Dramma per musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (review)

Dramma per musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century. By Reinhard Strohm. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. [x, 326 p. ISBN 0-300-36454-3. $50.]

This volume is a collection of fifteen essays written between 1988 and 1996. They have been revised slightly, either in the process of translating and updating, or to create better cohesion. The introductory chapter is a translation of Reinhard Strohm's article on opera seria for the new edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG): Sachteil, 2d ed. ([Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994-], s.v. "Dramma per musica," B: "18. Jahrhundert (Opera seria)"). The remaining chapters are arranged under four general headings: "Court and City Opera," "Tragédie into dramma per musica," "Theory and Practice," and "Themes and Dreams." Except for the introductory chapter, all of the essays deal with aspects of Italian serious opera in the early decades of the eighteenth century (1710-40). They do not demand a specialist's knowledge of the theoretical or analytical vocabulary of music, and they can thus be read and enjoyed by anyone with an interest in opera or eighteenth-century cultural life, as well as by specialists wishing to stay current in the field.

The introductory chapter is extremely important because it provides access in English to Strohm's insightful article on opera seria published in the distinguished German dictionary of music, MGG. Historians and critics have not dealt kindly with the genre, which served a philosophical, aesthetic, cultural, and political milieu finding little sympathy or approbation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recognizing this, Strohm has devoted much of his article, and, indeed, much of the book, to the task of developing a concept of the genre as an important and prestigious cultural entity within eighteenth-century society. Its role was to entertain and instruct, while, of necessity, observing the tastes and sensibilities of the power elite from whence its sustenance flowed. Strohm begins with the concept of the genre, its place in society, its management and production, and the strategies behind the relationship between drama and music that was so contradictory to the aesthetics of the next two centuries. Only then does he move into the usual concerns of such articles: the development of the genre and its criticism, reform, and survival.

The first group of essays, "Court and City Opera," focuses on aspects of opera in Rome, Venice, Madrid, and a group of German courts maintaining opera establishments. The opening essay, "A Context for Griselda: The Teatro Capranica in Rome, 1711-1724," offers a glimpse into the processes involved in maintaining a theater and assembling a season, from selecting the offerings, engaging the singers, and building a production, to dealing with political complications and financing. The remaining essays in this section deal with the exporting of Neapolitan opera seria to Venice, Germany, and Madrid. The second essay, "The Neapolitans in Venice," evaluates some persuasive evidence upholding the still somewhat controversial view that Neapolitan composers did indeed gain popular ascendancy over the Venetians during the 1730s. The third essay looks at the decline of German opera in the 1730s and its salvation with the advent of arcadian reform opera. Finally, "Corselli's drammi per musica for Madrid" addresses Francesco Corselli's role in the establishment of the genre in Spain.

In the second group of essays, Strohm approaches the emerging genre on its own terms rather than on those of subsequent centuries, comparing it with its models and viewing it in the light of contemporary theories, especially those governing French spoken drama and arcadian literary reform. Two pairs of essays consider first the libretto and then its musical setting. In the first two essays, Strohm compares Apostolo Zeno's Teuzzone with its French models and then looks at dramatic speech and musical image in Antonio Vivaldi's musical setting. In the second pair of essays, he first compares Antonio Salvi's libretto Amore e maestà with its model...