Book Review: Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth Century London. Volume I: The King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1778-1791

1997 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-91
Author(s):  
Byron Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

The Practical and Symbolic Functions of Pre-Rameau Opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Michel Noiray
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter explains how a uniquely long-lived canon evolved in revivals of operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and his immediate successors—chiefly André Campra and André-Cardinal Destouches—right up to the early 1770s. The Académie Royale de Musique was unique as the only theater to resist Italian repertory, except in two brief controversial periods. A dogmatic commitment to the old style and repertory survived after Lully’s death, quite separate from the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau. Opposition to this unique practice broke out occasionally among the public, but such opinion was not widely supported in the press. It is striking that the main critics of ancienne musique, as it was called—Rousseau, Paul Henri d’Holbach, and Friedrich Melchior von Grimm—all came from outside France. This chapter is paired with Franco Piperno’s “Italian opera and the concept of ‘canon’ in the late eighteenth century.”

Italian Opera and the Concept of “Canon” in the Late Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 50-71
Author(s):  
Franco Piperno
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Giovanni Paisiello

This essay shows that in Italy for much of the eighteenth century, canonic recognition was granted to the librettist of a famous opera but not to the composer, who was seen as an artisan rather than an intellectual. But the unique long-term popularity of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (1733) led to the honoring of composers in subsequent generations both in musical and in dramatic terms. Even though a stable authorial canon of opera composers failed to establish itself in Italy prior to the triumph of Rossini, strong respect emerged for composers such as Niccolò Jommelli, Niccolò Piccinni, and Giovanni Paisiello, which, together with the rising fame of leading singers, laid the groundwork for the Italian operatic canon of the nineteenth century. This chapter is paired with Michel Noiray’s “The practical and symbolic functions of pre-Rameau opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck.”

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