Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2005
The Parisian premiere of Paisiello’s Nina, o sia la pazza d’amore on 3 September 1791 triggered a hostile reaction from French librettists and composers. Since the opéra comique on which Paisiello had based his opera remained in the active repertory of the Comédie-Italienne, Nina was considered an infringement of copyright legislation recently passed by the National Assembly. In the controversy that followed, matters involving intellectual property and opera aesthetics were linked to revolutionary struggle. At a time when clarity and transparency were identified as republican virtues in France, the carefully wrought balance between music and text that was associated with French operatic genres acquired new political resonance. Simultaneously, the perceived emphasis on sensual musical pleasure – at the expense of a coherent libretto – in Italian operas like Nina was eyed with suspicion, deemed a potential symptom of counterrevolution. In this way, the relative merits of French and Italian opera were superimposed on issues of revolution, reaction and national identity.