Melodramma, specttacolo e musica nella Firenze dei Lorena: Francesco I, Pietro Leopoldo, Ferdinando III (1750-1800): Repertorio, 2 vols.

Rice, John A.

In the introduction to their book Robert and Norma Weaver deplore the duplication of effort involved in the more-or-less simultaneous production of these two exhaustive chronologies of Florentine musical theater in the second half of the eighteenth century. How did this "lamentable waste of time and money" (as the Weavers put it on p. 4) come about?

According to the Weavers, they began work on their project in 1981. "The semi-final draft ... was completed by February 1988, and copies sent to colleagues in Italy for their comments and corrections. A copy was also made available to the scholars participating in the 1989 Conference" ("Patrons, Politics, Music, and Art in Italy, 1738-1859," organized by the Weavers at the University of Louisville; p. 5). The Weavers state that they did not know that Marceno De Angelis (who participated in the 1989 conference) was compiling a similar book until they received a copy from him as a gift in 1991.

De Angelis, like the Weavers, has devoted his career to the study of Florence's musical past. He does not say in the preliminary pages of his book when he began working on it; but he does acknowledge that his bibliographical treatment of librettos was "inspired and in large part modelled on the principles and practices" set forth by Anna Laura Bellina et al., in La Raccolta Rolandi di libretti d'opera (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, 1986). De Angelis does not mention the Weavers' forthcoming book. If, in 1991, he was unaware of their project, we must conclude that, despite e-mail and fax (not to mention international scholarly conferences), communication among scholars can still do with much improvement.

This mix-up may partly be explained by the fact that the Weavers approached the second half of the eighteenth century from the past, while De Angelis approached it from the future. The Weavers' book is a sequel to A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1590-1750 Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1978). De Angelis's previous work on Florentine music largely focused on the nineteenth century and resulted in a book published in the same year as the Weavers' earlier book: La musica del Granduca: vita musicale e correnti critiche a Firenze, 1800-1855 (Florence: Vallecchi, 1978). It is quite natural that the fifty years between 1750 and 1800 should have become contested territory as the Weavers looked forward and De Angelis looked back, but the battle should have been fought before the research and writing was done.

It is easy to see why Florence in the second half of the eighteenth century has attracted the interest of scholars who want to survey the musical and theatrical life of an Italian city. The reign of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo (1765-1790) was a period of vigorous and varied musical activity in Florence. Surviving documentation of that activity is as vast as it is fascinating. It includes the Gazzetta toscana (hereafter referred to as GT), a semiofficial newspaper that appeared twice a week through most of Pietro Leopoldo's reign and devoted much space to opera, concerts, church music, and other aspects of musical life. librettos, containing varying amounts of information about the productions for which they were printed, document almost every one of the several hundred productions of operas and oratorios during the period.

Both De Angelis and the Weavers make effective use of these resources in the chronologically ordered catalogues that represent the largest part of both books. From GT they are often able to derive the date of the opening night. When the newspaper comments on a performance these comments are usually quoted; but the authors often differ in what they select for quotation. Criticism of opera in Italian newspapers of the eighteenth century is usually superficial, and that published in GT is no exception; but occasional reports preserve vivid pictures of Florentine theater; and as an indication of grand-ducal taste and patterns of patronage GT is invaluable.

Both catalogues are dominated by operatic productions but they differ in their inclusion of nonoperatic musical events. The Weavers include all concerts, whether or not they take place in theaters. De Angelis does not generally list concerts unless they involve the performance of a vocal work for which a libretto was printed. Neither the Weavers nor De Angelis list the performance of instrumental music in churches although many such performances (especially of concertos) are documented in GT. De Angelis includes all oratorios for which he has documentation, regardless of place of performance; the Weavers include oratorios except those performed in church. Scholars seeking information about concerts should use the Weaver's book; those who want a complete survey of oratorio in Florence will find De Angelis's book more useful.

Although both De Angelis and the Weavers depend on librettos for much of their information, De Angelis tends to report the contents of librettos in more detail. In some cases the detail is unnecessary and takes up inordinate amounts of space. De Angelis reprints librettists' descriptions of characters (e.g., the tide character in Metastasio's Semiramide is described in the libretto as "in abito virile, sotto nome di Nino Re degli Assiri, amante di Scitalce, conosciuto ed amato da lei Antecedentemente nella Corte d'Egitto come Idreno"). He also reprints descriptions of scenery, some of which can be very long and detailed. These descriptions are useful to have; less useful is De Angelis's repetition of the descriptions when a libretto is performed more than once. Thus Semiramide, performed in Florence in 1752, 1760, 1766, 1770, and 1782, caused De Angelis to present Metastasio's descriptions of his characters and scenery five times.

