Script & Print 37:3 (2013) 133–158 © 2013 BSANZ [ISSN 1834-9013]

Printed Interventions in Eighteenth-Century Librettos for the Performance of Italian Opera in London: The Roles of Commas, Inserts, and Pasteovers1

Michael Burden

Among the routines (or rituals) for a Londoner going to the Opera House in the eighteenth-century was the purchase of the book of the words of the opera about to be attended. Such a routine was also in place for those attending performances at the London playhouses, but there was one feature of the libretto for the Opera which made its acquisition both important and fundamentally different: the libretto contained a parallel English translation of the text, for all the works performed there were sung in Italian, and it was, in effect, an eighteenth-century system of surtitles. Imagine, therefore, the annoyance of a patron, who, having followed the opera for half an act, began to find that what was happening on the stage in front of him was becoming less and less like the text that appeared in the expensively acquired book. But surely, it might be asked, an opera is an opera, and doesn’t a published libretto simply represent what was performed? Hints that this might not be the case can be found from the very first years after the arrival of Italian opera in London:

the Tyranny [of Italian opera] is carried yet further for the Songs are so often turn’d out of their Places, to introduce some Absurd favourite Air of the Singer, that in a few Days the first Book you have Bought is reduc’d to little more than the Title Page of what it pretends to2

In these few pungent phrases, the actor Colley Cibber, writing in the Preface to his 1716 English masque Venus and Adonis, gives us an all-encompassing insight into the world of the London Italian opera libretto. At a stroke, the demanding singers, the irrational plots, and the complicit management are conjured up before us. Cibber’s tone is anything but approving, and while his comments on Italian opera should often be treated with scepticism, evidence to support his remarks on the Italian opera libretto can be found elsewhere. As he claimed, the opera text was manipulated with a breath-taking frequency to serve the interests of those involved in the performances, sometimes to the extent that an opera as performed in the theatre might have had little or nothing in common with the text as purchased by members of the audience only a “few days” before.

1 Some of the material that appears in this article was given in a paper at the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand 2011 Conference, “Textual Manipulation,” 3–4 November 2011, The Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide. I am grateful to Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson for their constant assistance in this project.2 Colley Cibber, Venus and Adonis (London: Bernard Linttot, 1715), Preface.

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The arias to which Cibber refers are one of the two main building blocks of an eighteenth-century opera; the other was recitative. Recitative shaped the action of the opera, the sentiments of the aria reflected on that action. And because they reflected on the action, they expressed the inner feelings of the characters concerned, not that character’s specific response to the exact dramatic situation. Therefore the texts were not, by definition, situation-specific, and were capable of being transplanted into new, appropriate, positions. The reasons for changing the arias were many—these included singers’ desires, impresarios’ requests, and composers’ foibles—but as long as the sentiments of the words fitted the action as outlined in the recitatives, it did not seem to matter in the overall picture which musical setting of those words was employed. It should not be thought that such changes were entirely frivolous; writing of Pacchierotti’s performance in Medonte, re di Epiro in 1782, the Public Advertiser commented:

The airs which Pacchierotti has chosen for himself have served to disclose in that excellent performer such powers as we had not yet discovered, uniting into one the delicate Soprano to the more majestic and manly strains of the most accomplished Contralto.3

This comment suggests that the airs Pacchierotti had sung in previous operas had not shown his voice to advantage; now, the set of arias chosen by himself— Medonte was a pasticcio with music “selected from the most eminent Composers”4—revealed him to be a better performer than had been thought. A theatrical puff? Probably (the theatre may well have simply paid for the piece’s insertion), but importantly for all concerned, such press coverage would have boosted the image of the singer and, it was hoped, the audience numbers at the opera. The sources of arias such as Pacchierotti’s were multifarious; they included house composers, musical directors, and, of course, singers, who travelled with folders and bundles of such pieces in their luggage, giving rise to the term “suitcase arias.”5 These arias could be ones that might have been written for a singer in their original contexts; or commissioned by singers from a composer to exploit aspects of their voices; or

3 Public Advertiser, 23 November 1782.4 The London Stage 1660–1800 (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968). Part I 1660–1700, ed. William Van Lennep (1965), Part II 1700–1729, ed. Emmett L. Avery, 2 vols. (1960), Part III 1729–1747, ed. Arthur H. Scouten, 2 vols. (1961), Part IV (1747–1776), ed. George Winchester Stone, Jr., 3 vols. (1962), Part V 1776–1800, ed. Charles Beecher Hogan, 3 vols. (1968). Cited hereafter as LS, followed by part, volume and page numbers; this reference LS, V/1, 569.5 See Curtis A. Price, Judith Milhous, and Robert D. Hume, Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London. Vol. 1. The King’s Theatre, Haymarket 1778–1791 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995); and Michael Burden, “Metastasio’s ‘London pasties’: Curate’s Egg or Pudding’s Proof?” in Hg. von Elisabeth Th. Hilscher und Andrea Sommer-Mathis eds., Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782), “uomo universal,” (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 293–309, for some discussion of these issues.

