This is the first book dedicated to the early history of opera in Europe from a comparative perspective. It takes into account not only the diverse beginnings of opera in Italy around 1600 (Florence, Rome, Mantua), but also the mechanisms of reception and adaptation of the new genre outside of Italy in the following decades (in the German-speaking realm, and in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania). Questions of genre and its terminology are discussed as well as the history, function, and contents of librettos and their special linguistic and structural devices. Special attention is paid to issues of performance practice, such as the assignation of certain types of roles to certain types of singers, and staging. In order to broaden this perspective, the influence of Spanish 17th-century spoken drama on the early Venetian opera is explored. Furthermore, the beginnings of regional operatic traditions outside of Italy (such as in Spain and France) play a central role, along with the specifically English concept of ‘dramatic opera’, and the question of music in spoken drama. In this way, new and fascinating insights can be gained into opera in its initial phase (roughly from 1600 to 1680), including its development and regional styles, its acceptance or rejection, and the critical discourse surrounding the genre.

Table des matières :

Introduction
Nastasia Heckendorff/Michael Klaper

Prologue : Encountering Opera
Margaret Murata

1. The Libretto
Funzioni e ruolo del libretto
Paolo Fabbri

Argomenti als Schwellentexte in italienischen Libretti des 17. Jahrhunderts
Albert Gier

2. The Beginnings of Opera in Italy
‘Fa’ riflesso al mio discorso’ : ‘Singing’ and ‘Speaking’ in Monteverdi’s Operas
Tim Carter

Knabensänger in der frühen römischen Oper – Aspekte der Gattungsgeschichte und Aufführungspraxis
Nastasia Heckendorff

‘Un contralto per fare una vecchia’ : Representations of the ‘Old Woman’ in Early Venetian Opera
Michael Klaper

3. Reception, Adaptation, and Regional Traditions Outside of Italy
The Earliest Adaptations of Italian Musical Drama in Salzburg, Prague, Vienna, and Innsbruck
Herbert Seifert

Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa (1595‒1648) and the Beginnings of Opera in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania
Barbara Przybyszewska-Jarmińska

Schütz, Opitz und die Dafne (1627) – Die frühe Entwicklung des dramma per musica in Italien und im deutschsprachigen Raum im Vergleich
Hanna Viehöfer-Jürgens

The Work of Opera in the Spanish Dominions
Louise Stein

Vocalité à la française, du ballet de cour à l’opéra
Catherine Massip

Speaking Mortals and Singing Spirits : Concepts and Practice of English Dramatic Opera in the Seventeenth Century
Martin Adams

4. Opera and Other Literary Genres
Music in Early Modern Drama
Irmgard Scheitler

Platani e regine (I) : The Roots of Dramatic Structure in Nicolò Minato and Francesco Cavalli’s Persian Cycle (1655‒59)
Sara Elisa Stangalino

Platani e regine (II) : Nicolò Minato and Francesco Cavalli’s Persian Cycle (1655‒59) – The Roots of a New Aesthetics of Aria
Hendrik Schulze