at the latter site in 1721. Hasse then studied at Naples under Porpora and A. Scarlatti and had several works performed in that city before moving to Venice in 1727. There he met and married a famous singer, Faustina Bordoni, and their two careers were joined from then on. In 1731 Hasse was appointed musical director of the Dresden opera, where his wife was the prima donna. He continued to hold his position at Dresden until 1763, while taking frequent and extended travel leaves in order to present his operas elsewhere—at London, Warsaw, Vienna, and various Italian cities. Between 1721 and 1771 Hasse wrote more than fifty operas, the majority of them on librettos of Metastasio, with whom he enjoyed a close friendship. Notable examples include Issipile (1732), Didone abbandonata (1742), Adriano in Siria (1752), and Artaserse. The last-named libretto Hasse set three times between 1730 and 1760. The joint works of these two men exemplify the type of eighteenth-century opera seria that has been described in the previous two chapters. Hasse had so thoroughly assimilated the Italian spirit that he was known familiarly in Italy as il caro Sassone—“the beloved Saxon.” His operas were given all over Europe; during his prime he was acclaimed as the greatest living master of vocal music.²³

Hasse’s style is marked by an easy flow of elegant, tasteful, and singable melody. No doubt there is much in his music to justify criticism that he was merely another composer gifted with facility and understanding of the voice but without dramatic insight and uninterested in the instrumental parts of his operas. Nevertheless, such criticism must be tempered by an understanding of the operatic ideals of his time and of the peculiar qualities of the Metastasian librettos. These qualities Hasse completely understood, and he wrote music to correspond to them, untroubled by any revolutionary impulses. His arias are models of that musical feeling that transmutes everything into beautiful melody, flowering naturally into long smooth curves of coloratura—superficial perhaps, but with a surface of such perfection that it seems captious to demand more (example 13.3). Yet even within this style, Hasse occasionally displays certain traits that foreshadow a change in operatic ideals. His arias, though usually in the prevailing da capo form, are well constructed, with a feeling for real development rather than mere repetition of the themes. In the later works, even the da capo form itself becomes more plastic.²⁴

The typical full or five-section da capo aria, common in the operas of Conti and Caldara, found its highest point of development in Hasse. It has the following scheme:

A: (first four-line stanza):ritornello I; first section, cadencing on the dominant or relative major; ritornello II; second section, in the nature of a development of the material of the first, with extended coloratura passages, modulating back to the tonic and sometimes with a return of the theme of the first section; cadenza; ritornello III.

B: (second four-line stanza):in one section, shorter than A, in a related key, and with material either (1) continuing and developing that of A or (2) contrasting with A; ending with a cadenza, then ritornello IV (usually the same as ritornello I).

A: da capo (usually without ritornello I), with additional improvised coloraturas and a longer cadenza.

The above scheme is frequently shortened by later composers, who either omit a portion of part A in the da capo or set both stanzas in a one-movement ABA′ form. The da capo aria in one shape or another, however, persists throughout the whole eighteenth-century opera seria, along with other aria forms.

Hasse’s respect for the integrity of the drama is in contrast to the carelessness of some earlier Italians in this regard; he is no slave to the conventional pattern of regular alternation of arias and semplice recitatives but will on occasion freely intermingle passages in different styles as the situation demands. His handling of the orchestra is above the general level of opera composers of his time.²⁵ Notable is his use of woodwinds to provide harmonic support or to counterbalance the strings. Moreover, and particularly in the accompanied recitatives for which he was so celebrated, he sometimes shows a depth of expression that may be attributable to his Germanic origin, as German historians are fond of pointing out, but that in any case is a quality for which few Italian composers of the early eighteenth century were distinguished.

Another Italianized German, contemporary with Hasse, was Carl Heinrich Graun (c. 1704–59). His early years (1717–35) were spent as a chorus singer (tenor) in operas by Lotti, staged in Dresden, and by Schürmann, staged at Brunswick. His appointment as vize-Kapellmeister at Brunswick led to his productions of six operas for that court before he became (in 1735) the official composer of Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712–68).²⁶ This monarch supervised with the closest interest all musical productions at his court and was personally responsible for the creation of the Berlin Opera House, which opened in 1742 with a production of Graun’s Cesare e Cleopatra. Ever since his attendance at the Dresden production (1728) of Cleofide by Hasse, Frederick the Great was enamored of Hasse’s operas and, as a natural consequence, Graun’s creations for the Berlin Opera, where he was Kapellmeister, tended to imitate the style of his famous compatriot.²⁷ The libretto of Graun’s Montezuma (1755), written in French prose by Frederick himself and translated into Italian verse by the court poet, is remarkable for being one of the comparatively rare modern subjects in eighteenth-century opera—the conquest of Mexico by Cortez.²⁸ (The ballets in this opera even make some attempt at local color, though with rather feeble results.) Montezuma is also historically important because in it cavatinas replaced the traditional da capo aria.

