The Cities of Italian Opera

Italian music in the late renaissance and ealry baroque eras dominated the European continent and British Isles. Often, wealthy members of any city in Italy would fund massive and extravagant productions combining drama, music, dance and specatular stage scenery. From these combinations of the arts, opera began its entrance into music history and as the towns of Padua, Mantua, and Ferrarra had been the great centers of medieval Italian music, these Italian cities became the centers of early baroque opera.

FLORENCE

The home of opera began in the court of the wealthy, and that place was the Medici court in Florence. The Bardi home, where the Florentine Camerata had met in earlier years, had influenced the rise of music in Florence and the return of the greek tragedy to the city, but was not eager to support opera.

Monody took in Florence as the new form of singing that would become a distinctive characteristic of opera. Cavalieri produced musical drama in Florence, and Peri and Cacini were soon to follow. Noticably, the support given to opera by the elite in Florence helped to establish Italy as the center of opera in the baroque period.

ROME

The Catholic church was the significant influence in Roman productions. Famed for its talented singers, who were all probably trained at academies sponsored churches or convents, Rome flourished with opera under the Barberini family. Giulio Rospigliosi (Pope Clement IX from 1667-1669) was a significant librettist for Roman opera who worked extensively with the Barberini operas.

The Barberini opera house, the Palazzo Barberini, closed in 1656, after haivng housed numerous productions during the Carnivals of years past. In the city of sacred music, the Vatican dictated the success of opera in Rome: with the Pope's blessing it flourished, with his curse it was doomed. Since Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) was a Barberini, opera survived through his families wealthy productions.

Alessandro Scarlatti, who worked for the church for a period was another important composer in Rome, before he settled in Naples.

NAPLES

Most notable for the opera buffa, or comic opera, that developed at the beginning of the 18th century, Neapolitan opera was successful only within the boundary of the city. Naples was the largest city in Italy at this time. Neapolitan opera was well-received by the people only because of its reality to everyday life in Naples and because of the rise of the "dialect comedies" in the theatres, which stressed local plot settings to emphasis the humor.

Significant composers include the latesr years of Scarlatti, and Vinci, Leo, and Pergliosi, who helped characterize the opera of that time period.

VENICE

Ferrari and Manelli brought opera to Venice in the early 17th century. The opera developed for the public, but due to high ticket prices it was limited to the elite few, and those servants who waited on them. Although not as large as Rome's Pallazo Barberini, new opera houses were established and maintaining them seemed a daunting task for those families that had built them.

Nonetheless, opera was a large commercial market due to its public appeal. Venice became a major European tourist attraction becaus e of its massive opera productions and the feasibility of attending any one of the eleven opera houses that were at one time in existence.

Historical and mythological features dominated the librettos of Venetian opera. Particular composers that worked in the city include Monteverdi and Peri of early fame, and the Cavelli brothers were soon to follow.

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