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simply arias that a singer knew and liked, and which saved the trouble of learning something new.

It is hard to assess the effects of such an approach on opera as artistic object. Done sensitively (or even insensitively), the opera—in its most extreme form, called a pasticcio—worked, or at least convinced the audience that it was worth listening to. Or perhaps it would be more to the point to say that it was a convincing vehicle by which to hear the singers. The audience (or, at least, the cognoscenti) did begin to complain, and towards the end of the eighteenth century, these complaints combined with changes in musical structures, reduced the prevalence of the practice. However, for the much of the eighteenth century, it was in full swing, and while it is hard to gauge its full extent, some insights can be gained from examining the history of the Italian poet Metastasio’s librettos, where their repeated use provides enough material to make a broad assessment of the results. The librettos that survive for the London versions of his Ipermestra, first set by J. A. Hasse for Vienna in 1744, provide us with one example. Metastasio originally provided twenty-two separate numbers for the opera, as well as the expected recitative. By the time it came to be performed in London in 1754, however, only six of those texts were still present, and fourteen new texts were added to the opera. When it was staged in a new setting by Giuseppe Sarti in London in 1797, the libretto then retained only four of Metastasio’s original texts, with thirteen new texts being added. There was even a text change between the submission of the licensing copy to the Lord Chamberlain, which Opera House manager Vincent Federici sent on 21 November, and the printed copy that must have been on sale in the auditorium on opening night on 28 November. The singer in the role of Lineco, Giuseppe Viganoni, perhaps had a diva moment, and demanded a change of aria. With the much more popular Metastasio libretto, Didone abbandonata, there were ten different versions of the opera performed in London—the first in 1737, the last in 1827—set by composers ranging from Leonardo Vinci to Saverio Mercadante. The pattern of substitution seen in Ipermestra is here in operation on a much larger scale, and by the time we reach Ferdinando Paer’s 1814 setting, so few Metastasio texts are retained that it is arguable to what extent it can really be thought to still be the poet’s opera.6

The effect on the opera books that were designed for use by the audience in the then-lighted auditorium during an opera’s performance can be imagined. The

6 See Don Neville’s comprehensive list in Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London: Macmillan, 1992), III.355–57; for a listing of the London versions that includes one or two more, see Michael Burden, “Metastasio in London: a Catalogue and Critical Reader,” Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 39 (2007), whole issue. And see Michael Burden, “Establishing a Text, Securing a Reputation: Metastasio’s Use of Aristotle,” in Peter Brown and Suzanne Ograjensek, eds, Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 177–91, for the proposition that Metastasio’s own involvement with the first collected edition of his works was a reaction to this treatment, and that he saw the edition as trying to establish accepted texts.

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books contained front matter—variously dramatis personae, argument, dedication, note to the reader—and, with one or two exceptions, each had parallel English and Italian versions of the text on facing pages, for even amongst the aristocracy, fluent Italian could not be assumed. And language aside, they helped the audience to follow the action of both plays and operas, for the English word-books at the playhouses of Drury Lane and Covent Garden also served a similar function.7 The audience members cared about their books and librettos, even if they did not employ them wisely, and there was obviously a hidden and now ill-understood etiquette associated with their use; in Henry Fielding’s novel Amelia, we find that a gentleman, wanting to charm the heroine, “procured her a Book and Wax-Candle, and held the Candle for her himself during the whole Entertainment.”8 One can only imagine the indecorous sentiments that might be murmured into the lady’s ear should the “gentleman” purchasing the book have proven to be an odious bounder.

Despite their often-recorded use, there is almost no visual evidence of librettos and playbooks being used in the London theatres. Among the few is the fourth version of William Hogarth’s painting, “The Beggar’s Opera,” where it can be seen in the hands of Charles Paulet, Duke of Bolton, the nobleman who was the paramour of the actress and singer who played the role of Polly Peachum, Lavinia Fenton.9 Paulet is recorded following her every word, night after night, in the book. Another appears in the James Gillray cartoon “Pacific-Overtures, or A Flight from St. Clouds ‘over the water to Charley’ - a new Dramatic Peace now Rehearsing,” published by Hannah Humphrey in 1806, where an old crone is following a book in the box, stage right. Gillray’s print is even more instructive; as with other images of eighteenth-century London theatre auditoria, it shows widespread use by members of the audience of the bills of the play, the cheap, daily printings of lists of works to be performed, casts to be seen, works to be staged in the future, and the minutiae of attending theatres. Overall, the general lack of representation in eighteenth-century London theatrical iconography suggests that the actual use of the book, a relatively expensive object (one shilling at the London Opera until 1785, one shilling and sixpence thereafter).10 was not common. But for those who did use the book—members of the audience who were wealthy, or members of the cognoscenti, or both—there can be no doubt that the text on sale at the performance had to match the performance actually given.

7 For a recent discussion of the books of the play, see Valerie Fairbrass, “‘Books of the songs to be had at the theatre’: Some Notes on Fruit Women and their Contribution to Theatre Finances,” Theatre Notebook 66.2 (2012): 66–84.8 Henry Fielding, Amelia (London: A. Millar, 1752), II.81; this was during a visit to an oratorio, but there is no evidence to suggest that this was not also the practice at the operas in the same building.9 Charles Paulet (1685–1754), from 1722 3rd Duke of Bolton, and Lavinia Fenton (1710–1760), from 1751, wife of the 3rd Duke.10 See Michael Burden, “Stage and Costume Designers Working at the Italian Opera in London: The Evidence of the Librettos 1710–1801,” Theatre Notebook 65.3 (2011): 126–51.

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The subsequent focus of this article will be on the ample evidence provided by the librettos of the (sometimes probably desperate) efforts by the booksellers to keep pace with the changes introduced into the opera’s texts by the theatre. Consisting of a variety of strategies, these indications include commas and other printed signs, inserts, and pasteovers; for an eighteenth-century opera-goer, they are interventions in a text he or she was about to see realised on the stage before them; for modern scholars, they offer a window into the preparation and staging of the operas concerned. Such interventions are not common; tables of all those so far located in eighteenth-century London librettos can be found in Appendix 1. Chronologically, the table suggests that librettos published earlier in the eighteenth century had a greater number of printed interventions, while the later ones used pasteovers. Given that the surviving numbers are small, it is difficult to be confident in any conclusions drawn from them, but it does suggest that when the genre was newly introduced to London, more care was taken in preparing the text for the printer, and that there was more concern to guide the audience through the novel entertainment. Whether this pattern reflected the preferences of different printers in recording such interventions is unclear; certainly, the table of printers of the London librettos in Appendix 2 suggests that Jacob Tonson and Thomas Wood preferred printed interventions, but it seems unlikely that the printers could or would prepare such interventions unaided by the Opera House.

These librettos survive in scattered sources with no particular pattern of survival, with the exception of the twelve volumes in the Harding Collection in the Bodleian library in Oxford. A small, pencilled, note in Volume 1, GB-Ob Harding D 244, which appears to be in Harding’s handwriting, announces “12 vols. A very curious collection of English versions of Italian Operas at the commencement of their introduction into this country.” The books are a set of nonce volumes, uniformly bound, and with only one of the texts—the second La vestale, GB-Ob Harding D 2449 (5)—having a subscriber’s or delivery name, Henry Johnston, “Johnston” presumably, as the name has been partly obscured by a binder’s cropping. How or why this collection—which contains more pasteovers than are otherwise recorded in total, world-wide—was assembled remains a mystery; there are enough of them, though, to suggest that it might be a collection of librettos from a printer’s workshop or even from the theatre’s prompter’s office. The documentation of these, and the other London librettos discussed below, has been undertaken as part of the project “The Italian Opera Aria on the London Stage 1705–1801,” 11 which has so far identified over nine hundred different librettos, a count that includes the copies in the Larpent collection of the Lord Chamberlain’s

11 The catalogue will appear as Michael Burden and Christopher Chowrimootoo, “The Italian Opera Aria on the London Stage 1705–1801,” 3 vols; it is discussed in Michael Burden and Christopher Chowrimootoo, “A Movable Feast: The Aria in the Italian Libretto in London before 1800,” Eighteenth-Century Music 4.2 (2007): 285–89.

