Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

(v) The confraternities.

As in the other principal Italian cities, after the Council of Trent (1545–63) various confraternities were created in Naples for the mutual assistance of craftsmen. The first confraternity of musicians, ‘S Maria degli Angeli’ in the church of S Nicola alla Carità, was established in 1569; its statutes were confirmed at the beginning of the 17th century and its patron was the distinguished lutenist and theorist Scipione Cerreto. However, it was not until the middle of the century that other confraternities of musicians were founded. A confraternity named after ‘Gregorio Magno e Leone, et di S Cecilia V’ was formed in 1644 in the church of S Brigida, although it seems to have been discontinued after 1649. In this year Domenico Cenatiempo, a member of the order of the Padri Pii Operai, created a much larger confraternity of musicians in the church of S Giorgio Maggiore. This confraternity numbered approximately 150 musicians, over half of whom lost their lives in the terrible plague of 1656. In 1667 the confraternity of S Giorgio Maggiore was split between the ‘Master Players of Strings’ and ‘Players of Wind and Trombones’, who moved to the same chapel of the first confraternity in the church of S Nicola alla Carità. The statutes, and as a result this division between players, were confirmed in 1681 and again in 1721 (wind) and 1723 (strings).

The musicians of the royal chapel also had their own exclusive confraternity, named after S Cecilia, of which the earliest documentation dates from 1655. In the meantime a confraternity of makers of strings for lutes and other instruments had been formed. It seems that some Neapolitan musicians continued to use the S Giorgio Maggiore establishment at least until 1701, the year in which an oratorio by Nicola Sabini, a member of the confraternity, was performed on the musicians' principal annual feast day of St Casimir. From 1709, possibly as a result of the new Austrian government, the musicians' confraternity seems to have moved permanently to S Nicola alla Carità, like S Giorgio an establishment of the Padri Pii Operai, where it remained for 30 years, meeting at the altar of Our Lady of Sorrows. In 1716, however, at least five musicians joined together in the convent of S Maria la Nova in a ‘Royal Congregation and Assembly of Musicians’. The two confraternities did not merge until 1738, when they moved to a new home, the church of Ecce Homo. Apart from the professional confraternities, to which all the great Neapolitan musicians who were not aristocrats belonged, there were countless confraternities of craftsmen that sponsored performances of music in religious establishments or during public processions, in some cases maintaining their own chapel and maestri, but usually engaging professional musicians or students from the conservatories as the need arose.

Naples, §3: The Spanish era (1503–1734)

(vi) The conservatories.

The Seminary of Naples, attached to the cathedral, had from its foundation in 1568 a singing master, with a ‘great hall for learning lessons in singing and music’; the seminary was suppressed in 1865. But here, as in many other Neapolitan religious institutions, the study of music was only a marginal element. From the middle of the 16th century some of the many charitable institutions known as conservatorii began to specialize in teaching music, in response to the increasing enthusiasm for music in the city. This quickly led to a change in nature of the conservatories, which began to take in boys from poorer families who were not orphaned, in order to prepare them for a career in music.

Apart from the Casa dell'Annunziata, mentioned above, there were four principal institutions specializing in music. The earliest was the Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto, founded in 1537 by the Spaniard Giovanni di Tapia. Payments for musicians were recorded as early as 1545, although the first mention of a maestro di cappella dates only from 1633. Later maestri included the leading figure in 17th-century Neapolitan music, Francesco Provenzale (1664–75). The success of the Conservatorio di Loreto under Provenzale was such that in 1667 it was closed to new pupils, because the roll had exceeded 100. Giuseppe Cavallo, Provenzale's assistant, was maestro from 1675 until his death in 1684. He was succeeded by another of Provenzale's assistants, Gaetano Veneziano (1684–5 and – after the temporary service of Nicola Acerbo and Pietro Bartilotti – from 1695 to 1716), who was in turn succeeded by Giuliano Perugino. For a single month, in 1689, Alessandro Scarlatti accepted the post, and during the 18th century some eminent musicians appear in the lists: Francesco Mancini (1720–37), Giovanni Fischietti (1737–9), Nicola Porpora (1739–41 and 1758–60), Francesco Durante (1742–61), Gennaro Manna (1756–61), Pietro Antonio Gallo (1761–77) and Fedele Fenaroli (1777–1807).

