This international colloquium took place at the National Palace of Queluz in Portugal, a summer residence close to both Sintra and Lisbon and built in 1747 by the future King Pedro III, the consort of Queen Maria I. During the second half of the eighteenth century it became the royal family's preferred place for leisure and entertainment, including the performance of several serenatas, operas and other musical works. Surrounded by elegant historic gardens, the palace was the perfect backdrop for the conference. This was the second international scholarly meeting organized by the Centro de Estudos Musicais Setecentistas de Portugal (Centre for Eighteenth-Century Musical Studies in Portugal; CEMSP), founded in 2013 by the baroque orchestra Divino Sospiro to establish connections between musicology and musical practice.
The conference's nine sessions gathered together about thirty scholars, most of them Italian, and were organized geographically according to the contexts of patronage, creation and performance (including Vienna, Turin, Parma, Venice, Florence, Naples, Rome, Sicily, Lisbon and Madrid). Several overarching issues emerged from this framework, such as terminological ambiguity regarding the serenata, festa teatrale and other related genres, the works’ political significance, the complexity of ceremony in both courtly and urban spaces, and the impact of operatic reform. The majority of the talks were musicological in scope, but some bridged the fields of history, art history and literary studies, contributing to a multidisciplinary approach. Also on the programme were presentations of two Portuguese music journals (Glosas and The Portuguese Journal of Musicology) and the first modern performance of David Perez's L’isola disabitata on Metastasio's libretto. This serenata was originally performed at Queluz Palace in 1767 before the royal family, and it came back to life thanks to Divino Sospiro and a group of young singers (Joana Seara, Francesca Aspromonte, Francesco Divito and Bruno Almeida) conducted by Massimo Mazzeo. The score was edited by Iskrena Iordanova (CEMSP).
The first session was dedicated to Vienna, Turin and Parma. In the opening keynote address, Andrea Sommer-Mathis (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) discussed the concept of ‘festa teatrale’ as applied to the musical dramas performed at the Vienna imperial court, and analysed two productions with major political importance: Angelica, vincitrice d’Alcina (1716) and Costanza e Fortezza (1723), both with music by Johann Joseph Fux, librettos by Pietro Pariati and set designs by the Galli-Bibiena family. The second keynote, delivered by Annarita Colturato (Università di Torino), also discussed distinctive aspects of encomiastic music theatre, this time at the Savoy court in Turin, a context that has remained relatively unexplored until recently. Her paper focused mainly on royal marriages and their ceremonial etiquette in connection with music by Galuppi, Pugnani, Bianchi, Martin y Soler and Tarchi. Armando Fabio Ivaldi (ORDINEX, International Organization of Experts, Paris) revealed new historical documents and drawings related to Gluck's serenata Tetide (Vienna, 1760), which celebrated the marriage of the future Joseph II to Isabella of Parma. These sources attest to the crucial role of Count Giacomo Durazzo, director of the Vienna imperial theatres, in planning the festivities and his contribution to opera and ballet reform. These reforms were also central to a paper given by Paolo Russo (Università di Parma) on Alessandro e Timoteo, a festa teatrale with libretto by Rezzonico and music by Sarti staged at the court of Ferdinand I of Bourbon-Parma to welcome Prince Paolo Petrowic of Russia in 1782.
In the second session, dedicated to Venice, Giada Viviani (Universität der Künste Berlin) analysed the relationship between Vivaldi's operas and his Serenata a tre, rv690, La Gloria e Himeneo, rv687, and La Senna festeggiante, rv693, with regard to the re-use of music and changes in dramaturgical meaning. Giovanni Andrea Sechi (independent scholar) presented new sources for Andromeda liberata (Venice, 1726), proving convincingly the contribution of Porpora and other composers while clarifying the genesis of the libretto as a revision of one that had been set by Caldara in 1716, and Giovanni Polin (Conservatorio di Potenza) focused on the political significance of music in late eighteenth-century Venice.
The journey led to Florence and Sicily for the third session. Giulia Giovanni (Università di Siena) considered the rarely studied serenatas ‘rustico civili’ for the festival of Calendimaggio by Francesco Baldovini (1635–1716). Combining aristocratic and popular traditions, these works represent another kind of serenata, one dedicated not to dynastic or political events, but to a seasonal feast. Stefania Gitto (Scuola di Musica di Fiesole) discussed the Florentine ‘feste in musica’, which marked changes of the ruling dynasty and the arrival of the Habsburg-Lorena, as well as the impact of Viennese influences. Regarding Sicily, Ilaria Grippaudo (Università di Palermo) provided a very lively picture of the multiple festivities for the coronation in Palermo of Charles III (1735), especially those organized by the Senate. The city was transformed into a ‘cluster of resonant spaces’, including the performance of two serenatas and many musical events in monasteries, Jesuit colleges, churches, and other public and private venues.
On the conference's second day, Danielle Lipp (Universität Wien) provided a ‘prelude’ to a session on the serenata in Lisbon by dedicating her talk to the cultural changes driven by the Archduke Charles's court in Barcelona and the celebrations of the marriage of his sister Maria Anna of Austria with King João V of Portugal in 1709. She compared the serenata Numeroso culto, musico festejo, promoted by the Portuguese ambassador, to other theatrical works staged in Barcelona in honour of the Habsburgs. Art historian Giuseppina Raggi (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) discussed the role of Queen Maria Anna of Austria in introducing serenata and opera to Portugal, and in implementing new models of court sociability. In my own talk (Cristina Fernandes, Universidade Nova de Lisboa), I established a bridge between the court and Lisbon aristocratic circles through the personality of Inês Antónia da Silva (1694–1727), one of the Queen's Ladies. A manuscript diary reveals that she promoted serenatas at her own residence, performed by singers and instrumentalists of the Royal House, in which she and her sisters sang as well. The repertory included some of Domenico Scarlatti's serenatas for Lisbon, the subject of a paper by Adriana di Feo (Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg), who devoted special attention to Applauso gentiliaco (Rome, 1714), commissioned by the Portuguese ambassador Marquês de Fontes, and La contesa delle stagione (Lisbon, 1720), which Feo compared to La gara delle quatro stagioni by Giovanni Bononcini (Vienna, 1699).