The word cavatina, the diminutive of cavata, comes from the Italian cavare, “to draw out, to excavate.” Hence, one meaning is that of something buried or concealed. For example, in vocal compositions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there were soggetti cavati—themes (in the tenor) that “concealed” a name, each vowel of which was represented by a note (a by fa, e by re, i by mi, and so on). Another meaning can be found in Walther’s Lexikon (1732), which defines cavata as “a short arioso passage, occurring usually at the end of a recitative, in which the mood or meaning of the recitative is concentrated or drawn forth.” Cavatina was used in the eighteenth century as opposed to aria, in the sense of a vocal number that “gathers together” an aria (that is, a da capo aria) in shorter and simpler form, without much text repetition or coloratura. In general, the word defines a type of song rather than any particular formal scheme.²⁹

The cavatinas in Montezuma are in two-part form without repeats and with the following key scheme: tonic → dominant ║ dominant → (modulations) → tonic, the ending of the second part repeating that of the first more or less exactly but in the tonic key. Thus the scheme is that already exemplified in the principal section of many of the large-scale da capo arias in the works of Vinci, Schürmann, and Hasse, corresponding to the typical contemporary instrumental sonata first-movement form. It may be regarded as a truncated da capo aria: an elaborate first section, but without the traditional middle (contrasting) section or the traditional recapitulation of part A. The decline of the da capo had already begun in Germany by the 1730s; many of the German scores of that period bear the direction senza da capo (without da capo) at the end of the arias.³⁰

It seems fairly certain that the large number of cavatinas in Montezuma is primarily due to the wishes of Frederick the Great and only secondarily to the librettist and the composer.³¹ Graun had used the form in earlier works (Artaserse, 1743; Europa galante, 1748), but Frederick claims most of the credit, as indicated by one of several letters on this subject written to his sister: “As for the cavatinas, I have seen some by Hasse which are infinitely more beautiful than the arias [that is, da capo arias]. There is no need of repetition, except when the singers know how to make variations [note that “except”!]; but it seems to me, in any case, that it is an abuse to repeat the same thing four times. Your actors … were never obliged to do such a stupid thing.”³² This statement is interesting not only as the comment of an intelligent contemporary on one of the conventions of eighteenth-century opera but also as an anticipation of the theories of Gluck on the same subject.

Graun’s music for Montezuma is in typical mid-eighteenth-century style. The overture is of the Italian type:³³ in three movements, with homophonic texture, short themes, a simple harmonic. vocabulary, many repetitions and sequential patterns, broken-chord figures, and the “Lombardic rhythm” (

), a device very common in the music of this period.³⁴ The arias are well written and show forth the beautiful vocal melodies for which Graun was justly famous. Only occasionally, as in Keiser, are there figures that suggest the instrumental rather than the vocal idiom.

Musical improvement of the semplice recitative is a noticeable feature in the work of many composers by the middle of the century, including that of Graun. His semplice recitatives show some harmonic variety and are enlivened by the use of deceptive cadences. The instrumentally accompanied recitatives are excellent examples of this style (example 13.4).

Among the Italianized German composers after Hasse and Graun we may mention Johann Gotthieb Naumann (1741–1801) of Dresden, a celebrity in his time and a typical representative of the Empfindsamkeit of the late eighteenth century. His early works are influenced by the buffo and seria styles of his contemporaries (most especially, Galuppi and Hasse). La clemenza di Tito (Dresden, 1769) is representative of his more mature style, especially with respect to the harmonic vocabulary and the orchestration. Only in the last few works, among them Osiride (Dresden, 1781), do changes appear that reflect the opera semiseria of the late eighteenth century.

Curiously enough, Naumann’s best-remembered operas were produced for Sweden. Cora och Alonzo, a tragédie lyrique, was composed on a Swedish text in 1778 and performed for the inauguration of the Royal Opera House at Stockholm in 1782.³⁵ This work was frequently revived at Stockholm until 1832, and it also appeared on many German stages in translation. His Gustaf Wasa (1786), a nationalist opera, was also set to a Swedish text. It was commissioned by King Gustavus III and remained one of that country’s most popular operas well into the nineteenth century.

Certain writers in the past have tended to regard everything in eighteenth-century opera before Gluck as being somewhat in the nature of a necessary but regrettable episode, declining about the middle of the century to a hopelessly low state of affairs, which Gluck, practically single-handed, redeemed through his so-called reforms—the very word carrying with it an aura of moral uplift, implying that something bad was replaced by something better. This point of view, a relic of the evolutionary philosophy of history, has led to the neglect of early and middle eighteenth-century Italian opera composers, out of a failure to appreciate their real merits and the qualities of their music in relation to the period and the circumstances for which their operas were composed. The situation has been aggravated by the fact that Italian scholars, who should be most concerned to set this matter in its true light, have so far not made much of the music of their own composers available in modern editions.

