Osservare il compositore al lavoro: scrittura e riscrittura di una scena d’opera italiana nel Seicento

Abstract

As regards the compositional process in the Italian opera of the 17th century, a scene contained in Nicolò Minato and Francesco Cavalli’s opera Xerse (Venice 1655) is a special case. There exist three different versions of the music of this scene, and they can be dated and localized with certainty: one version was conceived before the performances of the opera during carnival 1654/55; another version reflects the form in which the scene was performed for the first time in Venice; and a third version was created by the composer in the context of a revival of the opera at the French court in late 1660. As it is shown, these continuous revisions were partly due the fact that the scene in question was unusual for its time, and partly to the fact that the scene had to be adapted to two productions which were completely different from each other. If during a first step – the creation of the opera – the librettist was involved in imagining a new type of scene, and in finding the means for its effective realization, later on it was the composer alone to rewrite the music, and to take into consideration both the desired aesthetic effect and the requirements of the performing location for which the opera was destined in each respective case. In this way it is possible to get a fascinating insight into the manner of composing of one of the most famous composers of the 17th century.