Academic literature on the topic 'Theater of Marcellus (Rome, Italy)'

Abstract In its earliest years opera emerged as an enhancement of festivities designed to glorify the rule of dynasties in city-states or the power of cardinals in Rome. Its arrival in Venice led to a radical transformation in its very essence and a new beginning in its history. Coming from Rome in 1637, what the first opera troupe found upon arriving in Venice was not a dynasty to glorify (unless it was Venice herself) but thriving commerce and, especially during carnival, a teeming international, pleasure-seeking public. Opera took root immediately, on an entirely new basis: in one form or another, the public paid to be admitted to the theater, and the introduction of this new commercial factor speedily had its effect on what the public was offered. Opera very soon learned to adapt itself to the new consumers: scenic effects remained a high priority, but now solo singing grew tremendously in importance. More and more, composers strove to exploit the solo voice in constructing their scores, and star opera singers began to dominate the operatic stage (as they do to this day). It was Venetian opera, in turn, that dominated wherever opera found a new venue, whether in Italy or abroad. And except where supported by kings or other rulers, its economic underpinnings reflected the lessons learned in Venice. The details of operatic production in seventeenth-century Venice are nowhere so clearly described as in the following extracts from a book by the theatrical chronicler Cristoforo lvanovich published in 1681. Entitled Minerva al tavolino (Minerva at her desk), it is a catalogue of all the operas produced at Venice’s numerous theaters from 1637 to the date of publication, with an appendix (from which we quote) describing the theaters themselves and how they functioned.

Abstract Literary criticism in Italy around 1700 was very much preoccupied with the dominance of French culture in Europe and the consequent waning of Italian prestige. Gone were the days when Italian literature was held up everywhere as a model to be imitated. Instead, Italy for a century had been in the grips of a literary decadence that soon would acquire the derogatory name of secentismo, “seventeenth-century-ism.” Its poetry, ornate and mannered, was hardly exportable anymore. Instead, the main export item now was opera, and this, if anything, only held Italy up to further ridicule (see Saint-Evremond, p. 51 ff above). It was in this atmosphere that the Arcadian Academy was founded in Rome in 1690. An institution whose goal was the purification of Italian literature in all its forms, including, very importantly, tragedy (a genre in which France had recently offered the world supreme examples), the Academy soon turned its attention to opera. The Arcadians felt (quite rightly too) that opera had usurped the Italian stage, bringing about the decline of “legitimate” theater in Italy. Some writers wished to abolish opera altogether, as a degrading, “venal” spectacle. Pier Jacopo Martello (1665-1727), who helped found an Arcadian “colony” in his native Bologna, was more reasonable: he belonged to those who merely sought to reform opera. He had in fact written several librettos himself, as well as “legitimate” tragedies; and when he came to formulate his thoughts on tragedy in a treatise entitled Della tragedia antica e moderna (On Ancient and Modern Tragedy), he included in its second edition (1715) an entire section on opera. The premise of the treatise is this: on his way to France, Martello has met a stranger who, upon further acquaintance, turns out to be none other than Aristotle himself, the founder of tragic theory, miraculously come back to life. What follows, then, is a series of dialogues, carried on mostly in Paris and environs, between Martello and this latter-day philosopher, who reinterprets the classical “rules” of tragedy, adapting them quite sensibly to eighteenth-century conditions. With a light touch, pseudo-Aristotle teaches his disciple how to write a libretto. He dismisses the notion that such a work might be considered poetry in any serious way and instead gives him a down-to-earth, mildly satirical account of all the components of Italian opera that need to be taken into consideration by the would-be librettist.