The Conservatorio di S Onofrio in Capuana dates from the beginning of the 17th century, and took its name from the charitable foundation established in the church of S Onofrio in 1578. The young pupils wore the same white habit as the members of the order. There is no information on specific musical activity until 1653, when 11 paying pupils and a ‘mastricello’ are listed, together with the first singing master, Matteo Arajusta, and Carlo Sica (d 1655) who was already maestro di cappella. None of his early successors were eminent musicians, with the exception of Francesco Rossi (1669–72) who then moved to Venice where he composed operas; subsequently, however, S Onofrio rivalled the other conservatories, thanks to such maestri as P.A. Zani (1678–80), Cataldo Amodeo (1681–8), Cristoforo Caresana (1688–90), Angelo Durante (1690–99 and 1702–4), Nicola Sabini (1699–1702), Nicola Fago (1704–8) and Matteo Marchetti (1708–14). The most illustrious sequence of maestri occurred between the two tenures of Francesco Durante (1710–11 and 1745–55): Nicola Porpora (1715–22 and 1760–61), Ignazio Prota (1722–3 and 1740–48), Francesco Feo (1723–39), Leonardo Leo (1739–44) and Girolamo Abos (1742–60). They were followed by Carlo Cotumacci (1755–85), Giuseppe Dol (1755–74), Giacomo Insanguine (1774–95), Giovanni Furno (1785–97) and Salvatore Rispoli (1793–7). The maestro di cappella was assisted by a violin master (and, from 1785, by a cello master) and by a ‘cornetta’ master. During the 17th century S Onofrio's principal role had been to supply young pupils for the city processions, and to present oratorios (including Il ritorno di Onofrio in padria, 1671). In 1797 the few remaining pupils at the Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto transferred to S Onofrio, and this affiliation lasted until 1807, when all three surviving conservatories (including the Pietà dei Turchini) merged into a single institution which was to become the Real Collegio di Musica and later the Conservatorio di Musica S Pietro a Majella.

The Conservatorio di S Maria della Pietà dei Turchini originated in 1583 from a confraternity which had met in the church of the Incoronatella from 1573. At the end of the 16th century the necessary premises were acquired next to the church to accommodate young students and from the early years of the new century there was an upsurge in music. The first maestro di musica was a humble priest, Lelio d'Urso (1615–22), who was succeeded by an official maestro di cappella, G.M. Sabino (1622–6), the first of a series of prestigious composers and teachers, including Francesco Lombardi (1626–30), Giacinto Anzalone (1630–57), Domenico Vetromile (1657–62), Giovanni Salvatore (1662–73), Francesco Provenzale (1673–1701), Gennaro Ursino (1701–5), Nicola Fago (1705–40), Leonardo Leo (1741–4), Lorenzo Fago (1744–93), Nicola Sala (1793–9) and Giacomo Tritto (1799–1800). As in the other institutions, the Turchini (named after the deep blue ‘turchino’ colour of the pupils' uniform) had only one teacher for string instruments (apart from an occasional lute master) and one for all wind instruments. The Pietà dei Turchini had been the most wealthy of the four old conservatories, and was the last to disappear when, in 1807 it was transformed together with what remained of the others into the Real Collegio di Musica.

The only one of the four principal conservatories not to merge into the Real Collegio was the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo, which from its inception in 1599 was under the control of the Archiepiscopal Curia of Naples. The first music masters are recorded from 1606 onwards, but only from 1633 are there records of the names of permanent music teaching staff. About 1644 the conservatory had an annual revenue of some 1000 ducats for ‘various music and processions, performed and served by the children’. From that period, the teachers were sufficiently well known to rival those at the other Neapolitan conservatories: Donato Antonio Sabino (1642), Alessio Capece (1643), Domenico Arcucci (1667–77), Giovanni Salvatore (1677–88), Giandomenico Oliva (1684–5), Gennaro Ursino (1686–95), Gaetano Greco (1696–1706 and 1709–28), Nicola Ceva (1706–9), Francesco Durante (1728–38), Francesco Feo (1738–43) and Girolamo Abos (1740–43). Pergolesi was the most distinguished pupil from the Conservatorio dei Poveri, the strategic location of which (opposite the church of the Girolamini and close to the cathedral) encouraged continual interchanges. In 1743 one of the last ‘foreign’ pupils joined the Conservatorio dei Poveri: Benedetto Rivière, brother of the French ambassador to Naples. But in November of the same year the conservatory was suppressed and transformed into an establishment of the archiepiscopal seminary ‘because of the scant progress made in religious matters’. Other music schools lived a short life in Naples, like the Musical Seminary in S Gennaro de'Poveri (1670–1702), later named S Gennarello.

Naples, §3: The Spanish era (1503–1734)

(vii) Instruments and instrumental music.

