I Bononcini. Da Modena all'Europa (1666-1747) Visualizza ingrandito

From serenata to opera stage: Giovanni Bononcini’s serenata Amor per Amore (Rome, August 1696) as inspiration and source material for Il Trionfo di Camilla (Naples, December 1696)

Autore Rosalind Halton
Curatela Marc Vanscheeuwijck
Collana Studi e Saggi
N. 31
Dimensioni 17×24, pp. XIX+372
Anno 2020
ISBN 9788855430272

Giovanni Bononcini’s opera Il Trionfo di Camilla, which premiered in Naples, December 1696, was by all accounts a watershed in late seventeenth-century Italian opera composition. The innovative melodic style that ‘astonish’d the world,’ according to Geminiani, was heard in opera houses throughout Italy and in London for the next thirty years. The many books of favorite arias from Camilla, copied presumably for domestic use, leave no doubt that they were among the most widely circulated tunes in early eighteenth-century Europe.
This paper studies the close relationship between the music of Bononcini’s celebrated opera — his first for Naples, with libretto by Silvio Stampiglia — and his serenata Amor per Amore (Rome, August 1696). Drawing extensively on the serenata’s arias and duets, Bononcini ingeniously reworked them to position the most stirring arias at key points in his opera. The liberties that he was prepared to take with the dramatic context of his own music suggests that he recognized that the appeal of his memorable tunes would be the key to the popular success of Camilla. The 1696–97 opera season in Naples, in which Il Trionfo di Camilla was staged alongside new works of Alessandro Scarlatti, owed its flamboyant novelty to the patronage of the Duke of Medinaceli, Viceroy of Spain (1696–1702). Bringing to Naples ‘the flower of Italian musicians,’ including singers from Bologna and Mantua, Medinaceli provided the financial and artistic framework for a fusion of Italian musical creativities that would travel from Naples ‘to the world.’

Rosalind Halton is a New Zealand-born harpsichordist and researcher with particular interests in the Italian baroque cantata. A graduate of the University of Otago (NZ) and Oxford University (D.Phil.1980), she is a Conjoint Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her solo CD recordings of harpsichord music by François and Louis Couperin won a Soundscapes recording award in 1997. For many years the focus of her research has been the rich secular cantata repertoire of Alessandro Scarlatti, aiming to contribute to the revival of his music through editions, performances and research papers. She founded and directed the ensemble Chacona with leading Australian singers in a series of CD recordings entitled Venere, Adone e Amore: Serenatas and Cantatas of Alessandro Scarlatti (ABC Classics, 2007). Her published editions include two volumes of Scarlatti serenatas for A-R Editions and many cantatas online (e.g. for WLSCM), concentrating on the late seventeenth century, as well as the first modern edition (Edition HH) of Scarlatti’s 4 Sonate a Quattro senza cembalo, described by E. J. Dent as ‘the earliest string quartets’.
<r.halton@newcastle.edu.au> or <rosalindhltn@gmail.com>