De Angelis generally seems to depend on librettos more than the Weavers. De Angelis's book comes across as a catalogue of librettos to which other information has been added; the Weavers' book comes across as a catalogue of performances for which librettos have served as an important source. This difference in approach leads to important differences in substance. For example, De Angelis's performance no. 120 is a production of Johann Adolf Hasse's Egeria at the Pitti Palace during spring 1764. The only evidence for such a performance is a libretto printed in Florence in 1764, according to which the opera was performed "nel'Imperial Regia Corte per l'Incoronazione ... di Giuseppe 11 Re de Romani." The production, however, is unmentioned by the Weavers, who must have noticed that in almost every respect (including cast) this Florentine libretto is identical to the libretto printed for the first production of Egeria in Vienna that same spring. Similar librettos were also printed in Rome and Naples: they and the Florentine libretto were presumably printed for Habsburg public relations rather than to accompany particular productions of the opera. De Angelis, focusing on the libretto to the exclusion of other evidence, assumed that a libretto printed in Florence meant an opera performed in Florence; this forced him to assume that "Imperial Regia Corte" meant the Pitti Palace, a most unlikely meaning, since Florence was part of no empire. Hasse's Egeria was almost certainly never performed in Florence.

The Weavers have cast a much wider net than De Angelis, in terms of both primary and secondary sources. The English tourists depicted in A Room with a View were already visiting Florence in the eighteenth century; their correspondence (much of which has been published) provided the Weavers with many useful insights, as did the letters of Horace Mann, British charge d'affaires in Florence, to his friend Horace Walpole (readily available in Walpole's published correspondence).

The absence of such material from De Angelis's book contributes to the impression that his scholarship is somewhat provincial in comparison to the Weavers'. A glance at De Angelis's very short bibliography will suggest that his knowledge of non-Italian musical scholarship is quite limited. John Walter Hill's work on the Florentine oratorio, Marita McClymonds's survey of opera seria in Florence during the 1780s, and Elizabeth Gibson's article on Earl Cowper (a prominent English resident of Florence during Pietro Leopoldo's reign) -- all cited by the Weavers -- were apparently of no use to him. De Angelis's introduction reflects his scholarly isolation. In a rambling chronological survey of theatrical activity in Florence, De Angelis makes little attempt to suggest how Florence differed from other italian cities. He leaves largely unexplored the role of Pietro Leopoldo and the importance of dynastic connections between Florence and Vienna.

The Weavers' introduction, in contrast, deals thoughtfully with these and other issues. It is organized chronologically, but sensibly divided into sections that reflect the differences in Florentine musical life under successive governments. Further subdivisions focus on individual topics: theatrical regulations, activities of individual impresarios, the contributions of individual composers and choreographers, and so forth. The theaters of Florence emerge as unique entities, each with its own personnel, traditions, and repertories. An even more important contribution to the history of Italian opera is the Weavers' documentation and discussion of a Tuscan school of operatic composition that developed during Pietro Leopoldo's reign in the work of such composers as Michele Neri Bondi, Giuseppe Moneta, and Ferdinando Rutini. A few inaccuracies, generally occurring when the Weavers venture away from Florence, mar this otherwise fine scholarly essay. That "Joseph II ... asked Mozart to change the ending of Don Giovanni in order to restore the morality and calm of the civilized world" (p. 49) is surely no "fact." It is misleading to refer to performances of Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry's Zemire et Azor and of Francois-Andre Danican Philidor's Tom Jones in Florence in 1776 as representing "the powerful flow into Tuscany of French romanticism" (p. 59).

The exhaustive indexes of both books greatly enhance their value. The indexes are very differently organized. De Angelis has seven indexes: of titles and, when titles are unknown, generic designations; of names of characters; of names of people; of "cited names" (the difference between the third and fourth indexes seems to be that index 3 includes names reported as part of a standardized description of each production, while index 4 includes names referred to in editorial comments); of theaters in which operas mentioned in the book were first performed; of theatrical companies; and of printers. The Weavers have even more indexes: of librettists; of composers; of singers and actors; of impresarios, heads of comic companies, costumers, painters, etc.; of instrumentalists (by calling these "musicians" they leave the unfortunate impression that they do not believe composers and singers to be musicians); of dancers and choreographers; of theaters, academies, and companies; of publishers and vendors; of titles; and a general index of people, places, and things not covered in the other indexes.