The German musicologists, understandably enough, have concerned themselves chiefly with either composers of German birth or composers who were active in Germany, and even here they have been more attentive to those aspects of the music that seem to appeal to Germans—more serious quality of expressiveness, richer texture, greater importance of the orchestra—than to the fundamentally vocal and melodic traits characteristic of Italy. The result is that the importance of Gluck, great as it unquestionably is, has been exaggerated by inadequate conceptions both of the real nature of the situation against which he was striving and of the contributions of other composers who to some extent anticipated his doctrines.³⁶ Nor did the reform of opera begin with Gluck. Opera is always being reformed; that is to say, it is always changing, and one is presumably entitled to bestow the name of reform on any marked change regarded as being in the “right” direction. A more objective viewpoint is neatly stated by Martin Cooper:

Opera is constructed of three elements—the musical, the literary, and the spectacular; and at different times each of these three elements has in fact gained an undue supremacy over the other two. For this reason the history of opera is the history of a series of reformations and counter-reformations, no two countries and no two epochs agreeing on the role that each element should ideally play in the constitution of the whole. Neither evolutionary nor unified, it is the history of perpetually recurring schools of thought, one never victorious over the other, though occasionally gaining the majority of popular opinion.³⁷

Granting, then, that in much of the Italian opera of the early eighteenth century the elements of melody and display of singers’ virtuosity had usurped too large a place in the scheme, it could be expected that a reaction should take place calculated to restore the balance. Then, too, by the middle of the century there was a general turning away from the frivolities of the age of the Regency, and with this went a desire to make music more serious and expressive. The new Empfindsamkeit, which was at first nothing more than an infusion of a tender and pretty sentimentality into the fabric of rococo music, prepared the way for the classical style of the later eighteenth century. A deepening of the texture, an increased attention to harmonic variety and to the inner voices in the composition, were natural concomitants of this change. French opera, with its informal mingling of recitative and aria and its emphasis on ballet, chorus, and spectacle, began to exert some influence on composers in other countries. Finally, the comic opera, constantly increasing in popularity, acted as a goad through parody and satire, and at the same time provided a living example of the effects to be gained through simplicity and variety of style with new types of subject matter, forcing the creators of serious opera to take stock and adapt themselves to a new generation of audiences.

Not all the influences came from the side of music. The rise of sentimental novels, such as those of Samuel Richardson, and above all the cult of “naturalness” popularized by Rousseau wrought such changes in literary thought and expression that the opera libretto, and consequently opera music, could not possibly remain aloof. But as these changes are to be more clearly observed in the field of comic opera (through which in large measure their effects were transmitted to the serious opera), we shall defer a more detailed consideration of them until later.

We have already intimated that Gluck was not the only reformer in the eighteenth century. As a matter of fact, there was hardly a composer of serious opera after 1750 who was not touched by the general movement of reaction against the older type. As in all such changes, there were moderates and radicals. The radical reform movement took place almost wholly outside Italy and, as far as its consequences for Italian opera went, was short-lived; it will be dealt with later. First, we shall consider the moderate or evolutionary changes that came into opera seria everywhere after the middle of the eighteenth century.

These changes affected both the libretto and the music.³⁸ It was typical of the more moderate composers that they continued to use Metastasio’s librettos, although he wrote only four new ones between 1754 and 1782, the year of his death. But in the settings of the later eighteenth century, the earlier Metastasian librettos were altered: many recitatives and arias were deleted, and ensembles and occasionally choruses were added. The whole tendency was to make an opera a less regular but more organic whole, with arias and ensembles carrying on the action instead of being merely static moments in its flow. The distinction between recitative and aria was still maintained, but accompanied recitatives became longer and more elaborate, and some scenes were composed in a free alternation of recitative, arioso, aria, and ensemble. The five-part da capo aria virtually disappeared in favor of various more compact versions of the basic da capo scheme; other aria forms were also used, among them a two-movement form, generally in the order of “slow—fast.” Within the general pattern, the music came to be organized in longer and more complex phrases. More attention was given to the orchestra: the texture was enriched, and greater variety of color and more thematic independence were sought. All three movements of the Italian overture became longer and more elaborate; occasionally, overtures might be in one movement, usually a sonata-allegro form. Moreover, in the last part of the century, and especially after Gluck had set the example in his first “reform” works, it became increasingly common to relate the overture to the particular opera it introduced, sometimes only by foreshadowing the general mood, sometimes by using themes that would later appear in the body of the opera.³⁹ This was a contrast to the practice of the early eighteenth century, when as a rule the overture was a neutral, independent composition that might have served equally well for almost any opera.

