The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 25 (2019) No. 1

A Sociable Moment: Opera and Festive Culture in Baroque Siena. By Colleen Reardon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. [xiii, 304 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-049630-2.]

Reviewed by Beth L. Glixon^*

1. Introduction

2. Reardon’s Sources: Siena, Rome, and Florence

3. Opera in Siena, from the Medici, to the Chigi, to the Academies and Impresarios

4. Siena’s Repertory: Revivals and Their Transformations

5. Format and the Production of the Book

6. Concluding Remarks

References

1. Introduction

1.1 This marvelous book could only have been written by Colleen Reardon. Her unsurpassed knowledge of Siena, gained through decades of work in archives and libraries, is apparent throughout. In this, her third book about music in Siena, she draws also from archives in Florence and Rome. A Sociable Moment: Opera and Festive Culture in Baroque Siena showcases the depth of Reardon’s appreciation of Sienese history and culture, and how her understanding intersects with recent research on “sociable networks” (p. 3). The book’s title sums up the author’s approach, for we learn how a city already so dedicated to sociable academic gatherings, games, and plays (as well as the drama of the Palio di Siena) came to embrace public opera, adapting the entertainment to the forces and means at its disposal at any particular time (see Chapter 2, “A Festive Culture and its Sociable Network”). We might remember that La pellegrina, famous to our readership for the intermedi that adorned the performances of the play in Florence in 1589, was written by the Sienese Girolamo Bargagli, who had also penned a treatise on the “giochi” so popular among the Sienese nobility.^[1] In other words, this book goes far beyond what might have been a mere presentation of “opera in Siena in the early-modern era.”

1.2 Reardon explicates the plight of the Sienese, who came under control of the Medici in 1555, and how they came to maintain their typical social entertainments begun in earlier centuries. While their first public opera (1647: see below) was performed under the auspices of the Medici, later productions arose through more local channels. Indeed, opera in Siena (unlike that in Venice, for instance) would not have flourished without the help of various local academies, including the Intronati and the Rozzi. Also crucial were the members of the Assicurate, Siena’s famous female academy. It was they, for instance, who paid for the painting of the ceiling when the theater was renovated in 1668 (see below), and they also sponsored the performance of Amare e fingere, most likely composed by Alessandro Melani (1676). Opera in Siena, then,  may have been Tuscan in its broadest sense, but it succeeded on its own terms, with help not only from its own citizens but also from other “friends,” sometimes the Chigi in Rome, later Governor Cardinal Francesco Maria de’ Medici, who, through his interest in opera, cultivated networks of musicians throughout Tuscany and beyond.

2. Reardon’s Sources: Siena, Rome, and Florence

2.1 A Sociable Moment draws on a wide and varied mix of sources. The Sienese libraries and archives house numerous materials important to the understanding of the social life of the city, providing data often not available to scholars working in other cities. The author’s discovery of the papers of the Brancadori family was especially fortunate, as they are rich in references to their consumption of opera; her mining of the Deposito Piccolomini-Naldi-Baldini in the Archivio di Stato di Siena unearthed a unique printed contract—replete with a number of unusual requirements for the musicians—devised in 1703 by impresario Girolamo Gigli, also a famous Sienese playwright.^[2] Also of inestimable value are the various broadsides, not only the more typical ones common in other cities—sonnets honoring singers and others involved with the production—but also those announcing forthcoming performances, sometimes with projected dates as well as a listing of the full cast. Other archives also proved crucial for her project: the Medici papers at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, most particularly the correspondence of the Medici governors who oversaw Siena, and the vast collection of Chigi papers, books, and musical scores in the Vatican archive (V-CVbav), the legacy of the family members who followed the Sienese Fabio Chigi, the future Pope Alexander VII, to Rome.

3. Opera in Siena, from the Medici to the Chigi, to the Academies and Impresarios

3.1 The book opens (“The Curtain Rises”) with a discussion of the production of Datira (1647), an opera sponsored by the governor of Siena, Prince Mattias de’ Medici. Part of this initiative was the building of the theater in the Palazzo Pubblico that would serve also for later productions. This enormous space could seat 1500, although one surmises that many of the seats would have remained empty on at least some occasions. So expensive was this production that this effort was Mattias’s first and last attempt at mounting an opera there. Moreover, public opera would not resume for more than twenty years, until the Chigi-assisted production of Pietro Antonio Cesti’s popular Argia in 1669, after a year of renovation of the theater.^[3]

3.2 Three of the chapters of A Sociable Moment concern the influence of the Chigi family. Even though the most prominent members lived in Rome, their occasional visits sparked celebrations of various kinds, including the particularly popular Sienese conversazione. Musical entertainments could include operas, sometimes those that had previously been performed either in Rome or at the family’s villa at Ariccia. Moreover, the Chigi preference for pastoral works influenced the Sienese choice of repertoire (see Chapters 5 and 6) for years to come. Because these visits usually did not overlap with Carnival, the Sienese operas were often presented at other times of the year.