In general, the Neapolitans have invented neither musical instruments nor genres, but in assimilating them from outside have often taken them to the highest level of perfection. In instrumental music, Naples lay on an axis between the east, Spain and continental Europe. As early as the end of the 15th century Tinctoris declared that much attention was given in Naples to the viola ‘de arco’ (viola da gamba, to which Diego Ortiz devoted a treatise in 1553), and the viola de mano, or vihuela. During the 16th century Neapolitan virtuosos on the lute, viol, lira da gamba, keyboard and, especially, harp acquired a European reputation, as the lists in Scipione Cerreto's treatise Della prattica musica vocale (Naples, 1601) reveal. One instrument which was long the exclusive province of Neapolitan virtuosos was the double harp, one of whose principal exponents, Adriana Basile, was also famous for singing to the accompaniment of the guitar, known in Naples both in its four-double-string version (the ‘bordelletto’ or ‘chitarrino alla napoletana’) and in the five-string version known during the 17th century as the ‘Spanish guitar’, but which probably originated in Naples. German lute makers satisfied the demands of a society that valued stringed instruments above all others. The distinctive twangy sound of the ‘tiorba a taccone’, the Neapolitan name for the colascione, struck Burney during his visit to the city in 1770. The great keyboard composers of the early 17th century, from Macque to Trabaci and Maione to Strozzi, produced works in 4 part score (partitura) which could be played by any kind of polyphonic instrument. But some of their works were intended for extremely complex experimental instruments, such as the ‘chromatic’ or ‘enharmonic’ harpsichord, as was the treatise by Fabio Colonna, La Sambuca lincea (Naples, 1618). By 1638 the experimental phase of Gesualdo and his followers was over, as is evident from a letter by the painter Domenichino, in which he wrote that he could no longer find musicians able to play the enharmonic instruments he had designed. Around the same time, in 1630, the violin hitherto little known in Naples, made its first official appearance in the Neapolitan conservatories.

It was during this period that sacred music in stile concertato, on the Venetian and Monteverdian model, made its belated entry into Naples. Although there was an early group of at least five violins in the royal chapel, directed by Trabaci and employed as ‘outsiders’ in other institutions, the first collection of music for violins and other instruments was primo libro di canzone published in Naples in 1650 by the new maestro at the royal chapel, Andrea Falconieri. Naples also had a flourishing school of wind playing. Beside the cornetts, shawms, bassoons and flutes, there was the distinctive sordellina, a member of the bagpipe family, for which, as well as numerous literary sources, there is at least one manuscript of music written in special notation on two lines, dated Naples 1603 (manuscript of G.L. Baldano in the Biblioteca Vescovile in Savona). It is noticeable that other types of musical notation had exclusive use in Naples, such as ‘Neapolitan’ lute tablature (identified from the end of the 15th century, I-Bu 596 H.H.24, in Cerreto's treatise of 1601) and Valentini's Liuto anatomizzato (Rome, 1640) and ‘Neapolitan’ harpsichord notation used only once by Antonio Valente (1576³).

Besides printed and manuscript collections for harpsichord, very few collections of music for solo instruments were produced in Naples before the end of the 17th century, although the city had important violinists who created a distinctive school of string playing: G.C. Cailò (?1659–1722), Pietro Marchitelli (?1643–1729) and G.A. Avitrano (1670–1756), the composer of three collections of trio sonatas, the first of which dates from 1697. The cellists Rocco Greco, Francesco Alborea and Francesco Scipriani were among the great virtuosos of the early 18th century. Marchitelli was the famous ‘Petrillo’ who in 1702 humiliated Corelli during a performance of his music in Naples, according to an anecdote related by Burney. Naples was also the birthplace of Nicola Matteis (i), the most important violinist in 17th-century London, and in the early years of the 18th century Geminiani followed the same route, while Michele Mascitti, G.A. Piani and Salvatore Lanzetti, all Neapolitans, made their mark in Paris. Keyboard virtuosos followed the developments in their respective instruments, and through them we know of many famous organ and harpsichord builders in Naples, often several generations of the same family. The genius of Domenico Scarlatti, born and trained in Naples, was founded on techniques acquired from the Neapolitan masters, while the vast output of Gaetano Greco still awaits research.

Naples, §3: The Spanish era (1503–1734)

(viii) Music publishing and theoretical treatises.

After only two attempts at music publishing in the 15th century (Gaffurius and Tinctoris), the first printed music in Naples dates from 1519: a lost book of Mottetti by A. de Frizis and the second book of Fioretti di frottole by G.A. Caneto da Pavia (1519⁴), although a Neapolitan, Pietro Sambonetto, had already published a collection of frottolas in Siena (1515²). For several decades in the early viceregal period publication remained a rare event. It must have been the visit of Charles V to Naples that prompted the publication of the two Libri della fortuna, lute tablatures by Francesco da Milano, partly in so-called ‘Neapolitan tablature’ (1536, a single copy in F-Pn). In 1537 the first edition of Canzone villanesche alla napolitana (Giovanni de Colonia, 1537⁵) appeared, the official birth certificate of the ‘villanella alla napolitana’, a musical genre that was extremely popular in Europe until the beginning of the 17th century. Subsequent Neapolitan publications were largely collections of villanellas by Nola (1541), Cimello and Fontana (1545), Burno and di Maio (1546), and many other anthologies. One collection of particular importance is the Aeri published in 1577 by Rocco Rodio, for the way it reflects contemporary stage spectacles with music which anticipate the Florentine monodic experiments.

