Le serenate romane di Giovanni Bononcini e Silvio Stampiglia per Lorenza de la Cerda Colonna

This essay analyzes five serenatas commissioned by Filippo Colonna and his wife Lorenza de La Cerda from Giovanni Bononcini in his Roman period (1691–97). La nemica d’amore, La nemica d’amore fatta amante, La costanza non gradita nel doppio amore d’Aminta, Amore non vuol diffidenza, and Amor per amore were performed in Rome during August of each year from 1692 to 1696. The serenatas are clearly a unitary cycle, for several reasons: their common celebratory program (the saint’s day of Lorenza de La Cerda, the dedicatee of the pieces); their creation by the team of Giovanni Bononcini and Silvio Stampiglia; and the Arcadian features of the texts and their theme. I therefore examine them following three investigatory threads: their profile as an ‘Arcadian cycle’; the importance of the relation between patronage and the production/performance of the serenatas (relying also on unpublished documents in the Archivio Colonna in Subiaco); and the relation between some aspects of Bononcini’s writing for vocal serenatas and the composer’s profession as a cellist. In the Rome of the late seventeenth century, the presence of musicians and composers of the Emilian tradition contributed, through vocal music, to the gradual establishment of a cello practice freed from the single role of basso continuo.