Among the moderate reformers in the eighteenth century, we may certainly class Hasse and Graun, the extent of whose innovations has already been noted. A slightly younger and more progressive composer in this group was David Perez (1711–78), whose scores are remarkable for their wealth of feeling as well as for the skill of their instrumental music.⁴⁰ The works composed before 1752 for Genoa, Naples, and Vienna reflect the conventions of an older Baroque style; those composed after that date, when he took up permanent residence in Lisbon, point toward the galant style, with its greater emphasis placed on symmetrical melodic phrasing, increased use of accompanied recitative, and the introduction of woodwinds as obbligato instruments. Examples of the former are Alessandro nell’Indie (Genoa, 1744) and Andromaca (Vienna, 1750), and of the latter are Olimpiade (Lisbon, 1753) and the revivals of some of his earlier works such as Alessandro nell’Indie (Lisbon, 1755). Unquestionably, his most important opera is Solimano, first performed at Lisbon (c. 1757; revised in 1768) and set to a libretto by a protégé of Metastasio, Giovanni Migliavacca. It has a mixture of buffo and seria elements and includes one cavatina.

Another Spanish composer active in Italy was Domènech (Domingo) Terradellas (1713–51), who studied in Naples and had his first operatic success in Rome with Merope (1743). He was noted for his depiction of violent emotions—dramatically portrayed in the scores by strong contrasts of texture, dynamics, and tempo, and by the daring quality of his modulations.⁴¹ Woodwinds also play an important part in his scoring of accompanied recitatives. His principal work was a setting of Metastasio’s Artaserse, staged at Venice in 1744.

Three composers of a later generation may be briefly mentioned. Gian Francesco di Majo (1732–70) ranks with Perez and Terradellas as one who brought into the regular tradition of Italian opera certain individual qualities, particularly in the expression of sorrowful emotions and in the fineness and elegance of his style, of which the aria “Se mai più saro geloso” from Alessandro (1767) is an example.⁴² Other important operas of Majo are Cajo Fabricio (1760), and Ifigenia in Tauride (1764), which comes close to the advanced reform ideals of Gluck. (It may be noted that this last-named opera was composed not for an Italian audience but for the German court of Mannheim.)

Johann Christian Bach (1735–82), known as the “Milan” or the “London” Bach, was the youngest surviving son of the great Johann Sebastian. Having moved to Milan shortly after his father’s death, he became as completely Italianized in his music as Graun or Hasse.⁴³ By 1762 he had relocated to London to serve as music master for Queen Sophie Charlotte; he remained in England for the rest of his career.

J. C. Bach was one of the most popular of the later composers in the Italian style. Among his operas are Alessandro nell’Indie (Naples, 1762), Lucio Silla (Mannheim, 1774), La clemenza di Scipione (London, 1778), and one on a revised version of Quinault’s Amadis de Gaule (Paris, 1779), in which he endeavored to adapt his style to the French requirements of the tragédie lyrique. His music, elegant and expressive (if seldom profoundly emotional), clear in form, expert in detail, most characteristic in lyrical moods and cantabile melodies, was much admired by the young Mozart, who became acquainted with the composer during his yearlong sojourn in London (1764–65) and even attended a performance of Bach’s Adriano in Siria (1765).⁴⁴ Bach and Mozart wrote for some of the same singers, set some of the same aria texts, and in Lucio Silla, set basically the same opera libretto. Indeed, the close relationship between these two composers with respect to the details of their compositional style invites further comparison. Burney states that in Bach’s arias “the richness of the accompaniments perhaps deserve [sic] more praise than the originality of the melodies; which, however, are always natural, elegant, and in the best taste of Italy at the time he came over.” ⁴⁵ Indeed, Bach’s orchestrations are made more colorful because flutes, oboes, bassoons, clarinets, and horns are allowed to assume a more prominent, sometimes dominant, position.

One of the last composers of opera seria in the eighteenth-century tradition was Giuseppe Sarti (1729–1802), whose career, like that of many of his contemporaries, took him to foreign courts: Copenhagen,⁴⁶ Venice, Milan, and St. Petersburg.⁴⁷ The most successful of his serious operas were Medonte (1777) and Giulio Sabino, first staged in Venice in 1781. A performance of Guilio Sabino at Eszterháza in 1783 may have influenced Haydn to try his hand at writing in a similar style, for shortly thereafter he came forth with Armida.⁴⁸ Sarti has perhaps been longer remembered for his works in a lighter vein, with such offerings as the comic intermezzo, La giardiniera brillante, first performed at Rome in 1768, and most particularly for Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode (Milan, 1782), an opera buffa from which Mozart quoted a phrase from the aria “Come un angello” in Don Giovanni.⁴⁹

Sarti went to St. Petersburg in 1784 and remained there until the end of his life. In addition to the serious (Armida e Rinaldo, 1786) and comic (I finti eredi, 1785) operas composed for the Russian court, Sarti contributed to Nachal’noye upra leniye Olega (The Early Reign of Oleg, 1790), an opera set to a libretto by Catherine II. Along with many traditional features, Sarti’s serious operas show some influence of newer ideas, especially in their powerful accompanied recitatives, frequent use of choruses, and the substitution of multi-sectional numbers (consisting of recitatives and ensembles) for the exit arias. His graceful melodies and the profusion of his ideas often suggest the style of Mozart.