It was only from 1591 onwards that collections of madrigals were published in Naples, despite the many madrigals by Neapolitan composers which had already appeared in other cities, particularly Venice. And yet Naples became the main centre in the final phase of the madrigal until the 1630s, with the majority of composers connected either to Gesualdo's circle or to the royal chapel.

The leading publishers of music were Cancer, Cacchio, Vitale, Sottile, Stigliola, Gargano, Scoriggio and Ricci, the archiepiscopal printers Beltrano, De Bonis, and, most importantly, G.G. Carlino, Gesualdo's personal printer. As for instrumental music, after the edition of lute music in 1536 there were only three publications during the rest of the 16th century (Rodio 1575, Valente 1576 and 1580), while the 17th century saw just a few publications for keyboard or guitar. After the first collection of dances and sonatas for several instruments by Falconieri (1650) there was a gap of half a century before the collections by Avitrano and the lost edition of sonatas by Chiarelli (1699). Music publishing was dominated by sacred music, particularly motets, and by theoretical treatises. The earliest of these was the short treatise De musica by A.M. Acquaviva d'Aragona, interpolated in his commentary on Plutarch's De virtute morali (1524), which was partly repeated in the better known Duo dialoghi by Luigi Dentice (1552). Apart from two manuscripts that can be attributed to Giovanthomaso Cimello (I-Nn, V.H.210 and Bc, B 57) the other 16th-century Neapolitan treatises were on playing a musical instrument (viol for Ortiz, lute for Lieto, harpsichord/organ for Valente's tablature) or singing (C. Maffei da Solofra). Rocco Rodio's Regole di musica (various editions from 1600 to 1626) provided a thorough contrapuntal method, revised and expanded by his pupil Olifante, who in turn collaborated with Giovanni Salvatore on his subsequent treatise Porta aurea (1641). In the 17th century, following the encyclopedic treatises by Cerreto (1601) and Cerone (1613), there were more treatises devoted to the composition of sacred music and to music teaching. The most vivid treatise of the period is Giovanni d'Avella's Regole di musica (printed in Rome in 1657) which upheld the music of Gesualdo and his circle as the ideal model of musical composition.

Naples, §3: The Spanish era (1503–1734)

(ix) Vocal music and opera.

The success of the villanella – possibly the only musical genre to have been invented in Naples before opera buffa – from the 1550s onwards owed much to its use of Neapolitan dialect to poke fun at the madrigal and its conventions. The villanella infiltrated many musical genres during the viceregal period, turning up in the most unlikely places: in the sacred dramas performed in the conservatories, for instance, in chamber cantatas and in opera. Leonardo Vinci's only surviving comic opera Li zite 'ngalera (1722) actually opens with a villanella. Neapolitan dialect was an aspect of the commedia dell'arte tradition that passed into comic opera, establishing a distinctive Neapolitan style. An anonymous prologue interpolated in the manuscript of Francesco Boerio's Il disperato innocente (1673) provides a valuable description of how operas were performed in Naples at that time. The same subject is dealt with in depth by the famous librettist Andrea Perrucci in his manual Dell'arte rappresentativa, premeditata e all'improvviso (1699), which summarizes the reciprocal influences between comedy, sacred oratorio and heroic opera. Giulia de Caro, a singer and later the impresario of the first opera house in Naples (from 1673 to 1675) began her career in commedia dell'arte, as did another actress-impresario, Cecilia Siri Chigi.

The generic name of the companies that staged operas in 17th-century Naples was ‘Febi armonici’, a reference to the name of the company of comedians and musicians which had been summoned from Rome by the Count of Oñate, Viceroy of Naples, in 1650 and had introduced Venetian opera to the city. Before this, however, there had been more than a century of continually developing links between theatre and music. Theatrical performances with music were first given in the homes of Neapolitan aristocrats, in association with leading academies, such as the Sereni. The model was provided by the spectacles organized by Prince Sanseverino in about 1545 (Gli ingannati and Philenia, with music by, respectively, Zoppino and Mariconda). In the 17th century there were produced two particularly significant court entertainments consisting of masquerades with a concluding dance: the ‘festa a ballo’ Delitie di Posilipo Boscarecce, e Marittime (1620), the printed libretto of which preserves all the vocal music (by Trabaci, F. Lambardi, Giramo, Anzalone and Spiardo) and diagrams of the dance movements; and the mascherata Monte Parnaso given in honour of the arrival in Naples of the king's sister, Maria of Austria, Queen of Hungary, in 1630. Here the music (by Giacinto Lambardi, now lost) and dances were accompanied by spectacular scenic transformations. Another important entertainment was that given for the imperial coronation of the King of Hungary in 1637; but after this date, court ‘feste a ballo’ were increasingly replaced by the new fashion for opera.