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licensing copies at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.12 For the purposes of this article, the use of the term “text” will, at times, encompass both words and music, although the emphasis will be on the former. Indeed, it might be worth noting at the outset that, leaving aside the works of Handel, only about a dozen London Italian operas survive in score, and that the librettos are, in some cases, the only surviving sources.

Printed Interventions: Commas, Braces, and Other IndicationsCommas, braces, and other indications such as asterisks represent planned interventions, ones that, for the most part, seem to have arisen either out of the rehearsal period, or from the need to acknowledge input in the process of creation or adaptation. Inverted commas were invariably used to mark the sections of text that were to be omitted in the performance; these were already in use in English playtexts, and regular audience members would have been aware of their function. Their first employment in a London Italian opera libretto was in the 1707 version of Thomyris, Queen of Scythia. Here, double inverted commas against the left-hand end of the line of text meant that that line was omitted:

Pray Note, That throughout the Opera whatever is mark’d thus “ with double Comma’s in the Margin, and between two black Rules, is left out, to shorten the Performance.13

Many operas—and plays for that matter—carried similar instructions, ones that provided the full text of the work for the purchaser, but allowed the audience home before the early hours. Clearly, such decisions were made in rehearsal; the cumulative time taken to sing the arias would only have been obvious when the staging got underway. The inclusion of all the words whether performed or not, suggests a genuine desire to give the audience the full version of the opera, but there are examples of texts in which the author, clearly indignant at the theatre’s “adjustment” of his or her new drama, has printed all the words regardless of whether or not the cuts are improvements to the original.

One case in which such commas were used to suggest something entirely different, is the 1721 Muzio Scevola. The author employs them to aggrandize his text, for they indicate an authoritative source, manipulating the reader to take those sections based on “true history” more seriously:

These Marks are a Sign that the adjoining Verses being an exact verbal Translation of the speeches taken from true history, for the present Purpose.14

12 For a full listing of the Larpent plays and operas, see Dougald MacMillan, Catalogue of the Larpent Plays in the Huntington Library (San Marino, CA: San Pasqual Press, 1939).13 Peter Anthony Motteux, Thomyris, Queen of Scythia (London: Jacob Tonson, 1707), 2.14 Paolo Rolli, Muzio Scevola (London: Thomas Wood, 1721), Argument. The attributions of the London librettos given in these notes are the ones given by the English Short Title Catalogue. As will

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Such sentiments suggest an attempt to lift the opera from being merely a frivolous entertainment to the level of the high art of tragedy.

As it happens, the author of Muzio Scevola does offer possible cuts, but by using braces (not commas), and includes alternatives to the performers and the managers:

The Marginal Lines denote that those Verses may (for brevity sake) be omitted in the Singing.15

These are an effort on the poet’s part to manipulate his own text from afar; evidently, he is saying: “if the performance is too long, please take these lines out, rather than others.” Other uses of braces are for a variety reasons: in the 1726 Ottone, they mark the gaps in the English text, where no translation of the aria texts has been provided, whlie in the 1761 Tolomeo, they indicate that “The remainder of this scene as well as the song are by Mr Handel.”16

Almost all of the last type of printed intervention—asterisks—that appear in London librettos, are reserved for notes on the music: those in Arsace (1721), L’arcadia in Brenta (1754), and Gli amanti ridicoli (1768) all indicate the contributions of specific composers. Those in Arianna e Teseo (1760), Artaserse (1772), and Ninetta (1790) are a more generic indication, simply showing which of the tunes are by other unspecified composers. In Zemir e Azore (1796), asterisks indicate stage and performance directions essential to the comedy, including the first number in Act 1, Scene 1, “ ’ Tis clear again, the winds are still,” which has the note: “The accompaniment does not agree with the words.”

