THE FIRST LIBRETTO

If ever the magic, passion and vision of an historic moment was captured in print, then it is here. Not the first libretto in history, but the first for a public opera house. This is history in the making.

This dramma per musica (Benedetto Ferrari, librettist, and Francesco Manelli, composer) lit a fuse that sparked an explosion in Venice, which led to a love affair that endures even now. It is the point at which public opera started and marks the beginning of its journey to the form we know and love today.

 

 

Such was the opera's success, that the libretto was published a few months after the original staging with a passionate recounting of the magical special effects fashioned by the stage machinery and scene-sets. The images it invokes explain in an instant why this project must be realised. The text can be read in full here, but the opening paragraph sets the scene:

“The curtain disappears. The scene was entirely sea. In the distance was a view of water and rocks so contrived that its naturalness (although feigned) moved the spectators to doubt whether they were in a theatre or on a real seashore. The scene was quite dark except for the light given by a few stars, which disappeared one after another, giving place to Aurora who came to make the prologue. She was dressed entirely in cloth of silver with a shining star on her brow, and appeared inside a very beautiful cloud which sometimes grew large and sometimes small, and oh lovely surprise, circled across the sky on the stage. Meanwhile, the scene grew light as day for the prologue, sung divinely by Signora Maddalena Manelli from Rome, after which one heard a very sweet symphony from the most polished instrumentalists, assisted by the author of the opera with his miraculous theorbo. Then Juno came out on a golden carriage drawn by her peacocks, blazing in a coat of cloth of gold with a superb variety of jewels on her head or in her crown. To the wondering delight of the spectators, the carriage turned from right to left as it pleased her. Mercury appeared before her. This personage was and was not in a machine. He was, since flying, it is impossible not to admit it; he was not, since one saw no other machine but that of a flying body. He appeared adorned in his customary garments with a blue mantle that waved loosely from his shoulders…In a moment one saw the scene change from a seascape to a wood so natural that it carried our eyes to the life to real snowy heights, real flowering countryside, a regal spreading wood and unfeigned melting of water. Andromeda appeared with a following of twelve damsels dressed as nymphs…”

 

RECONSTRUCTION AND PERFORMANCE

From the point of view of both reconstruction and staging, so much is revealed by even this brief excerpt from the libretto. The stars disappearing one by one were probably candles having their light shielded or expunged, the scene-sets were evidently changeable, we have documented stage-machinery with flying apparatus and a carriage on stage; in another scene they found the space for 12 nymphs. Knowing how small the stage was, one wonders how they fitted it all in.

Our great fortune is that we have world’s best specialists on our team of consiglieri, like Professor Martin White, whose professional expertise and knowledge of how, to take one example, the lighting worked, allows us to take this information and apply it both to the practical reconstruction and the actual performances. To close, here’s Martin’s thoughts on the value of lighting at the San Cassiano.

 

Happy 6 May! It’s a big day for us all!