Drammaturgia Musicale Veneta
Published by Casa Ricordi with the collaboration of the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi (Fondazione Cini) and the Department of History and Art Criticism at the University of Venice
General Editor:
Francesco Fanna
Facsimile editions of full score manuscripts:
Hardbound volumes, 29 x 21,5 cm; each volume includes a critical and historical essay, a critical edition of the libretto and an annotated bibliography in Italian, with a summary in English.
The series, launched in 1983 and edited by the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi and the Department of History and Art Criticism at the University of Venice, was brought to completion in 2019. It contains thirty studies in musical dramaturgy each accompanied by a facsimile edition of the corresponding manuscript score from the period 1640-1800. The texts of the essays, in either Italian or English, are accompanied in the appendix by an edition of the libretto together with a summary in the complementary language. The collection of scores, reproduced faithfully and carefully in their original hand-written characters and all perfectly legible, aspires to offer, in the choice of the thirty operas in question and by way of the broad critical framework of the corresponding studies, a representative picture of opera as a whole in the form of an account of the evolution, life and ultimate fate of the opera houses of Venice.
The choice of the particular operas has been guided by a concern to identify the fundamental themes in the artistic development of opera and the crucial historical circumstances lying behind the relevant social, cultural, economic, political and psychological manifestations of its spread; for this reason the series constitutes a highly representative sample of the research interests of a wide range of extremely able collaborators, musicologists, art historians and historians of thought and culture.
In this way the series traces the entire trajectory of the evolution of opera in Venice, transforming itself in the process – thanks to its recognition of the key problems emerging in contemporary scholarship and its illuminating treatment of the related themes – into an extraordinarily broad-ranging “history of opera”. The various operas are grouped roughly in accordance with a series of chronologically ordered historical periods: 17th century opera (Volumes 1-10), the opera of the first half of the 18th century (Volumes 11-20) and the opera of the second half of the 18th century (Volumes 21-30).
Editorial Plan
1. Francesco Sacrati, La finta pazza
Edited by Nicola Usula, Lorenzo Bianconi and Wolfgang Osthoff (2018)
2. Claudio Monteverdi, L’incoronazione di Poppea – Out of print | For more information, please contact the Sales Office
Edited by Gino Benzoni and Alessandra Chiarelli (2011)
3. Francesco Cavalli – Alessandro Stradella, Il novello Giasone
Edited by Fausta Antonucci, Lorenzo Bianconi and Nicola Usula (2013)
4. Francesco Lucio, Il Medoro (1658)
Edited by Giovanni Morelli and Thomas Walker (1984)
5. Antonio Cesti, Il Tito
Edited by Giada Viviani (2012)
6. Antonio Sartorio, Orfeo (1673) – Out of print | For more information, please contact the Sales Office
Edited by Ellen Rosand (1983)
7. Antonio Del Gaudio, Almerico in Cipro
Edited by Giovanni Morelli (2005)
8. Carlo Pallavicino, Messalina (1680)
Edited by Eleanor Selfridge-Field (2001)
9. Carlo Francesco Pollarolo, Il Faramondo (1699)
Edited by Carlo Vitali and John H. Roberts (1987)
10. Various Composers, Tre intermezzi (1707-1724) | 1. Le rovine di Troia/Dragontana e Policrone; 2. Melissa contenta; 3. Cuoco e Madama/La preziosa ridicola
Edited by Francesca Menchelli-Buttini (2008)
11. Antonio Lotti, L’umiltà coronata in Ester
Edited by Laura Zanella (2004)
12. Antonio Vivaldi, Ottone in villa (1713) – Out of print | For more information, please contact the Sales Office
Edited by John Walter Hill and Massimo Gemin (1983)
13. Carlo Francesco Pollarolo, Ariodante (1718)
Edited by Olga Termini (1986)
14. Giuseppe Maria Orlandini, Nerone
Edited by Francesco Giuntini and Reinhard Strohm (2013)
15. Antonio Vivaldi, Due serenate | 1. La Gloria, Imeneo (1725); 2. La Senna Festeggiante (1726)
Edited by Michael Talbot and Paul Everett (1995)
16. Various Composers, Andromeda liberata
Edited by Michael Talbot (2006)
17. Johann Adolf Hasse, Demetrio
Edited by Reinhard Strohm and Francesca Menchelli-Buttini (2014)
18. Geminiano Giacomelli, La Merope (1734)
Edited by Sylvie Mamy (1984)
19. Gioacchino Cocchi, La maestra (1754)
Edited by Anna Laura Bellina (1987)
20. Baldassare Galuppi, Artaserse
Edited by Francesca Menchelli-Buttini (2010)
21. Baldassare Galuppi, L’Inimico delle donne (1771)
Edited by Helen Geyer-Kiefl (1986)
22. Various Composers, Pygmalion (1774) Pimmalione (1790) – Out of print | For more information, please contact the Sales Office
Edited by Emilio Sala (1996)
23. Ferdinando Bertoni, Orfeo ed Euridice (1776)
Edited by Paolo Cattelan (1989)
24. Pasquale Anfossi, Adriano in Siria (1777)
Edited by Jacques Joly (1983)
25. Francesco Bianchi, La morte di Cesare (1789)
Edited by Piero Weiss (1999)
26. Gaetano Andreozzi, Amleto (1792)
Edited by Marcello Conati (1984)
27. Giovanni Paisiello, I giuochi d’Agrigento
Edited by Lorenzo Mattei (2007)
28. Pietro Generali, Cecchina, suonatrice di Ghironda
Edited by Marco Beghelli (2010)
29. Marco Portogallo, Gli Orazi e i Curiazi
Edited by Maria G. Miggiani (2003)
30. Various Composers, Balli teatrali a Venezia (1746-1859)
Edited by Elena Ruffin and Giovanna Trentin (1994)