Printed Interventions: Errata and Inserted PagesThe errata that appear in the librettos are usually only of the small variety, things that reflect a detailed proof reading, possibly by the theatre poet or translator. One such set is that which appears under the final chorus of the 1776 Germondo, which offers six errata to the text. Four of these involve spelling corrections—“Freme” for “Frema,” “l’amor” for “l’amore,” “Quel torrente” for “Qual torrente,” and “Stigie” for “Stige”—while three others adjust the line divisions of the text. These are straightforward proof-reading corrections, typesetting mistakes made by the printer; all four are given correctly in the opera’s Larpent manuscript. Of the two remaining corrections, one is a change of line division, and the other, a change of text, substituting “T’invola, all’ ire d’un sdegnato padre” for “T’invola, all’ ire d’un genitor sdegnato” found in Larpent. These last two details suggest that the proofreading was undertaken by someone fluent in Italian associated with the opera house, rather than someone in the printing house

be clear from this article, such an attribution cannot be automatically extended to all the aria texts contained therein.15 Ibid.16 Tolomeo, re d’Egilto (London: G. Woodfall, 1761), 56–57.

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simply comparing the printed text with the manuscript. There is no doubt, though, that Larpent contains the text as sent to the printer, for the manuscript has each line of every aria marked with two horizontal lines, and the whole of each number is bracketed with a single vertical line. These instructions, which resulted in the customary indented italic aria text, were not, of course, required by anyone other than those in the printing shop.

In contrast, the very long errata paragraph at the back of the 1730 Ormisda points to a different situation; all the corrections are to the English text, and all appear to be either omissions or corrections.17 In the case of the 1771 Le pazzie d’Orlando, the new comic opera by Carlo Badini set by Pietro Guglielmi, it may well have been the anonymous translator who on page 14 demanded that “instead of ‘Man’s heart, ye fair ones, is’, read ‘Our hearts, ye fair ones, are’”; Badini’s London activities suggest he was fluent in English, and it is possible that he himself prepared the translation.18 While these types of interventions suggest both a desire on the part of the printer and theatre to get the text correct and a longer after-life for the librettos than might otherwise be expected of such apparently ephemeral objects, such errata remain part of the printing process, and do not represent matters of performance.

The majority of errata slips, however, are more substantial, and detail supplementary or substitute arias, usually referred to as “new songs,” and are frequently printed on the pages of the front and back matter. The hastily printed Ormisda discussed above shows other signs of speed in preparation, for there are nine aria substitutions recorded in the text. The opera was first performed on 4 April 1730 as simply a “new opera;”19 after only four more performances, the press announced that, for 21 April, there were “twelve songs changed,” after which there were eight more performances.20 The twelve songs of the press report and the nine songs of the libretto can be reconciled if the press was referring to the music, and libretto only to the words. Another case is the opera Gianguir of 1742, where both the text and the translation of Lampugnani’s setting of “Perfido, e traditore” appear below the dramatis personae, on the appropriate facing Italian and English pages, and is to be sung “Instead of the first Air, Consider, you are still a son, &c.”21 In the 1787 Giannina e Bernardorne, we find the text of “La Donna ch’ e amante” printed on the back matter under the instruction:

N. B. The following are the words of Signora BENINI’s first Cavatina, which has been changed.22

17 Apostolo Zeno, Ormisda (London: A. Campbell, 1730), verso of 71.18 Carlo Badini, Le pazzie d’Orlando (London: W. Griffin, 1771), 78.19 LS, III/1, 47.20 Ibid., 52.21 Apostolo Zeno, Gianguir (London: T. Wood, 1742), 4–5.22 Filippo Livigni, Giannina e Bernardorne (London: D. Stuart, 1787), 68.

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The “first cavatina” is “Son qual rosa in sulla spina,” the number which opens Scene 3. This is not, though, an effective intervention: by definition, there is no cue at the cavatina itself to indicate that a change has been made, and an audience member coming on the text and working backwards from the end of the libretto, is given no page number, and would need to know where Anna Benini’s first number occurred.23 One of the more entertaining interventions is that in the 1770 Il disertore, where the author notes that:

Rather than to jar with any body, and chiefly with Musicians, I entreat the courteous Reader to refer the following Song to the 51st Page, in the Second Act, which Signor Lovattini is to sing instead of that printed there.24

The text offers “Tergi ’l bel ciglio, o cara” to replace “Se quell ciglio ancor ti miro,” which Giovanni Lovattini sang in the role of Alessio.