The viceroy was unable to create a true system of patronage that could include entertainments and opera, since the average length of his government was only a few years. Moreover, only a few of them had a personal predilection for music and theatre. For example, the Viceroy d'Oñate's decision to introduce opera performed by the Febi Armonici was purely political: a celebration of the victory over Masaniello with a type of heroic spectacle hitherto unknown in Naples. Celebrations at the royal palace of birthdays, namedays and anniversaries linked to the Madrid court should be viewed in the same light. The viceroys' tentative efforts to introduce comedies and opera sung in Castilian at court led to nothing; the music has survived in only one such case, El Robo de Proserpina by Filippo Coppola (maestro of the royal chapel), performed in 1678 and revived in 1681 under a different title.

The first opera performed in Naples was Didone, in September 1650. The composer is unknown, but the libretto is the same as that of Cavalli's opera of the same name, given in Venice in 1641. This marked the beginning of a Neapolitan operatic tradition, which at first was limited to importing operas from Venice, adapted to local taste. The first pieces included Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1651), the score of which has survived, and Cavalli's Veremonda (1652) with ‘Appearances of Scenes, Machines and Dances’ by G.B. Balbi. Subsequently the companies of ‘armonici’ made their permanent home in the Teatro S Bartolomeo (Teatro di San Bartolomeo), which until then had been used only for spoken plays: for 30 years after 1654 there were no great changes in the organization of Neapolitan opera. The Neapolitan ‘adapters’, composers belonging to the troupe of ‘armonici’, began to introduce characters singing in Neapolitan into operas in Venetian style. The most skilled were Francesco Cirillo (who arranged Cavalli's Orontea in 1654 and composed Il ratto d'Elena in 1655), Giuseppe Alfiero (La fedeltà trionfante, 1655), Filippo Coppola and, especially, Francesco Provenzale, who was the first to produce operas independent of pre-existing models. Of his operas only the scores of La Stellidaura vendicante (1674) and Lo schiavo di sua moglie (1672) have survived. After 1683, when he became director of the Teatro S Bartolomeo, the leading figure in opera in Naples was Alessandro Scarlatti, who did much to modernize the genre and make it truly international. During his 20 years in Naples, Scarlatti wrote about 40 operas and produced works by his leading northern Italian contemporaries, Legrenzi, Pollarolo, Sartorio, Pallavicini, Perti, Bononcini, Draghi, Pasquini and Gasparini.

Besides the public opera house run by an impresario (with two seasons, one during Carnival and the other, in the open air, in summer), operas were produced in the royal palace and sometimes also in the homes of the aristocracy. Home-grown pieces performed by the musicians of the royal chapel alternated with operas brought in by travelling companies, usually staged first at the royal palace and then at the S Bartolomeo. One effect of Scarlatti's arrival from Rome in 1683 to become the director of a troupe which included some of the most important Italian singers of the day was to erase the difference between church (the singers in the royal chapel) and theatre performers. From 1650 until the end of the Spanish viceroyalty in 1706, more than 170 operas were performed, to judge by the surviving librettos. The annual number increased steadily during the subsequent Austrian viceroyalty, when new theatres were built, mainly devoted to comic opera (the Teatro dei Fiorentini, 1707; the Teatro Nuovo, 1724; and the Teatro della Pace, 1724). The old Teatro S Bartolomeo (which had already burnt down in 1681, reopening in 1682) was demolished in 1737, when the new Teatro S Carlo (Teatro di San Carlo) was inaugurated by the first Bourbon King of Naples. The players and singers of the royal chapel, together with teachers and pupils from the conservatories, were responsible for the musical performances both at court and at the S Bartolomeo, at least until 1684. That date initiated the third phase of Neapolitan opera, which flourished especially under the viceroyalty of the Duke of Medinaceli, an enthusiastic opera lover and a generous patron of musicians and singers particularly of Angela Voglia, ‘La Georgina’. The many Neapolitan operas composed by Scarlatti and his most renowned successors (Vinci, Leo, Pergolesi) are an eloquent demonstration of the city's passion for opera, particularly after the emergence of specifically Neapolitan forms of comic opera: the commedia ppe mmuseca (in Neapolitan throughout, the first documented examples of which date from after 1706), comic ‘intermezzos’ (including Pergolesi's famous examples), and opera buffa, which achieved success around 1720 with the works of Vinci, Leo, Pergolesi and many others.