Regarding the second half of the century, Ricardo Bernardes (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) analysed the musical and dramaturgical structures of serenatas produced during the rule of Queen Maria I (1777–1792) by composers such as Sousa Carvalho and Leal Moreira, arguing that when dealing with historical subjects, these works tended to be conceived as reduced versions of opera seria. The celebrations of the double marriage involving the royal houses of Braganza and Bourbon, which took place in 1785 in Lisbon and Madrid, allowed Pedro Castro (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) to compare the four serenatas written for that occasion: L’imenei di Delfo by Leal Moreira, Le nozze D’Ercole by Jerónimo Francisco de Lima, Il Parnaso by Francesco Piticchio and Il ritorno d’Astrea by the Spanish violinist and composer resident in Portugal José Palomino. Vasco Negreiros (Universidade de Aveiro) analysed the serenata Teseo (1783) by Jerónimo Francisco de Lima, considering how ‘variety’ and ‘cohesion’ are achieved in this work.
Naples and Rome, with excursions to Vienna and Madrid, dominated the remaining sessions. The magnificent celebrations of the marriage of the dauphin Louis Ferdinand with the Spanish infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela, organized in Naples in 1745 and including L’impero dell’universo diviso con Giove by Calzabigi and Manna, were the subject of a talk by Paologiovanni Maione (Conservatorio Statale di Musica San Pietro a Majella/Fondazione Pietà de’ Turchini, Naples), who analysed data provided by banking documents, feast reports and other primary sources. In a paper on isole disabitate, Andrea Chegai (Università di Roma La Sapienza) showed the transformation of this Metastasian subject in versions by Jommelli (1761), Traetta (1768) and Astaritta (1773). Steffen Voss (RISM Munich) introduced another work created in the spirit of the operatic reform: Amore e Psiche by Joseph Schuster and Luigi Serio (Naples, 1780). When later presented in Lisbon, it was adapted to the model of Portuguese court serenatas. At the end of the session, David Cranmer (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) focused on La pietà di amore (1782) by Giuseppe Millico, demonstrating the work's affinity in both subject matter and performance history to eighteenth-century occasional works. It was also the only major work by Millico to be performed in Portugal and Brazil.
A talk by Thomas Griffin (European University Association) provided an overview of the late serenatas of Alessandro Scarlatti (composed 1709–1723), most sponsored by the Viceroys of Naples, although some were commissioned by Portuguese officials in Rome. Several are now available in modern editions at Griffin's website <www.ascarlatti2010.net>. Also on the Neapolitan context, Paola De Simone (Conservatorio di Musica Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa, Potenza) and Nicolò Maccavino (Conservatorio F. Cilea, Reggio Calabria) presented a huge number of historical and musical sources on Le nozze di Peleo e Tetide by Giovan Basso Bassi and Giovanni Paisiello, and on other pieces linked to the celebrations of the royal wedding of Ferdinand IV with Maria Carolina (Naples, 1768). Unfortunately, the presentation of this data left insufficient time for interpretation and discussion. The only paper on Madrid was one by Gorka Rubiales Zabarte (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), who explored the festa teatrale in Spain, a topic often incorporated into the broader study of the serenata. For this purpose he did a comprehensive structural and dramaturgical analysis of two feste teatrali, performed at the Court of Philip V, in 1741: Lea imperadrice della China and Domiziano.
On the last day, Jen-yen Chen (National Taiwan University) delivered an enlightening talk, illustrated with audio and video examples, on Metastasio and Caldara's Le cinesi (1735) and the practice of reflexive critique within Austrian court ceremonial culture. He compared this one-act entertainment for the Viennese court with the more familiar version by Gluck (1754). Metastasio's appropriation of China functioned as a dialectical resource whereby ostensible engagement with a foreign culture served as the basis for self-critique. Several papers were devoted to Rome. Silvia Tatti (Università di Roma La Sapienza) provided a literary analysis of librettos linked to the diplomatic representation of European courts in the Papal City, including Nuova aurea e culta età dell'onore by Porpora, performed at the palace of the Portuguese ambassador Marquês de Fontes (1713), Paolo Rolli's Sacrificio a Venere, with music by Giovanni Bononcini (1714), and a cantata by Silvio Stampiglia (1720). Teresa Chirico (Conservatorio Santa Cecilia, Rome) sought to reconstruct the history of the serenata in the circle of Cardinal Ottoboni. She provided information on settings, places, composers, casts and performance practices and pointed out interesting connections between the scenography of serenatas and the set decorations for the religious ritual of Quaranta’ore, a kind of ‘teatro sacro’ (sacred theatre). Finally, art historian Pilar Diez del Corral (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) sketched the history of the theatre sponsored by Cardinal Troiano Acquaviva, Spanish ambassador to the Holy See (1735–1747), in the context of festivities held at the Palazzo di Spagna and the Roman politics of representation. Acquaviva's model was Cardinal Ottoboni's court, at that time already in its twilight.
An online publication of the conference proceedings is planned for next year.