Some librettos show a much greater level of intervention. In the 1792 Discordia conjugale, the front matter ends with a section of two full pages headed “Alterations,” which adds not only the arias “Ho perduto il mio risposo” and “Ah mia cara, il vostro brio” to Act 1, but a whole new scene between first and second scenes of Act 2, with a lengthy opening recitative.25 The 1755 Ezio has an even more extreme set of interventions: the libretto has eight pages of “NEW SONGS Composed by Mr Perez” carefully cued for substitution through all three acts, and appears to relate to the performance on 20 May 1755 (and presumably to the three given thereafter in that season), when the opera was advertised with an addendum to the advertisement which read, “By desire the Musick by Perez.”26

On occasion, the material on these extra pages was taken into a later printing of the libretto, with the version with the inserts then coming to represent an interim state of the libretto. The case of the 1776 version of La frascatana is instructive here. The opera had a text by Filippo Livigni (fl. Venice, 1773–86) and a score by Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816), and was premiered in 1774 at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice; it was first staged in London billed as “A new Comic Opera,” for 5 November 1776.27 There followed a series of performances on 12, 19, 26, 30 November and 10 December 1776, and 4, 11, 17, 28 January, 22 February, 18 March, 8 April, 1, 6, 15 May, and 17 June 1777. A libretto was duly printed for the performances, but after type-setting, a change was made to Act 1, Scene 3, in which “Sapessi almen se barbara” was substituted for “Vado ma, oh Dio”; this alteration was noted on pages 85 to 86. A single copy of this text survives

23 Ibid., 5.24 Carlo Badini, Il disertore (London: T. Baldwin, 1770), Front matter.25 Giovanni Lorenzi, Discordia conjugale (London: H. Reynell, 1792), “Alterations.”26 LS, IV/1, 488.27 LS, V/1, 33.

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in the Niedersächsische Staats– und Universitätsbibliothek in Göttingen.28 At an unknown date later in the run, the libretto was reprinted, and the text of “Sapessi almen se barbara” was set in its correct place, and “Vado ma, oh Dio” then excluded; this version also exists in a single copy, this time in the British Library.29

PasteoversIn the cases discussed above, the printers had time to respond to such changes made by the theatre, but on other occasions, they were made too late for such interventions. When this happened, the printer was driven to having the aria texts and translations individually typeset, printed, and then trimmed and pasted into the libretto over the aria concerned. Pasteovers themselves are not common and, while the results of such interventions are clear, the point at which they were actually inserted—before the run, during the run, in the benefit season—is not. In one or two cases, it is clear that the printer simply gave up waiting for the theatre, and printed the libretto with blank spaces, presumably with the intention of inserting a pasteover containing the text of the relevant aria. This was the case with the 1742 libretto Meraspe; overo, L’olimpiade, the work which introduced Pergolesi’s stage music to London audiences; in Act 1, the aria “Dolce di pastorella,” allocated to Argene and sung by Lucia Panichi, is simply pasted into the gap left in the text.30 More usual was the case of the 1765 Olimpiade, or the 1767 Sifare, where both librettos have arias pasted over extant texts, in the latter case for three out of the opera’s six roles.

Like the printed errata in the 1767 La frascatana discussed above, the pasteovers in one libretto, that of Metastasio’s opera Artaserse dated 1772, were at a later date taken into the text and the whole reprinted. In this case, the pasteovers establish the chronology in the alterations to the opera’s text. Artaserse, altered by Giovanni Botterelli, translated by Antonio Carara, and with music (mostly) by Tomaso Giordani, was staged in the 1771–1772 season, opening on 25 April. Using asterisks, the libretto at GB-Lbl 907.i.15.(1.) records that the arias “Non ti son padre, non mi sei figlio,” “Figlia ascolta di padre il comando,” “Se d’un amor tiranno,” “Oh dei, che affanno è questo!,” and “Mi credi spietata” were set by composers other than Giordani. However, a single copy of this 1772 edition—at GB-Ob Harding D 2443 (5)—also has the following arias as pasteovers: “Se soffre allor che s’ama,” “Se da me stessa imparo,” “Da mille affanni oppressa,” and “Velo l’obia del figlio innocente;” there is also a new cast list, which gives Maria Antonia Girelli Aguilar (and not Cecilia Grassi) in the role of Mandane, and Leopoldo De Micheli (and not Andreas Morigi) as Semira, and Signora Antonio Carara (and not Signora Giordani) as Megabise. This is the cast list for the 1772–1773