3.3 Two of the heroes of the book are father and son Giovanni Fabio and Giovanni Battista Nuti (Chapters 7 through 9), the postmasters who corresponded with Francesco Maria de’ Medici (later a Cardinal), the absent governor of Siena. They supplied Francesco Maria with a running commentary on the various opera productions, information that would otherwise remain entirely unknown. Seemingly no topic was unworthy of discussion. We learn of impresarios and their all-too-familiar problems: delays and losses, but also the occasional profits. (The most indefatigable of the impresarios was Girolamo Gigli.) Also named are the musicians and their experiences in Siena, as well as travelers passing through the city. Although local musicians often performed in the operas, as instrumentalists and in some cases as singers, a few of the musicians were anything but ordinary. In the 1700 performance of Cammilla, regina de’ Volsci, for example, three members of the orchestra were gentleman dilettantes: Cavalier Tolomei on theorbo, Count Maccarani on violin, and, also one of the sponsors, the Roman Girolamo Pamphili, who occasionally appeared in the pit (p. 210). In a previous opera, L’innocenza riconosciuta (1698), some noblemen had even appeared on the stage with professional singers (p. 203), and a certain “Captain Rochester” may have played the flute in the orchestra (p. 204)!^[4]

4. Siena’s Repertory: Revivals and Their Transformations

4.1 Reardon makes clear that most of the works performed had seen their premieres elsewhere, and she helpfully traces the histories of the operas before they reached Siena. The librettos of some of them have much to offer scholars of Baroque opera. The foreword of one in particular, Il Conte d’Altamura (1701) is a gem, for it comments on the baggage aria and its prominence in Siena: “It is common these days that singers replace arias in operas at their pleasure, and either because each singer has favorites that are not from the opera, or because what is in the score does not sit well in their voices, it so happens that little by little the poetry is changed….” The publisher placed the substitute arias at the end of the libretto, an astonishing thirty-eight of them. Yet another work, L’innocenza riconosciuta (1698), shows how the Sienese impresarios might change the original librettos, as this work, an adaptation of La Regina Floridea, had not only twenty-nine substitute arias, but also an added final chorus with ballet and five new scenes, all but one with comic characters.

4.2 Another revival, produced in 1702, was Il Tullo Ostilio, here with music by Giovanni Bononcini, Giacomo Antonio Perti, and Bernardo Sabadini, and adapted by the Florentine maestro Giuseppe Maria Orlandini. Reardon rightly connects the production (originally performed in Venice in 1685 with music by Marc’Antonio Ziani) to previous performances at Pisa and Florence, where the work appeared as Alba soggiogata (with music by Bononcini), especially as many of the singers performed in those other cities. Yet further links to Siena may be found in an even earlier revival. In December 1694 the singer Pietro Mozzi (who was something of a staple in Sienese opera in the 1690s and after) signed the dedication of the 1694–95 Bolognese production of the drama (with music by the composer of the original setting, Marc’Antonio Ziani) to Antonio Felice Zondadari, brother of Bonaventura Zondadari (son of Pope Alexander’s sister Agnese Chigi, himself a sometime impresario, and heir to Cardinal Flavio Chigi). Antonio Felice had begun serving as the vice-legate in Bologna earlier that year, and the Sienese Zondadari may well have had a copy of that libretto in their library. Mozzi later appeared in the Tuscan productions in Pisa, Florence, and Siena, but it’s unclear whether he could have been a prime mover for all of the Tuscan productions.

5. Format and the Production of the Book

5.1 A Sociable Moment is meticulously edited, with almost no spelling errors, and with musical examples that are well integrated to the narrative of Reardon’s story. One of the strengths of the layout of the book may be found in the corpus of documents that follows many of the chapters, and which forms the basis for the author’s discussion. This arrangement keeps the original texts out of the footnotes, and eases the reader’s consultation of the texts, as some of them are referred to more than once.

5.2 One hesitates to make suggestions or offer criticisms of a book of this quality, yet I wished that the documents themselves could have been indexed (is this ever done?). For instance, readers interested in the operas produced at Pratolino who might not peruse all of the documents in full would gain four more references to the theater of Francesco Maria’s nephew, as Giovanni Battista Nuti saw fit to mention in his reports those who passed through Siena on their way to view Grand Prince Ferdinando’s entertainments. I also noted that the compact index was very much geared towards Siena. The names of composers and librettists of the operas that originated in Venice, for example, do not appear, and most of the proper names indexed are tightly connected to Siena and the Chigi. Yet many readers of the book, I would think, will not be Sienese specialists, and would welcome easier access to topics connected to their own worlds of research.

6. Concluding Remarks

6.1 Reardon’s book is filled with all sorts of unique information. Those interested in singers will find that her account closes holes in our knowledge of a number of singers’ careers, both in terms of repertoire and in details regarding their personal lives. Rosa Maria Bracci, for example, is nearly unknown in the literature and does not even appear in Claudio Sartori’s catalog; the ubiquitous Pietro Mozzi is irascible, and not above doing his best to sabotage performances of his colleagues; Vittoria Costa tarries in Siena, hoping for an offer of marriage from composer and maestro Giuseppe Maria Orlandini (in vain, apparently). Orlandini serves as musical director, “stitching together” Il Tullo Ostilio from music by Giovanni Bononcini, Giacomo Antonio Perti, and Bernardo Sabadini (this information comes from one of the unique broadsides mentioned above). We often read of the generous Sienese nobles who celebrated the prima donnas, bringing them into their homes, and offering them sizeable gifts in recompense for their modest salaries.

6.2 In the end, one of the most satisfying aspects of A Sociable Moment stems from the nature of the source material itself, and Reardon’s ability to convey the personalities of the people who made possible opera in Siena, as well as the challenges they faced. Reardon guides her readers into the heart of the social and cultural fabric of Siena from which opera there emerged. This book is a must-read for anyone passionate about early modern Italian culture, and for those eager to learn how opera functioned and developed beyond the centers of Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples.