«Pronti a ben servire»

In eighteenth-century Italy, the orchestra was usually a precarious entity. Musicians were hired by the impresario, on the basis of a contract of a private nature. As a result, there was a constant conflict between budgetary problems and the aspiration of instrumentalists to obtain financial and social stability. Only in the nineteenth century the orchestra, together with the choir and the corps de ballet, became a permanent and professional organism, linked by contract or by statute to the theater and its activities, to the point of becoming a reference point in the cultural life of the city. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as is known, three types of orchestra can be distinguished: 1. that formed exclusively by instrumentalists enrolled on a fixed-term basis; 2. the permanent orchestra, which gradually became prevalent in the second half of the nineteenth century; 3. the one formed both by permanent and seasonal personnel, as occurred in Parma, Milan and Trieste. Even the orchestra of the Accademia Filarmonica di Verona can be traced back to the latter type since the last years of the eighteenth century, as is shown by archival documents of the institution. The Accademia Filarmonica’s orchestra has already been the subject of relevant articles; however the study of newly discovered archival documents (transcribed in the Appendix) allows us to expand the perspective, with the aim of proposing a historiographical framework of the Verona case as a ‘theater orchestra’ phenomenon in the context of opera production between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Problems concerning the organization of a permanent orchestra were already faced in the first decades of the Accademia Filarmonica’s life, as emerges from the minutes with which the series of Academic Acts resumes, after the interruption of the period 1734–1769. In 1780, when the stage space of the theater was radically transformed, members of the Accademia Filarmonica once again discussed the idea — partially realized in 1769 —, of having a permanent orchestra. However, the decisive step in the process occurred in June 1794, when the establishment of «a certain and limited orchestra formed by the best Veronese instrument players», was approved. The orchestra had to serve in the opera seasons as well as in all the official events planned by the academy, and its members were going to be paid with a fixed annual salary, to which were added «the appropriate wages» related to the evening performances that the impresario was required to pay. The article retraces the evolution of the Veronese orchestra from 1794 to 1838, when it was composed by forty-eight instrumentalists, according to a modern criterion of balance between strings and winds, although there was still only one cello against a section of six double basses.