With the arrival of the Austrian viceroyalty in 1707 Scarlatti left Naples; however, in 1708 the first Austrian viceroy, Cardinal Grimani, invited him to resume his office. The previous year Michelangelo Faggioli's La Cilla, a setting of a text by F.A. Tullio, was revived in the palace of the prince of Chiusano. This is thought to be the first opera sung entirely in Neapolitan; its libretto has survived (as have fragments of the music, preserved in I-Nc). The first public performance of a comic opera, Patrò Calienno de la Costa by Antonio Orefice, was given in 1709 at the Teatro dei Fiorentini. Scarlatti himself did not tackle this new genre until 1718, with Il trionfo dell'onore.

But another and more memorable event in Naples in 1724 must be mentioned – the production, at the S Bartolomeo, of Metastasio's first drama, Didone abbandonata, with music by Sarro. In the Metastasian drama the classical and rational ideas that had inspired Italian culture from the last decades of the previous century found full expression. It provided a paradigm for the new type of opera elaborated by the generation that had come to the fore in the years after 1720 – the one traditionally referred to by the controversial designation of Neapolitan opera. It could be regarded as a rationalization and a simplification of Baroque opera on the basis of the following: the well-cadenced articulation of the dramatic-musical structure in recitatives and arias; the rigorous, definitive differentiation of the role which the former and the latter play in the dramatic mechanism; the equally rigorous differentiation of the roles of the characters and the consequent introduction of a rigid internal hierarchy; the parallel definition of an affective typology of the arias, each one corresponding to a specific role; and the absolute prevalence of the three-part aria – in short, all the well-known characteristics of opera seria. Yet this structure, however uniform and standardized, precisely because of its intimate rationality retains enough flexibility to allow within itself an evolution, a gradual adjustment to changes in taste and sensibility. Compared with opera seria, comic opera is characterized not only by a much more simple style, but also, and above all, by a more varied formal articulation and by the presence of ensemble passages. Finally, the advent of Metastasian drama encouraged the formation, also in the Neapolitan environment, of another musical genre for the theatre, the intermezzo. For in Naples the practice of mixing a secondary, comic plot with the main, heroic one had remained more lively than elsewhere. Only after 1720 were comic scenes deleted from the text of dramas to form a short action, wholly independent from the main one and performed in the two intervals, between the three acts of an opera seria. Intermezzos, however, were relatively short-lived in Naples, because in 1736 they were banned by King Charles III and replaced with dances. They reappeared, however, in the second half of the century, included, as farsette, in the third act of a comic opera.

Vinci was one of the first Neapolitan composers to embark on a career in opera outside Naples, in Venice, Rome and London, where Handel made pasticcios of some of his works. In 1724 Vinci was asked to set Stampiglia's Partenope (first set to music in Naples by Mancia in 1699 and then by Sarro in 1722) for the opera season in Venice. While Vinci is associated with the beginnings of opera buffa in Naples, Sarro owes his operatic reputation to his close collaboration with Metastasio (from Didone abbandonata, 1724, onwards) and to the commission to provide the opera that inaugurated the Teatro S Carlo in 1737 (Achille in Sciro). Vinci's decision to arrange Sarro's score of Partenope instead of making an original setting is an acknowledgement of his senior colleague's reputation as the only Neapolitan before Leo and Vinci himself who could rival Alessandro Scarlatti as a representative of the modern operatic style.

During the same period Naples had come to be considered one of the most important musical capitals, as the many distinguished visitors to the city confirm, and the conservatories achieved a European reputation: students no longer came only from the various provinces of the kingdom, but from the other Italian regions and even from outside Italy. The most respected teachers were Durante (who taught at three of the conservatories, but was not involved in opera) and Leo (who was a maestro at S Onofrio, Pietà dei Turchini, the royal chapel and also a leading figure in opera), while Vinci died before achieving an appropriate role in the musical life of the city. Other names were added to these; in the 1720s, Porpora, Feo and the ‘Saxon’ J.A. Hasse, who throughout his career remained strongly influenced by his training in Naples, and in the 1730s Pergolesi, Perez, Latilla, Sabatino, Jommelli and, later, Gennaro Manna. Many of these composers were successful in both opera seria and comic opera (Vinci, Leo, Pergolesi), while others worked almost exclusively in comic opera (Logroscino, Auletta). All of them also excelled in sacred music.

Naples

4. The Kingdom of the two Sicilies (1734–1860).

In 1734 the Kingdom of Naples, involved in the vicissitudes of the Polish war of succession, was assigned to Charles, son of Philip V of Spain and of Elisabetta Farnese, and formerly Duke of Parma and Piacenza. Urban and cultural life derived a new impulse from the regained independence; the city was adorned with new, grandiose monuments, among them the Teatro S Carlo (fig.5) which opened on 4 November 1737.

