Читать книгу Anna Maria Strada, Prima Donna of G. F. Handel - Judit Zsovár - Страница 21

Significant changes occurred around that time in Neapolitan operatic life. Firstly, the social as well as musical role of the S. Bartolomeo shifted. The theatre, which had been opened in 1621, initially presented mainly Neapolitan works. Later in the autumn of 1724, following its renovation, it assumed a leading role in the operatic life of the aristocracy as well.¹³¹ Of course, other theatres offered opera performances, such as the Teatro dei Fiorentini, which had given up presenting spoken dramas and kept focusing on musical ones from 1706 onwards. But in 1709, after staging a comic opera in Neapolitan dialect (a novelty which proved successful), the Fiorentini specialised in the genre, leaving heroic opera almost entirely to S. Bartolomeo.¹³² Leonardo Vinci, for instance, made his debut at the Fiorentini in 1719 as the composer of a commedia per musica, Lo cecato fauzo, earning tremendous applause.¹³³ Noblemen visited both theatres, though mostly S. Bartolomeo. Furthermore, in 1724 two new theatres were inaugurated for the performance of comic operas: the Della Pace and the Nuovo.¹³⁴

By mid-century, Naples became the ‘capital of the world’s music’ due to its ‘best schools of music’, as De Brosses stated.¹³⁵ Music and musical education gained wide popularity and became deeply rooted in society. Large families destined their sons to be priests, instrumental players, and singers ‒ in that order. Naples had four excellent conservatories: S. Maria di Loreto, S. Maria della Pietà dei Turchini, Poveri di Gesù Cristo, and S. Onofrio a Capuana, all founded in the sixteenth century and generally with ‘two music masters, the senior being selected from among the most celebrated composers and giving three lessons a week’.¹³⁶

The presence and significant influence of renowned composers in the Neapolitan musical life, especially in the field of opera, began with the arrival of Alessandro Scarlatti in 1684, when he received the title of Maestro di Cappella from the viceroy of Naples, which he held until his death in 1725. This was probably ←55 | 56→due to the influence of his sister, who was not only an opera singer but also a nobleman’s mistress, although Scarlatti’s reputation had already been cemented in Rome. He was, however, absent in Naples between 1702 and 1708, during which period a new generation of composers trained in the conservatories arose: among them were Domenico Sarro, Francesco Mancini, and Niccolò Porpora, not to mention Leonardo Vinci, whose fame spread beyond Naples (mainly to Rome) and career reached its zenith in the mid-1720s onwards.¹³⁷ Music was not only exported to other parts of Italy and beyond, but young musicians also started to arrive with the support of the Austrian court. Composers who later become famous, such as Johann Adolph Hasse (1722–1730), also visited the city in order to study privately.¹³⁸

Traditional historiography has identified the musical style of Naples in the 1720s as the beginning of a new era: that of the ‘galant style’ or even ‘pre-classical style’. The concept of a specific ‘Neapolitan school’ in musical composition, however, has been relativised more recently by researchers such as Helmut Hucke, Daniel Heartz, Francesco Degrada, and Reinhard Strohm, who agree that stylistic innovation in that period was achieved elsewhere in Italy, too.¹³⁹ The typical features of this modern compositional manner lie partly in the handling of the instruments: the violins frequently play unison while the violas col basso play at the octave, or providing a solely harmonic accompaniment pulsating in quavers, crochets, or semiquavers.¹⁴⁰ Colla parte sections are also usual for the violins, while the basses take pauses.¹⁴¹ But more attention should be paid to innovation in singing styles and vocal composition, especially the new prominence given to cadenzas. Michael F. Robinson writes that by the second decade of the eighteenth century, cadenzas were not merely stretched and embellished (as was common ←56 | 57→in the seventeenth century). But as Johann Joachim Quantz noted, on the basis of observations made by Tosi in his Opinioni de’ cantori, a new custom had been established between 1710 and 1716: the whole musical process in the orchestra halted (especially in the case of final cadenzas), so that during the pause singers could ‘execute passages of I know not how many bars together: they’ll have echoes on the same passages and swellings of a prodigious length, and then, with a chuckle in the throat, exactly like that of a nightingale, they’ll conclude with cadences of an equal length, and all this in the same breath’.¹⁴²

