Articles by tag "18th century"
Paisiello’s La Frascatana: Dramaturgical Transformations on Its Journey Through Central Europe
During the second half of the eighteenth century, the Italian opera buffa successfully spread all over Europe. The works were often adapted to suit not only the new performers but also the respective cultural context. This is also true of one of the most popular comic operas of the period,...
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Courtly Representation Play, Singspiel, Opéra Comique: On the Reception of Antonio Sacchini’s L’isola d’amore
Up to now, scholars have treated ”opera as a form of courtly representation,” a topic of great significance for cultural history, primarily with regard to opera seria as well as festa teatrale. By contrast, opera buffa has been neglected, often being given the label ”bourgeois,” although the works of this...
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Italian Opera in Vienna in the 1770s: Repertoire and Reception – Data and Facts
Up to now in the research on Vienna’s theater and opera life in the 1770s the subject of the Italian repertoire and its reception remained rather underexposed, among other reasons for lack of outstanding artistic events, but also for the particular attention devoted to the institution-historical developments of this decade,...
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Borrowing, Reworking, and Composing: The Making of the Viennese Pasticci of 1750
The dramma per musica Andromeda liberata, the favola pastorale Euridice, and the azione teatrale Armida placata, all performed for the first time in Vienna at the Theater nächst der Burg in 1750, are, as pasticci, quite exceptional for the Viennese opera repertory of the Theresian Age. Their singularity resides not...
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His Voice and Something More: Francesco Borosini’s Cantata Quando miro o stella o fiore for Anton Ulrich, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
Eighteenth-century opera singers often engaged in activities that far exceeded their role as mere performers. Not only could they have a decisive impact on a composer’s musical choices; they often functioned as “cultural middlemen,” cultivating contacts to various noblemen. We can observe a prime example for a singer’s “networking abilities”...
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