Musicologica Austriaca (Nov 2020)
Borrowing, Reworking, and Composing: The Making of the Viennese Pasticci of 1750
Abstract
The dramma per musica Andromeda liberata, the favola pastorale Euridice, and the azione teatrale Armida placata, all performed for the first time in Vienna at the Theater nächst der Burg in 1750, are, as pasticci, quite exceptional for the Viennese opera repertory of the Theresian Age. Their singularity resides not only in the high number of composers involved, but also in that they are mentioned explicitly at the top of individual vocal numbers in the manuscript scores. In this article we shed new light on the making of these operas by identifying twenty of the borrowed arias, showing how they were not the products of a simultaneous collaboration among all those composers, as early researchers often implied. Their creation was in all probability coordinated by Wagenseil, involved local librettists as well as other composers of the Viennese court, and required a substantial amount of pre-existing music, partly brought to Vienna by some of the singers, probably due to a lack of opera composers in Vienna in 1750 capable of setting entire libretti on their own.
