Verse forms in eighteenth century opera: a comparative study of settings by Sarro Vinci and Handel of Silvio Stampiglia's Partenope

Abstract

This thesis sets out to present a picture of the kinds of verse used for different purposes in 18th century opera seria through an examination of Silvio Stampiglia's Partenope. This particular libretto was chosen because it was set by Handel and consequently offers the possibility of comparing Handel's practice with that of some of his contemporaries. Two other scores have been included in the study, one attributed to Leonardo Vinci and the other to Domenico Natale Sarro. The introduction, which is the first chapter of the thesis, gives an account of all the settings of Partenope that are touched on in the thesis with particular emphasis on source material. The exact titles of works are given, details of their publication, and, where possible, the present location of the manuscripts and copies. In Chapter 2 the ideals of the Arcadian movement in Rome, in which Stampiglia was prominent, are examined and some biographical background material is included. The brief account of the operatic careers of Vinci, Sarro and Handel, and their respective settings of the opera Partenope are put into the context of their artistic careers and an attempt is made to discover how the work fits into their respective outputs. The next chapter summarizes the principles of prosody in the context of a musical setting appropriate to late 17th and early 18th-century Italian operatic libretti. This is followed in Chapter 4 by an account of the procedures and ideals of librettists. Various 18th-century informants are cited, ranging from the lighthearted satire by Benedetto Marcello II Teatro alla Moda. through to Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni, who was the greatest of all 18th-century opera buffa librettists. Strictly speaking, Goldoni was a contemporary of Mozart and not Handel. The excerpts that have been lifted from his account, pertain to events from earlier on in his career at around 1730 when Handel's opera was first staged. A brief history of the Partenope libretto follows in Chapter 4, and of its various settings. The 'Vinci' text, and in part the setting, is an adaptation of the Sarro. The Handel version is independently obtained from the original Stampiglia version, but has greatly abbreviated recitatives. Some aspects of the libretto's literary qualities are discussed and the point is made that it does not conform to the stereotypes discussed in chapter 4. Its tone is mixed serious and comic and the distribution of arias is based on dramatic demands rather than the prevailing expectations of the management and audiences of baroque opera houses. An attempt is made to clarify the authorship and provenance of the scores discussed in the thesis. In the case of the Handel setting this is quite straightfoward, but the relationship between the settings attributed to Vinci and Sarro is complicated; clearly we are not dealing here with two independent scores, it would seem that the Vinci is an adaptation of the Sarro. What follows is a set of comparative studies of various settings of ten sections of the libretto. (Transcriptions of these examples from Vinci's Partenope are included as an appendix to the thesis along with a synopsis of the plot.) Each of the analyses has been undertaken with a view to clarifying the characteristics of the verse used for different purposes. In verse for recitative the variation of line lengths and the occurrence of rhyme is analysed. Particular attention is given to each composer's harmonic schemes and placing of cadences in these sections. The stanza forms for arias are described and the composer's use of such devices as word repetition is examined. Recitative verse tends to be less regular than aria verse, but this irregularity is not as marked as might be expected. Lines of 7 and 11 syllables - though common - are sometimes replaced by a more regular, aria-like format, particularly in soliloquies. The effect of the verse forms on the style of musical declamation is negligible. Although harmonic underlay is influenced by the length of lines, rhyme and regularity of line length are obviously unrelated. Rhyme is more prominent than is usually thought and is always present in the concluding rima baciata couplet. Stanza forms for arias are more balanced than recitative verse. Line lengths are usually consistent though it is common to find a first stanza which is longer than the second. Handel's opera is shorter than any of the others as he has completely omitted the roles for Anfrisa/Beltramme or Eurilla/Beltramme present in both Stampiglia and Sarro, and reduced the long recitative sections included in the earlier settings. His recitatives are more concentrated and coloured by more vivid music, and in his arias his inventiveness - not surprisingly - far exceeds Vinci's and Sarro's with superior musical resources and a more thorough exploitation of the dramatic potential of his texts.