An Italian contemporary of Mozart was Niccolò Zingarelli (1752–1837), one of the last of the eighteenth-century Neapolitan composers.⁵⁰ His principal opera, Giulietta e Romeo, with a libretto based on Shakespeare, was performed at Milan in 1796 and continued to be played for more than twenty-five years. Most of Zingarelli’s dramatic works were serious, but he also had some success with a comic opera, Il mercato di Monfregoso (Milan, 1792).

The radical reform movement in eighteenth-century opera, as already noted, took its course mainly outside Italy. The two Italian composers chiefly associated with this movement were Niccolò Jommelli (1714–74) and Tommaso Traetta (1727–79). Beginning in 1737, Jommelli produced a large number of operas, both serious and comic, in Italy.⁵¹ His earliest works were quite traditional in style, but signs of change and experimentation became evident by 1750. Perhaps unfortunately, Jommelli became acquainted with Metastasio at Vienna in 1749 and remained under his spell ever thereafter, with the result that he was never moved to make a fundamental break with the older type of opera libretto. Two of his most successful works were settings of Metastasian texts: Demofoonte (1743) and Didone abbandonata (1747). The climax of Jommelli’s life was his period of service (1753–69) as Kapellmeister to the Duke of Württemberg at Stuttgart—a German court, but one in which French taste was an important factor. It was in the works written in Germany that Jommelli’s innovations were most marked, and particularly in Fetonte (1768), on a libretto by Mattia Verazi (known as “Romano”).⁵² His last operas, written after he had returned to Naples in 1769, were received coldly by his countrymen, who found his new style “too German.” So strong was the admixture of northern elements in his music that he has been called “the Italian Gluck.”

Traetta, by both temperament and circumstances, was led to even greater departure from the accepted Italian models of his time.⁵³ Like Jommelli, he began with successes in Italian theaters, including two operas on librettos of Metastasio: Didone abbandonata (1757) and Olimpiade (1758). An important influence in Traetta’s career was his term of service from 1758 to 1765 at the court of Parma, which was dominated by French ideas of opera. Some of his most important later works were written for the German stage: Armida (1761) and Ifigenia in Tauride (1763) for Vienna, Sofonisba (1762) for Mannheim. From 1768 to 1775 Traetta was at the court of St. Petersburg.

What are the qualities in the operas of Jommelli and Traetta—qualities most strongly evident in their works for non-Italian theaters—that have caused these two composers to be numbered among the reformers in the eighteenth century? The first is their international character. Earlier Italian composers, though they traveled a great deal, always took with them the Italian tradition and preserved it untouched by foreign musical influences, even of those countries in which they worked. At this time, there was only one school of opera in Europe outside Italy, that of France, which had been preserved by virtue of almost complete isolation from Italian music in the first half of the century. By 1750 the French opera had begun, though slightly, to make itself felt by composers in those courts and cities that in other respects also were touched by French culture—meaning, in effect, the German courts and a few in northern Italy. French influence was still strong on German life throughout the eighteenth century up to the time of Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, as witness in literature the doctrines of Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) and in manners those of Frederick the Great, the great friend of Voltaire, who habitually spoke and wrote French and despised German as “the language of boors.” It happened that both Jommelli and Traetta came into this French orbit, the former at Stuttgart and the latter at Parma. The very subjects of some of Traetta’s operas are significant—for example, I tintaridi (1760), a translation of Rameau’s Castor et Pollux; Le feste d’Imeneo (1760), a festa teatrale or opéra-ballet similar to Rameau’s Fêtes d’Hébé; and Ippolito ed Arice (1759), the same subject as Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie. Traetta’s principal librettists, Marco Coltellini (c. 1740–75) and Carlo Frugoni (1692–1768), were well acquainted with Rameau’s works. Coltellini was a pupil of Calzabigi;⁵⁴ in 1765 he was engaged to prepare the libretto of Telemaco for Gluck, and in 1772 Calzabigi designated him as his successor at the Vienna court. The importance of the ballets in both Jommelli’s and Traetta’s operas is another sign of French influence. At Stuttgart, the ballet master was Jean-Georges Noverre (1720–1810), author of a celebrated treatise on the dance and ballet master at the Paris Opéra, who advocated a return to Greek ideals of the dance, with naturalness of movements, simplicity of costume, and emphasis on the dramatic content of the ballet rather than on abstract figures or the virtuosity of the dancers.⁵⁵ Another evidence of French taste in Traetta and Jommelli is the greater prominence of the spectacular element in their operas, as in Traetta’s Sofonisba, with temple scenes, battle scenes, the undersea palace of Thetis, the transformations of Proteus—all reminiscent of Lully and Rameau. Equally French are the pictorial details in the music, touches of that imitation of nature so dear to eighteenth-century aestheticians: storms, battles, pastoral idyls, even the rhythm of a horse’s gallop imitated in the second violins throughout an aria (“Quel destriere” in Jommelli’s L’Olimpiade) or the realistic direction urlo francese (“French howl”), a cry rather than a musical note, literally imitating the sound of the voice under stress of emotion (Traetta’s Sofonisba).