While opera dominated 18th-century Neapolitan musical life, sacred music was almost equally important. Sacred music generally followed a development parallel to that of opera; so there soon appeared a ‘Neapolitan’ mass, which often had the dimension of the so-called ‘messa di Gloria’ (in which only the first two parts of the Ordinary were set to music), with alternate choral passages and solos in the aria style. The same can be said of the motet for several voices with instruments, consisting of a choral introduction (normally repeated at the end) and of a succession of recitatives and arias, duets, etc. The liturgical cycles for Holy Week and Christmas (lessons and lamentations, responsories) and for the Office for the Dead are particularly rich examples of Neapolitan sacred music in the 18th century. Oratorio was practised mainly by the pupils of the conservatories, and went out of fashion after about 1730. Instrumental music was less important; even in this genre, however, the activity of the Neapolitan musicians was not so trifling as was once thought. While instrumental music was an ‘appendix’ to the work of some masters mainly devoted to opera (Mancini, Porpora, Leo, Pergolesi), it constituted a fundamental part of Durante's output. Much of the instrumental music by Neapolitan composers had a didactic purpose, as was often written specifically for use in the city's conservatories.

In the second half of the 18th century the refined mechanism of Metastasian opera was modified more and more radically, under the new demand for new means of expression that required greater dramatic verisimilitude and, therefore, more agile and dynamic structures. The most radical innovations, however, were away from the Neapolitan milieu (Jommelli in Vienna and Stuttgart, Traetta in Parma, G.F. de Majo in Mannheim). In Naples, taste remained linked for some decades to the old tradition – as is shown by the scant success enjoyed by Jommelli after his return from Germany – and only after 1790 did the operas by the last representatives of the Neapolitan school, of the greater composers (Piccinni, Paisiello, Cimarosa) as of the lesser (Tritto, P.A. Guglielmi, N.A. Zingarelli), open themselves to the possibilities of innovation. Two factors contributed to this: the growing influence of French opera, and the increasingly frequent grafting on to the rigid structure of opera seria of the variety of formal solutions typical of comic opera. Even in comic opera, however, besides the purely Neapolitan tradition (vernacular texts, strictly local characters, local humour and local situations), there emerged a trend, adhering to the latest European developments, towards sentimentalism and the ‘lachrymose style’. Piccinni's La buona figliuola (1760, libretto by Goldoni, after Richardson) and Paisiello's Nina, o sia La pazza per amore (1789, libretto by G.B. Lorenzi) are the best-known examples of this genre; as can be seen, parallel with this evolution of taste, comic librettos were no longer by local poets (the most prolific were, indeed, Lorenzi, who was the most significant, G. Palomba, P. Mililotti and Francesco Cerlone), but also came from figures of a higher literary stature. In 1776 Piccinni, considered the leading figure in Neapolitan opera, was called to Paris to counter the ascendancy of Gluck.

In the conservatories the Neapolitan didactic tradition was kept alive by Fenaroli and Tritto; but although the schools went on producing excellent musicians, sometimes of the highest rank, there was a progressive decadence towards the end of the century. Burney's disappointed reaction, on visiting the Conservatorio di S Onofrio in 1770 is well known. In the meantime the upheavals that followed the end of the ancien régime also shook the Kingdom of Naples. After the short life of the Neapolitan Republic (1799) had been brought to an end by a bloody Bourbon repression (of which Cimarosa, among others, was a victim), Naples was again under French influence (1806–15) when, the Bourbons having been defeated once more, the continental portion of the kingdom was entrusted first to Joseph Buonaparte, then to Joachim Murat. Among the numerous reforms carried out during the ‘French decade’, one of the first was the fusion of the two surviving conservatories into a single institute called the Real Collegio di Musica (from 1807), directed first by a triumvirate (Tritto, Paisiello and Fenaroli) and, from 1813, by Zingarelli. Thus reorganized, the conservatory continued to flourish. Among those who studied under Zingarelli's direction were Bellini and Mercadante. The same period also saw the formation of the conservatory's rich library, from a small nucleus at the Pietà dei Turchini, by Saverio Mattei and Giuseppe Sigismondo, who was the library's first director (1795–1826). Primarily through the tenacity and enthusiasm of Francesco Florimo (librarian from 1826 to 1888), the library became by far the most important source for the history of Neapolitan music. In 1826 the conservatory moved permanently to its present home in the monastery of S Pietro a Majella.

