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Inventing the Business of Opera - The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Hardcover)
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Inventing the Business of Opera - The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Hardcover)
Series: AMS Studies in Music
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In mid-seventeenth-century Venice, opera first emerged from courts
and private drawing rooms to become a form of public entertainment.
Early commercial operas were elaborate spectacles, featuring ornate
costumes and set design along with dancing and music. As ambitious
works of theater, these productions required not only significant
financial backing, but also strong managers to oversee several
months of rehearsals and performances. These impresarios were
responsible for every facet of production from contracting the cast
to balancing the books at season's end. The systems they created
still survive, in part, today.
Inventing the Business of Opera explores public opera in its
infancy, from 1637 to 1677, when theater owners and impresarios
established Venice as the operatic capital of Europe. Drawing on
extensive new documentation, the book studies all of the components
necessary to opera production, from the financial backing and the
issue of patronage to the commissioning and creation of the
libretto and the score; the recruitment and employment of singers,
dancers, and instrumentalists; the production of the scenery and
the costumes; and the nature of the audience. The authors examine
the challenges faced by four separate Venetian theaters during the
seventeenth century, and focus particularly on the progress of
Marco Faustini, the impresario most well known today. Faustini made
his way from one of Venice's smallest theaters to one of the
largest, and his advancement provides a personal view of an
impresario and his partners, who ranged from Venetian nobles to
artisans. Throughout the book, Venice emerges as a city that prized
novelty over economy, with new repertory, scenery, costumes, and
expensive singers the rule rather than the exception.
Through close examination of an extraordinary cache of
documents--including personal papers, account books, and
correspondence--Beth and Jonathan Glixon provide a comprehensive
view of opera production in mid seventeenth- century Venice. For
the first time in a study of Venetian opera, an emphasis is placed
on the physical production-- the scenery, costumes, and stage
machinery--that tied these opera productions to the social and
economic life of the city. This original and meticulously
researched study will be of strong interest to all students of
opera and its history.
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