28 D-Gs 8 P DRAM IV, 7090.29 GB-Lbl 1490.m.64. 30 GB-Lbl 907.i.4.(4.).

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season, associating this libretto with the series of performances which began on 1 December 1772. The 1773 imprint of the libretto for opera—this one at GB-Ob Harding D 2443 (7)—shows the text’s next stage: it takes into the text all the alterations indicated by the pasteovers, and at the same time, adds composers for the extra numbers: J. C. Bach for “Non ti son padre, non mi sei figlio,” Leopold Gassman for “Figlia ascolta di padre il comando,” Mattia Vento for “Se d’un amor tiranno” and “Mi credi spietata,” and Giuseppe Sarti for “Oh dei, che affanno è questo!.” The libretto also gives Giuseppe Majo for “Conservati fedele,” a number attributed to Giordani in 1772. The date at which this third libretto went into circulation cannot be identified, but 5 January 1773 seems possible, when the first of two performances “By Command of their Majesties” was given; it does not seem likely that the theatre would have presented the King with a patched up and pasted over libretto.31

Such pasteovers can also illustrate the changing resources of the opera house from season to season. In the 1781–1782 season, the theatre staged one performance on 25 May of a new setting by Bertoni of Ifigenia in Aulide. The extensive cast list included not only the main solo roles, but also a chorus of priests, people, and damsels. Having only been “acted but once last season,”32 it was given again in the 1782–1783 season, this time for two performances on 18 and 22 February. For these performances, the 1782 libretto was simply given a new cast list and half title page, and all the choruses were cut, indicated by blank pastedowns over all but the final number.

ConclusionThe astute reader will, however, have begun to suspect that whatever the physical (and, therefore, identifiable interventions) to the librettos, there will, in the matter of performance, be changes that are largely not recorded anywhere. We can only speculate at their extent, but what little we do know makes for uncomfortable reading in any pursuit of a stable artistic object. In the 1770s, for example, the singer and manager Gaspare Pacchierotti found himself in an extraordinary situation with Franziska Le Brun, a stylish singer of some experience, who agreed with him at rehearsal on November 18, that she would sing one aria; imagine his surprise when, at that point on the following night, she sang a completely different number.33 Another report, that of the 1785 performances of I rivali delusi, provides an example of extra forces at work:

31 LS, IV/3, 1684.32 LS, V/1, 592.33 Price, Milhous, and Hume, Italian Opera, 223–24.

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The Rivali Delusi was cut very properly by omitting the under singers’ airs; yet the curtain did not drop till near midnight.34

We might reflect that had the author of the report in the Public Advertiser omitted this piece of information, there would be no evidence that these arias for the “lesser” characters had been omitted, and our understanding of the work as performed (as opposed to its survival in the sources) would be entirely different. At least in this instance, though, it seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment strategy to allow the audience to depart at a reasonable hour. In the case of Regina Mingotti’s performances of Siroe in 1754, there was clearly “preparation” behind such changes. The singer subsequently wrote:

THE Musick of Siroe was all composed by Lampugnani; but when [impresario] Vanneschi heard me privately sing the Songs that were allotted me in this Opera, he found them so little to his Taste, that he begged of me as a Favour, to substitute other Songs of other Masters, knowing that I had better Compositions in my Possession.35

In this instance “songs” meant a change in the music, not in the words, so while she substituted music (probably by Hasse) for that by Giovanni Lampungnani, the libretto shows no indication that a change had been made because she sang settings of the same words.36 As in the case of I rivali delusi, if the contemporary report did not exist, we would have been none the wiser as to the true situation.

These three examples illustrate only too clearly that the opera as actually “received” by the eighteenth-century London public may have been a very different work in performance to that which we study so enthusiastically in the history of opera reception. Indeed, the preparation processes discussed in this article suggest a performance routine utterly alien in method and result to anything a modern audience might expect or desire. And it is a routine on which the eighteenth-century pan-European opera scene relied, for without its existence, the business of staging opera would have been very different; unless strategies such as those we have seen with the aria were in use, how otherwise could a singer arrive in London in October, learn six new operas (most of which were not finished when the pieces went into rehearsal) for a season, and then depart at the end of April? But it does stand diametrically opposed to our notion of the work, of a repertory, and of a canon of pieces on which such a repertory might draw, and it is as well to acknowledge that modern interpretations of eighteenth-century operas may well be edifices that, at any moment, may be brought tumbling down.

New College, University of Oxford

34 Public Advertiser, 16 April 1785.35 Regina Mingotti, An Appeal to the Public (London: for the Author, 1755), 3–4.36 Pietro Metastasio, Siroe, re di Persia (London: G. Woodfall, 1755).

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