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The Creation of the Buffo Finale in Italian Opera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1977

Daniel Heartz
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Extract

Carlo Goldoni left his native Venice to practise law in Tuscany for five years starting in 1743. Up to this point he had written some twenty comic librettos, most of them Intermezzi in two acts for two or three characters, but some of them full-length dramas in three acts for several characters. La Contessina, which ranks as the latest and finest of his dramas in the latter category up to this time, received its première in the San Samuele theatre at Venice during the Carnival of 1743. In his edition of the playwright's complete works, Ortolani suggests that Goldoni's model for La Contessina was a specific Neapolitan comedy, Madama Ciana, with text by Barlocci and music by Gaetano Latilla. The satire in both turns upon a poor family with pretensions to noble rank, manifested most appallingly in the person of the daughter and the question of her dowry. The music of the original production of La Contessina is lost; all we know is that the piece was a pasticcio, involving among others the young Jommelli. There were no revivals, which tells us something even so: Venice at this time was in no position to compete with Naples in the production of original comic operas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 104 , 1977 , pp. 67 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 Tutte le opere di Carlo Goldoni a cura di Giuseppe Ortolani (Milan, 1935–56), x, 1264 (I Classici Mondadori). Ortolani lists the many different settings of the libretto and productions of the opera.Google Scholar

2 The diary entry is quoted in the original in D. Heartz, ‘vis comica: Goldoni, Galuppi and L'Arcadia in Brenta (Venice, 1749)’, Appendix I, to appear in Venezia e tl melodramma nel settecento (Venice, 1979), ii.Google Scholar

3 Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS Mus. F. 437. This collection is one of the richest for Italian comic opera of the mid-eighteenth century and houses the unique surviving copies of Ciampi's Bertoldo (MS Mus. F. 256) and Galuppi's Arcadia in Brenta (MS Mus. F. 439). It also houses Rinaldo da Capua's Gli Impostan (Modena, 1751) (MS Mus. F. 138) which is perhaps the earliest opera by a Neapolitan composer to include elaborate finales.Google Scholar

4 Leonardo Leo, Amor vuol sofferenza a cura di Giuseppe A. Pastore (Bari, 1962), 121 (Musiche e Musicisti Pugliesi, ii).Google Scholar

5 Francesco Galeazzi, Elemento leorici-pratici di musica (Rome, 1791–6), ii, 295: ‘La Sestupla serve soitanto all'espressioni buffe, ridicole, alle pastorale, a’ balli, e simili'. On the previous page Galeazzi says that G major is ‘un Tono innocente, semplice. …’Google Scholar

6 The opera, originally called Chi non fa non falla, was revived at Venice in 1747. Perhaps Galuppi is responsible for this pasticcio reaching Vienna. That he went there in person is confirmed by the payment made to him for lodging, cited in Gustav Zechmeister, Die Wiener Theater nächst der Burg und nächt dem Kärtnertor van 1747 bis 1776 (Vienna, 1971), 906. (Theatergeschichte Oesterreichs, iii, part 2).Google Scholar

7 The piece will be printed in its entirety in appendix to my article ‘vis comica’ (see footnote 2).Google Scholar

8 The quartet provides one of the focal points of discussion in D. Heartz, ‘Hasse, Galuppi and Metastasio,’ Venezia e il melodramma nel settecento (Venice, 19781, 309–40.Google Scholar

9 The Finale to Act 1 is transcribed in Mariane Fuchs, ‘Die Entwicklung des Finales in der italienischen Opera Buffa vor Mozart’, (diss., U. of Vienna, 1939), Anhang iii.Google Scholar

10 Charles Burney, A General History of Music, ed. Frank Mercer (London, 1935), ii, 859.Google Scholar

11 Tutte le opere di Carlo Goldoru a cura di Giuseppe Ortolani, (Milan, 1935–56), xi, 1327.Google Scholar

12 Marita Petzoldt McClymonds, Niccolò Jommelli: the Last Yean (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1978), 127; the complete letter is her no. 23, given in the original and translated on pp. 662–3; she explains that ‘the sext is the high outside guard position in fencing.’Google Scholar

13 Michael F. Robinson, Naples and Neapolitan Opera (Oxford, 1979), 959.Google Scholar

14 Vol. iii, 198. ‘Le Dieu du genre bouffon’ had the sense of ‘artistic creator’, as may be seen from Gerber's translation in the next sentence. Ulisse Prota-Giurleo took over the phrase in Italian as the tide of his book, Nicola Logroscino ‘il dio dell’ opera buffa' (Naples, 1987), a work which adds some biographical information but no musical insights.Google Scholar

15 Hermann Kretzschmar, ‘Zwei Opern Nicolo Logroscinos’ Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters für 1908 (Leipzig, 1909), 47–68.Google Scholar

16 Edward J. Dent, ‘Ensembles and Finales in 18th Century Italian Opera’, Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, xii (1910–11), 137–138; the previous instalment is in SIMG, xi, 543–69; another related article, ‘Giuseppe Maria Buini’, appeared in SIMG, xiii, 329–36.Google Scholar

17 Hermann Abert, ‘Piccinni als Buffokomponist’, Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters für 1913 (Leipzig, 1914), 29–49.Google Scholar

18 W. A. Mozart von Hermann Abert; neubearbeitete und erweiterte Ausgabe von Otto Jahns Mozart (Leipzig, 7/1955), ‘Die Opera Buffa’, 339–82.Google Scholar

19 Wolfgang Osthoff, ‘Die Opera Buffa’, Gattungen der Musik m Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade (Munich, 1973), i, 718–98.Google Scholar

20 Naples and Neapolitan Opera, 158.Google Scholar

21 Ibid, 237.Google Scholar

22 Tutte le opere di Carlo Goldoni a cura di Giuseppe Ortolani, xii, 1130.Google Scholar

23 So Ortolani speculates, ibid, 1135. The libretto appeared in the Venetian edition of Goldoni's works by Zatta in 1794 (vol. vii of the opere giocose).Google Scholar

24 Abert, H., W. A. Mozart (Leipzig, 7/1955), 99ff., still assigns the libretto to Coltellini, which can only mean that he as well as his later revisers never looked through any edition of Goldoni's works: an oversight that helps explain some of the biases in the chapter on opera buffa.Google Scholar