This dissertation examines four operas created by the composer Franceso Cavalli and the librettist Giovanni Faustini at the Teatro Sant'Apollinare in Venice in 1651-1652 with regard to the relationship between musical dramaturgy and stage performance. All four operas--L'Oristeo, La Rosinda, La Calisto, and L'Eritrea--are preserved in manuscript scores that are part of the Contarini Collection in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Annotations in these sources document the complex process of rehearsing at the Sant'Apollinare and the ways that multiple considerations of production (including vocal casting, staging, and scenography) interacted with the evolving musico-dramatic structure. Several of these operas were revived later in the seventeenth century in new theatrical circumstances: L'Oristeo was revived as L'Oristeo travestito in Bologna in 1656; La Rosinda was reworked and presented under the title Le magie amorose in Naples in 1653; and L'Eritrea received multiple productions (including a Venetian revival at the Teatro San Salvatore in 1661). These case studies provide a fuller view of the relationship between Venetian opera aesthetics and the exigencies of performance on the seventeenth-century stage. Modifications to the original dramaturgy--such as inserted arias and sinfonie, added secondary comic characters, and cuts to recitative--were made with careful regard to the scenography of each production. This analysis demonstrates the critical importance of stagecraft in the interpretation of this repertoire both historically and in modern edition and performance.

One of the most fundamental changes of the European opera production of the so-called long 19th century - apart from the change of the music structure itself, opera dramaturgy (or poetics) and forming of stable repertoire among other things - was its internalization: it was no more Italian opera as the only international operatic idiom but various traditions were influencing each other, the most important being the French, German and Italian operatic traditions (apart from the Russian one). The core thesis of this work, as it is seen in its title, could be formulated as follows: Prague in the mid-19th century could be regarded as a crossroad of European opera, in other words a place where these operatic traditions were in play. It means two things: First, Prague opera repertoire became international (many French, German and Italian operas were performed here). Second, dramaturgy of poetics of these various genres was projected into works of home composers. Dramaturgical analysis of four chosen operas - three of them by Johann Friedrich Kittl (Bianca und Giuseppe oder Die Franzosen vor Nizza, Die Waldblume and Die Bilderstürmer) and one by Josef Dessauer (Lidwinna) - aims to document this second statement. To which extent a composer is led and determined by a given libretto could be seen at the case of...

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished