Late eighteenth-century Italy suffered from an inferiority complex as compared to France, whose siècle d’or - particularly in terms of drama - had recently ended. The multiplication of academies, gatherings that brought together men of letters, artists, and members of the nobility, demonstrated a vital need: the defence of art, Italian literature, and, in particular, the constitution of a repertoire of dramatic works. Italian theatre at the time was not a thing of consequence. It included tragedies that were never staged (or unstageable?), written in the chamber style of Seneca, the travelling shows of the commedia dell’arte and…opera. French thinkers were sarcastic about the latter (Saint-Evremond declared in 1676 that it was “magnificent nonsense, but nonsense all the same”), but the Italians chose to make it their main concern, in the belief that the mellifluous quality of the Italian language made it better adapted to opera than to tragedy. Slowly but surely, in a rather underground fashion and despite the resistance of more conservative circles (it was forbidden several times in Rome), public opinion began to make opera – or, more precisely, melodramma – the preferred form of expression of the Italian theatre. In a word, melodramma would become for Italy what classical tragedy had been for France.
Opera reform
In this competitive climate, the precepts of French classical tragedy (brilliantly laid out in 1600 by Corneille in his Discours de l’utilité et des parties du poëme dramatique) were gradually adapted to the demands of opera. It is paradoxical that Italian opera would in the end more closely resemble French theatre than did Lully’s tragédie lyrique, which was closer to the fantastic world of Venetian opera. Metastasio’s ability to discern and impose the structural force of the melodramma as a “major literary genre” accounts for his importance as an artist. He was the only author to successfully negotiate the apparently impossible reconciliation between great popular success and the constitution of a dramatic œuvre.
The desire to reform opera, as mentioned above, began in the last years of the seventeenth century. It is therefore not possible to cite Metastasio alone as a reformer, as his first drama was not staged until 1724. In order better to understand Metastasio’s contribution, it is important to be aware of his predecessors. These will be explored in greater depth in a future article. For the moment, it is enough to give their names: the best known, members of the Arcadian Academy, Apostolo Zeno (1668-1750) and Silvio Stampiglia (1644-1725). Despite their relatively marginal success, the innovations of Antonio Salvi (1664? -1724?) and Girolamo Frigimelica Roberti (1653-1732) were also significant. I disagree with Robert Freeman, who includes certain members of the Venetian school in his list of reformers: Aurelio Aureli (1652-1708), Matteo Noris (? -1714), Francesco Silvani (1660-1728?) and Domenico Lalli (1679-1741).
It is a revealing fact that the majority of the above-mentioned authors wrote less often for public Italian theatres – which were strongly influenced by the demand for profitability and immediate gratification – than for court theatres. And a closer inspection of the situation shows that most of the reforms occurred neither in Naples nor in Italy generally, but in Vienna. As opera became more and more prevalent on the European stage (this occurred a mere twenty years after its “invention”), the Austrian court chose a series of Italian playwrights as its “official” poet: Nicolo Minato from 1669 to 1698, Silvio Stampiglia from 1707 to 1713, Pietro Pariati from 1714 to 1718, and Apostolo Zeno from 1718 to 1729. Zeno, who had become weary of his duties, suggested engaging Metastasio as his assistant.
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