The German influence on Jommelli and Traetta is seen in their treatment of the orchestra, showing a greater complexity of texture and increased attention to idiomatic use of the instruments. The orchestra was the medium through which German music in the eighteenth century began its conquering career in Europe; the Mannheim orchestra was famous by 1745, while those of Dresden under Hasse and Stuttgart under Jommelli (there were forty-seven players for his Fetonte in 1768) were hardly less celebrated. Likewise owing to German influence is the greater richness and variety of the harmonies in both Jommelli and Traetta, as compared with their Italian contemporaries.

Another aspect of their operas is the way in which Jommelli and Traetta consistently aim at a closer coordination of music and drama. One sign of this is the decreased proportion of secco recitative, a style that by its very nature excludes any thorough participation of music in the action.⁵⁶ To a greater extent than ever before, secco recitatives are replaced by the accompanied variety. In the second act of Jommelli’s Demofoonte, only two of the eleven scenes are secco, all the rest being accompanied by full orchestra; this is an extreme instance, but it illustrates the whole tendency of the century that culminated in the later works of Gluck, where the secco recitative is eliminated altogether. Among the accompanied recitatives in these operas are some splendid examples of dramatic power, such as the tenth scene of Act III of Traetta’s Sofonisba. The treatment of the aria also undergoes a change: many are so contrived as to further the action rather than interrupt it as in the older Italian opera; the melodic style is more expressive and covers a wider range of emotions. A distinctly Mozartean quality is apparent in some of the cantabile arias, such as “Non piangete” (example 13.5) from Traetta’s Antigona (1772). A sense of climax and proportion, a sure grasp of the principles of musical form and their adaptation to the dramatic situation, are everywhere evident.⁵⁷ The tendency is constantly toward greater fluidity, toward breaking down the old hard-and-fast boundaries between recitative and aria. We often find long scene-complexes in which accompanied recitative, arioso, aria, ensemble, and chorus all participate freely. Even the conventional da capo pattern of the arias is artfully concealed: more prominence is given to the middle (contrasting) section, especially in Traetta; on repetition, the principal section is shortened or otherwise altered; changes of mood, of meter, and of tempo are incorporated; declamatory (recitative) sections occur in the midst of an aria; or an accompanied recitative and the following aria will use the same thematic material—all changes from the old order, even though some of them had been anticipated by earlier composers.

The changing conception of the overture is another eighteenth-century tendency that finds reflection in the works of Jommelli and Traetta. One of the points of Gluck’s reform manifesto of 1769 is a statement of the new ideal of an overture that should be specifically connected with the drama following. Although neither Jommelli nor Traetta consistently aimed at this ideal, their operas do show certain marks of it. Thus in Traetta’s Sofonisba the theme of the slow movement of the overture recurs in a quintet in the last scene of the opera—a device similar to that employed by Rameau in Castor et Pollux twenty-five years earlier—and the finale leads without pause directly into the first scene of Act I. Both here and in Jommelli’s Fetonte the overture is suggestive of the general course of the drama—as in Rameau’s Zoroastre of 1749. In Fetonte the very short first movement of the overture leads at once into the first scene of the opera (an andante solo with chorus), which replaces the usual second movement; then follows the “third” movement, a musical depiction of an earthquake, after which, with the second scene of Act I, the opera proper begins. The overture to Majo’s Ifigenia in Tauride is a similar compromise between the old Italian concert overture and the later nineteenth-century program type, which was first exemplified in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide (1772).

The French example, and the departure from the Italian norm, are most clearly evidenced in Jommelli and Traetta by the return of the chorus to an important place in their operas not written for Italian performance. Choruses are numerous and often of large dimensions; they do not merely appear in the spectacle scenes but also form part of the action. Perhaps the most notable instance is the fourth scene of Act II of Traetta’s Ifigenie in Tauride, in which the pleadings of Orestes are interrupted by outbursts from the Chorus of Furies. Although the librettos are not the same, an interesting comparison may be made between this and the parallel scene in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride (Act II), written twenty years later. In spite of their impressive scale and appearance, the choruses in Traetta never attain the real solemnity and impact of the great choral scenes of Rameau and Gluck, or of Mozart’s Idomeneo. The eighteenth-century Italians apparently lacked feeling for the full dramatic possibilities of the chorus.

In sum, while the operas of Jommelli and Traetta show many important differences from what may be called the orthodox Italian opera seria of the eighteenth century, they still do not make a complete break with it. In Jommelli particularly, and in Traetta to a lesser degree, the old type of libretto still prevails. The duality of poem and music is weakened but not overcome. In spite of all changes in detail, the works remain singers’ operas, with the old virtuoso display, improvised embellishments, and cadenzas.⁵⁸

1. Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli (the basic work, a thoroughgoing study of the Neapolitan conservatories, teachers, composers, and singers up to the middle of the nineteenth century); [Grosley], New Observations on Italy (1769); Croce, I teatri di Napoli; Roberti, “La musica in Italia”; Schletterer, “Die Opernhäuser Neapels”; Robinson, Naples and Neapolitan Opera.

