Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Music Examples
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Laudatio
- Introduction
- I Music in Theory and Practice
- II Art and Social Process: Music in Court and Urban Societies
- III Creating an Opera Industry
- IV The Crisis of Modernity
- Epilogue Reinhard Strohm: List of Publications
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
11 - Identity and Poetic Style: The Case of Rosmene by Giuseppe Domenico de Totis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Music Examples
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Laudatio
- Introduction
- I Music in Theory and Practice
- II Art and Social Process: Music in Court and Urban Societies
- III Creating an Opera Industry
- IV The Crisis of Modernity
- Epilogue Reinhard Strohm: List of Publications
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
Summary
Italian opera of the second half of the seventeenth century was shaped and characterised by two contrasting phenomena. The first was the dissemination of Venetian opera over the whole Italian peninsula. This process of dissemination was concerned with two, interrelated elements of what can be called Venetian opera:
The production system, known as the ‘impresarial system’, with its entrepreneurial approach, division of economic and artistic competences, and openness to being produced in and for non-courtly environments. This model was predestined to become the paradigm for many other places.
The artistic product itself, the musical drama that spread and circulated in the form of a score and/or libretto. With the same drama seen in Venice, Turin or Palermo, dissemination tended to have a unifying, homogenising effect. At the same time, the musical and poetic text confronted regional and local traditions, preferences, conventions, tastes and styles. These continued to exist – despite the general acceptance of the Venetian model – and produced a manifold, regionally diversified operatic landscape on the Italian peninsula spanning major and minor operatic centres, from Milan to Palermo and from Messina to Udine.
Besides variations resulting from the Venetian production system and its modifications, diversity within dramma per musica had complex sources. The application of modern categories such as taste and the persistence of local traditions cannot fully explain this diversity. There are many preconditions that constitute the basis for this diversity, such as the social and political organisation of the hosting state or city and the place of musical drama in the location’s broader cultural life. On the other hand, there are many ways in which diversity manifests itself, and these would be valid objects of investigation – for example the style of the music and the peculiarities of dramaturgy. This study, however, explores one specific segment of the broad panorama of Italian opera between 1650 and 1700: the question of language and the options of poetic versification of dramma per musica used by librettists of that period.
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- Information
- Music as Social and Cultural PracticeEssays in Honour of Reinhard Strohm, pp. 199 - 213Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007