In September 1721, Nicola Galtieri and Aurelio del Pò (1698‒1773), former musicians of the Real Capella, were signed up to a four-year contract as new impresari of S. Bartolomeo after the elderly Nicola Serino had died that year. Because running of the theatre was intrinsically costly, and because the budget of another applicant, Salvatore Caputo, was too large to deliver (in spite of different sources of financial support), these candidates, both former conservatorists of Neapolitan churches, were finally chosen. Both were related: Nicola the maternal uncle of Aurelio’s father, Andrea del Pò, a painter and stage designer who himself also used to be the impresario of S. Bartolomeo.¹⁴³

The Galtieri‒Del Pò duo achieved notable results within a short time. Among other things, they were the first in S. Bartolomeo’s history to collaborate with Pietro Metastasio (by staging Francesco Feoʼs Siface in May 1723) and with additional librettists such as Pietro Pariati, Agostino Piovene, Bernardo Saddumene, Antonio Salvi, Silvio Stampiglia, Nino Zanelli, and Apostolo Zeno.¹⁴⁴ Likewise, they could enlist the best composers of the ‘Neapolitan school’; the music of Leo, Porpora, Sarro, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Vinci was heard during the years of their activity, not to mention the greatest star singers of those days, among them Faustina Bordoni, Merighi, Benti-Bulgarelli, Tesi, Vico, Farinelli, Grimaldi, and Annibale Pio Fabri.¹⁴⁵ This must have been a glorious period in the life of ←57 | 58→the S. Bartolomeo and of the Neapolitan musical culture alike. Not surprisingly, when the contract came to an end in September 1725, it finished with a huge deficit.

According to Benedetto Croce, Aurelio del Pò owed Strada 2,000 ducats, most probably the total sum of her fees from 1724 onwards, which he could compensate only by marrying her that year (he was twenty-seven, Strada twenty-two).¹⁴⁶ Regardless of this, we may assume they were already in a relationship; otherwise, how would it be imaginable that Strada could let these debts grow and sing without payment for years? On the other hand, why did Aurelio not pay the wages even of Strada? Presumably he and Nicola could pay the other members of the company, at their own expense at least, but withheld that of Strada’s, as she was to be part of their family soon anyway. Nonetheless, it seems to have been a good marriage. Certainly, Aurelio remained passionately interested in Strada’s career, not only from an artistic and financial aspect, but from a moral one as well, as some incidents that happened in London during the 1730s will reveal.

Although Del Pò and Galtieri were originally supposed to leave by October 1725, and be succeeded by the next impresario, Angelo Carasale ‒ who was in the viceroy Cardinal D’Althann’s favour ‒ as Croce states, the libretti of S. Bartolomeo’s performances up to the carnival season of 1726 show names of Galtieri and Del Pò as dedicators.¹⁴⁷ In fact, Carasale worked at the Teatro Nuovo eretto di sopra Toledo in the carnival of 1726. It follows that Aurelio and Strada left the theatre together afterwards, and that Carasale took over S. Bartolomeo after Easter, beginning with the run of Hasse’s Sesostrate (from 13 May).¹⁴⁸ Strada was not the only singer whose contract was terminated: basically the whole company was replaced.

Interestingly enough, there is no information about either Strada or Aurelio for the next three years until Handel engaged her for the Second Royal Academy in London. Libretti from those years bearing her name have not been found. One plausible explanation for her absence from the stage is that she fell pregnant.

Table 2.1 Strada’s Neapolitan repertoire, 1724‒1726

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