2. Lalande, Voyage, 6:345. Of the composers named, all but two, Corelli and Durante, were famous chiefly for operas. Francesco Durante (1684–1755), though he wrote no operas himself, was the teacher of many of the most important Italian opera composers of the eighteenth century.

3. On Vinci, see Silva, Illustri musicisti calabresi; Meikle, “Leonardo Vinci’s Artaserse”; Markstrom, “The Operas of Leonardo Vinci, Napoletano.” On Leo, see G. Leo, Leonardo Leo…e le sue opere musicali; Pastore, Leonardo Leo; Hardie, “Leonardo Leo … and His Comic Operas.”

4. See Villarosa, Memorie dei compositori; Giacomo, I quattro antichi conservatorii musicale di Napoli, 1543–1800; Robinson, “Porpora’s Operas for London, 1733–1736”’

6. See Radiciotti, Pergolesi; Degrada, “L’opera napoletana”; Paymer and Williams, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.

7. Antonio Caldara was the first composer to set Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade. For a comparison of eighteenth-century settings of this libretto, see a study by J. K. Wilson, in which settings by Pergolesi, Caldara, Vivaldi, Leo, Traetta, Galuppi, Hasse, Jommelli, Piccinni, Sacchini, Paisiello, and Cimarosa are considered.

9. The earliest extant stage work by Pergolesi is La conversione di S. Guglielmo, a dramma sacro in three acts with comic scenes, first performed at the monastery of S. Agnello Maggiore in Naples in 1731. For information on, and a facsimile of, L’Olimpiade, see Brown, ed., Italian Opera, 1640–1770, vol. 34. For Adriano in Siria, see vol. 3 of Pergolesi: Complete Works, edited, with an introductory essay, by Monson.

11. Ebert, Attilio Ariosti in Berlin; Bose, “Ariosti und Bononcini”; Lindgren, “Ariosti’s London Years.”

12. Valdrighi, I Bononcini da Modena; Lindgren, “A Bibliographic Scrutiny of Dramatic Works set by Giovanni and His Brother Antonio Maria Bononcini.”

13. Research by Lindgren credits Giovanni Bononcini, rather than his younger brother Antonio Maria, with the composition of Camilla. See Lindgren. “Il trionfi di Camilla” and “Camilla and The Begger’s Opera.” See also chapter ten.

14. The attribution of the music to specific composers is supplied by only one source, a copy of the 1709 libretto for the London production, currently in the University Library in Bologna, wherein the name of a composer, in a handwritten notation, has been assigned to each of the “songs.” It should be noted that Conti’s 1706 score of Clotilde is no longer extant, prohibiting any comparison of the musical material beyond that of the first movement of the overture, which interestingly comes from Conti’s oratorio, Il Gioseffo.

15. From 1705 to 1711, Antonio and Giovanni Bononcini, together with the librettist Stampiglia, provided operas for Joseph I, who succeeded Leopold I, but these three were not retained by Charles VI. Giovanni did not return to Vienna until 1737; in that year he brought to the Vienna stage two new operas—Alessandro in Sidone (libretto by Zeno and Pariati) and Zenobia (libretto by Metastasio).

17. For a facsimile edition, see H. M. Brown, ed., Italian Opera, 1640–1770, vol. 69. Pariati and Zeno remained faithful to the Cervantes text, sometimes incorporating lines from the original, but they also added several characters, such as Rigo, the barber. A shorter version of this same libretto, bearing the same title, was the source for a set of intermezzos (no composer or librettist given) that was produced in Spain in 1728. The libretto for Amor medico, o sia il Don Chisciotte, published in 1739, also draws heavily from the Pariati/Zeno source.

18. Gmeyner, “Die Opern Antonio Caldaras”; Kirkendale, Antonio Caldara; Pritchard, ed., Antonio Caldara: Essays on His Life and Times.

20. For a description of these Habsburg opera productions, see Lady Montagu’s letter of September 14,1716 in her Letters, 1:239.

21. Köchel, Johann Josef Fux; Meer, Johann Josef Fux als Opernkomponist; White, ed., Johann Josef Fux and the Music of the Austro-Italian Baroque; Seifert, Die Oper am Wiener Kaiserhof im 17. Jahrhundert.

22. Burney, The Present State of Music in Germany, vol. 1; Gerber, Der Operntypus Johann Adolf Hasses; Zeller, Das recitativo accompagnato in den Opern Johann Adolf Hasses; Millner, The Operas of Johann Adolf Hasse; Heartz, “Hasse, Galuppi, and Metastasio”; Muraro, ed., Metastasio e il mondo musicale.

24. For a study of arias by Hasse, Jommelli, and J. C. Bach, see Weimer, Opera Seria and the Evolution of Classical Style, 1755–1772.

25. See diagram of the Dresden Opera orchestra under Hasse in Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, s. v. “Orchestra.”

