Dafne in alloro di Benedetto Ferrari: drammaturgia ‘alla veneziana’ per Ferdinando III (Vienna, 1652)

The article sheds light on the Viennese chapter (1651-1653) of Benedetto Ferrari’s life, who is known as the theorbo player, composer, singer and poet who witnessed the beginnings of public opera in Venice. The essay focuses on the first of Ferrari’s dramatic works documented at the court of Ferdinand iii between 1651 and 1653: a sung introduction to a ballet entitled Dafne in alloro, staged in Vienna in 1652. After a first section devoted to the reconstruction of Ferrari’s activity in the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, this essay presents the only two manuscripts containing the text of Dafne, which appear to survive in two different versions: one source is preserved in the National Library of Vienna and the other in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena. The Modenese volume, besides Dafne, presents also four of Ferrari’s Venetian librettos (Andromeda, Maga fulminata, Ninfa avara, and Prencipe giardiniero), however they appear in an unknown version never studied until now. The article continues with the analysis of some philological issues related to the dramatic texts copied in the Modena manuscript. Moreover, after the presentation of the two versions of Dafne, the essay ends with the framing of the Modena manuscript within a strategy of self-promotion that probably Ferrari used to return to Italy and, more specifically, to the court of Modena. In the appendix of the article a complete critical edition of the dramatic text of Dafne in alloro with introduction and apparatus is provided.