The Weavers' compartmentalized indexing of different kinds of people, for all its advantages, sometimes presents difficulties. Il Meleagro, a melodrama of the kind pioneered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Georg Benda, was performed in Florence during spring 1785. The production is recorded by the Weavers (p. 536) but not by De Angelis, perhaps because Il Meleagro was not an opera. The libretto, if it can be called that, contains a very interesting explanatory note, quoted by the Weavers, that refers to Rousseau's melodrama Pygmalion, but with Italianized spelling: "Russeau," "Pigmaglione." Readers curious to know how the Weavers indexed this reference (is Rousseau, who wrote both text and music, indexed under librettists or composers?) will find Rousseau among the librettists but not the composers. His work is listed in the index of tides, in an Italianization of the tide, but a different Italianization ("Pigmalione") from the one on page 536.

The inconsistency of eighteenth-century spelling and the frequency of misprints in eighteenth-century printing causes editorial problems in both books, and sometimes leads to names appearing in almost unrecognizable forms. The Weavers seem to have adopted the policy of citing names in the same form as they are cited in the source from which they derived the name. Thus, Gluck appears as Cristoforo Gluck (p. 234), apparently because that is how he is referred to in GT; and Stephen Storace is referred to as Stefano Storace (p. 427) because that is how his name is spelled in a libretto that documents his participation as harpsichordist in the production of Francesco Bianchi's Castore e Polluce during fall 1779. Harder to understand is why the Italianized names are preserved in the index, where editorial oversight generally seems to have been particularly lax.

The great bass Francesco Benucci apparently appears in the cast list for Il talismano (spring 1780) as "Francesco Penucci"; this is in any case how the name appears, without editorial comment or correction, in both books. When the soprano Irene Tomeoni sang in a concert on 21 March 1784, GT spelled her name "Irene Torneoni," according to the Weavers' transcription (p. 514). "Penucci" found its way into the index of singers in both books; "Torneoni" is in the Weavers' index of singers. Readers of either book who use the indexes to follow the appearances of Benucci and Tomeoni in Florence will be unaware that he took part in Il talismano or that she sang in a concert described by the GT.

The Weavers' tendency to follow the spelling used in eighteenth-century sources sometimes produces an unsettling linguistic mixture. What can one make of such formulation as "Augustus III, Re di Pollonia" in the index (p. 986)? A confusing family tree (pp. 12-13) is made even more difficult to read by the unusual forms that some names take. Although Emperor Joseph II is spelled normally throughout the Weavers' introduction, he is referred to as "Josef (Giuseppe)" in the family tree, and his second wife's name is needlessly (and incorrectly) Italianized as "Maria Giuseppa di Bavaria." In listing Pietro Leopoldo's children, the family tree suggests that his eldest daughter married her brother (a little too incestuous, even for the Habsburgs); a son called Gioseffo in the family tree is apparently the "Giosef" in the family portrait on page 34 (one of several inconsistencies in these two lists of Pietro Leopoldo's children). On page 620 we read that a performance of Guglielmi's Le due gemelle was attended by "Princess Carolina and Prince Carlo Augusto of Brunswick." This combination of Italianized personal names and Anglicized place name makes little sense.

The catalogues will be of great help to scholars trying to untangle the bibliographical knots that have long hampered the study of eighteenth-century Italian opera. The difficulty of this enterprise is apparent in these books, which unavoidably contain inconsistencies and inaccuracies beyond those already mentioned. Both the Weavers (p. 381) and De Angelis (p. 254), for example, fail to mention that the characters in Anfossi's La fedelta nell'angustie (performed in Florence during spring 1777) are identical to those of his well-known La finta giardiniera (to a libretto also set by Mozart), of which La fedelta nell'angustie is in all likelihood an alternately titled version. Both De Angelis (pp. 95-96) and the Weavers (p. 213) misidentify Piccinni's La buona moglie, performed during spring 1765, confusing this sequal to La buona figliuola with its more famous predecessor. The Weavers' statement (p. 144) that a production of Carlo Goldoni's libretto La calamita de' cuori in 1753 included an aria-text borrowed from Goldoni's La finta semplice is difficult to reconcile with the date to which La finta semplice is normally assigned, 1764.

Only a few libraries will need to own both these books. The choke is relatively easy. Despite its numerous, mostly minor editorial flaws, the Weavers' book is clearly the product of energetic and thoughtful scholarship sustained over many years, based on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources. Their catalogue of musical productions is substantially superior to De Angelis's: richer in detail, more obviously informed by experience and reflection. Their introduction is a monograph in itself. Carefully documented and lovingly written, it represents a contribution of major importance to the study of eighteenth century music. The Weavers' book has slightly more pages than De Angelis's. In spite of this, the Weavers' single clothbound volume is much easier to use, especially when dealing with indexes, than De Angelis's cumbersome, two-volume paperback.