26. See Mayer-Reinach, “Carl Heinrich Graun als Opernkomponist”; Yorke-Long, Music at Court, chap. 4; Strunk, ed., Source Readings (1950 ed.), 699–710; Helm, Music at the Court of Frederick the Great.

27. Graun is known to have studied the opera scores of Keiser and Lotti. He probably was also influenced by the operas of F. Conti, whose music he undoubtedly heard and may even have performed, especially in Brunswick, where a number of Conti’s operas enjoyed rivals in the mid-1720s.

28. Most of the librettos set to music by Graun were tragedies, but Montezuma was an exception. For more on this libretto, see Klüppelholz, “Die Eroberung Mexikos aus preussischer Sicht: Zum Libretto der Oper Montezuma von Friedrich dem Grossen.” See also Mayer-Reinach, “Zur Heraus-gabe des Montezuma.”

29. On the history and significance of the cavatina, see Pirrotta, “Falsirena,” and Osthoff, “Mozarts Cavatinen.” See also chapter twenty.

31. Graun adhered closely to the taste of his patron, who preferred that he use the Italian sinfonia and the cavatina as a suitable alternative for the da capo aria in Montezuma.

33. This was typical of Graun’s overtures after 1745. On the overtures to his other operas, see Mennicke, Hasse und die Brüder Graun, chaps. 3 and 4.

34. Quantz, Versuch, 241, says this Lombardic rhythm was introduced “about the year 1722.” Burney, A General History of Music, 2:847, complains of its abuse in operas sung at London in 1748.

35. Breitholtz, Studier i operan Gustaf Wasa; Engländer, Johann Gottlieb Naumann als Opernkomponist; Åstrand et al., Beiträge zur Biographie J. G. Naumanns: Zur Tonsetzung vom Gustav Wasa.

38. For a detailed treatment of this topic, with musical examples, see Downes, “The Operas of Johann Christian Bach,” vol. 1.

39. See Botstiber, Geschichte der Ouvertüre, chaps. 5–7; Mennicke, Hasse und die Brüder Graun, chap. 6.

42. Printed in Bücken, Die Musik des Rokoko und Klassik, 115. See also DiChiera, “The Life and Operas of Gian Francesco di Majo.”

43. Downes, “The Operas of Johann Christian Bach”; H. Abert, “Johann Christian Bachs italienische Opern”; Warburton, “A Study of Johann Christian Bach’s Operas.” See also the introductory essays for the facsimile editions of Bach’s operas in Warburton, ed., Johann Christian Bach 1732–1782:The Collected Works.

44. H. Abert, W. A. Mozart, 1:58, 242–49; cf. Köchel, Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis…Mozarts, no. 293 e.

47. See Scudo, Le Chevalier Sarti; Rivalta, Giuseppe Sarti; Mooser, Annales, 2:415–50, 463–79.

48. John Rice presents this viewpoint in “Sarti’s Guilio Sabino, Haydn’s Armida, and the Arrival of Opera Seria at Eszterháza.” Guilio Sabino was also performed at Vienna in 1785 under the direction of Salieri. See Armbruster, “Salieri, Mozart, und die Wiener Fassung des Giulio Sabino von Giuseppe Sarti.”

49. Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode was an outstanding success in Vienna, where it enjoyed, by 1790, sixty performances (some versions in German, others in Italian). Performances in Vienna usually featured a number of substitute arias by well known composers such as Salieri, Storace, Anfossi, and Martín y Soler.

51. H. Abert, Niccolo Jommelli als Opernkomponist; idem, “Zur Geschichte der Oper in Württemberg”; Yorke-Long, Music at Court; McClymonds, Niccolo Jommelli: The Last Years 1769–1774.

52. Verazi (c. 1730–94) was court poet at Mannheim until 1778. His librettos set a new tone for the operatic genre, with their successful blending of music, dance, poetry, and stagecraft to create what has been called spectacle opera. One such example is Europa riconosciuta (1778), set by Salieri for the inauguration of the opera house in Milan. Verazi and Jommelli worked closely to produce a number of operas; their first collaborative work was Ifigenia in Aulide. See McClymonds, “Mattia Verazi and the Opera at Mannheim, Stuttgart, and Ludwigsburg.”

53. On Traetta, see studies by Cassavola and Schlitzer, ed.; Yorke-Long, Music at Court; Mooser, Annates, 2:87–132.

54. The eighteenth-century spelling of his name was Calsabigi. For more on this important poet, see chapter fourteen.

55. Noverre. Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets. See also H. Abert, “J. G. Noverre,” in his Gesammelte Schriften, 264–86.

56. By this date, the term secco is frequently used instead of semplice as a descriptive term for the simple continuo-accompanied recitative. See Monson, “Semplice o secco: Continuo Declamation in Early 18th-Century Italian Recitative.”

58. Several operas by composers mentioned in this section are discussed in part 2 of Wilhelm Heinse’s novel Hildegard von Hohenthal. See Lauppert, Die Musikästhetik Wilhelm Heinses.