In the first half of the 19th century Naples also remained a theatrical centre of primary importance, very much open (again because of political events) to French influence: this is an important factor in the operas of N.A. Manfroce, one of the most significant Neapolitan musicians of the first years of the 19th century, who died young in 1813. Meanwhile Paisiello had returned to Naples, having been called to Paris by Napoleon in 1802; but he took no part in operatic life in the city, limiting himself to directing the court chapel from 1804 until his death in 1816. A leader in Neapolitan theatre life until 1840 was Domenico Barbaja (new documents published in Maione and Seller, B1994), impresario of the royal theatres S Carlo and del Fondo (the latter opened in 1779); he is remembered mainly for having called Rossini to Naples, where the composer worked from 1815 to 1822. Donizetti, who was director of the royal theatres (1827–38), and teacher of composition in the conservatory from 1834, was an important stimulus to Neapolitan musical life. When he left in 1838, Mercadante assumed his role in Naples for more than two decades; not only was he active at the S Carlo as an opera composer, but he also strove to disseminate knowledge of the instrumental music of the great Viennese Classical composers (principally of Beethoven), until then cultivated only by private circles. Besides this mainstream, comic opera in the Neapolitan style continued to flourish in the smaller halls of the Nuovo and the Fiorentini; but its level of taste became increasingly provincial, although it did not lack, at least in the more gifted musicians, a certain biting vis comica and a genuine musical vitality (e.g. Vincenzo Fioravanti's Il ritorno di Columella, Errico Petrella's Le precauzioni and Luigi Ricci's La festa di Piedigrotta). Finally, the lively activity of numerous publishing houses, both in vocal and instrumental music, should not be forgotten; foremost among these was B. Girard & Co. (later Stabilimento Musicale Partenopeo di Teodoro Cottrau), whose publications included the Gazzetta musicale di Napoli (1852–68), a weekly that carried generous, if naive, attempts at criticism. Other music publishers active during the same period included Clausetti (associated with Ricordi in Milan), Fabbricatore and Tremater, and the nature of their work can be inferred from the advertisements published in the press, especially in the Giornale del Regno delle due Sicilie (1817–60). The titles of these publications indicate a decisive change in the market from the previous century, and a circulation in private salons, élite circles and the new academic institutions and musical organizations, where the demand was equally for songs and instrumental music. It was at this time that a vogue for songs in Neapolitan was born, or rather revived. The two most famous Neapolitan songs of the century, Fenesta ca lucive and Te voglio bene assaje, were long attributed to, respectively, Bellini and Donizetti, albeit with no factual basis.

Naples

5. From 1860.

After the unification of Italy (1861), Naples went through a cultural resurgence. The mainstay of musical life was no longer opera, but instrumental music. In 1866 Beniamino Cesi, a pupil of Thalberg, was a piano professor at the Naples Conservatory and founded a vigorous school of pianists (Giuseppe Martucci, Alessandro Longo and Florestano Rossomandi), simultaneously carrying on an intense campaign for the diffusion of the best Classical and Romantic chamber repertory. After some 20 years of sporadic attempts, two resident concert societies were finally formed in 1880: the Società del Quartetto and Società Orchestrale. The Neapolitan orchestra, led by Martucci, having taken part in the concerts at the 1884 Turin exhibition, was unanimously proclaimed Italy's best. The Teatro S Carlino, the historic comic opera house constructed in 1783 and clearly named to parody the grand royal theatre of S Carlo, was meanwhile demolished in 1884.

Finally, the 19th century saw the beginning of historiographical research on Neapolitan music and musicians through the efforts of the Marquis of Villarosa, Francesco Florimo and Nicola d'Arienzo. The thrust of this research was an investigation of the evolution of the so-called ‘Neapolitan school’, a concept which took as its starting-point the European importance of Neapolitan composers from the end of the 17th century to the end of the 18th. While 18th-century music historians and intellectuals including Charles Burney, grouped operatic composers, notably Vinci, Leo, Pergolesi and Hasse, under the banner of a ‘Neapolitan school’, musicologists from the mid-20th century onwards have come to reject this notion; as has been convincingly demonstrated by Robinson (B1972), Degrada (B1977), and others, composers born or active in Naples may have made a considerable contribution to 18th-century opera, but cannot be clearly distinguished in form and style from operatic composers working north of the Alps.

The rhythm of Neapolitan musical life, somewhat slackened in the last decade of the 19th century through the absence of Cesi (in St Petersburg from 1885) and Martucci (in Bologna from 1886), regained its full vigour after the latter's return in 1902 as director of the conservatory. A resident orchestra was reconstituted, this time at the conservatory, and important lacunae were filled in both the symphonic and theatrical repertories, which included first performances there of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1905) and of Tristan und Isolde (1908). The legacy of Martucci was taken by Longo who was also a composer, pianist, organizer of concerts, teacher and publisher of early music and music periodicals (L'arte pianistica, later Vita musicale italiana, 1914–26). Other musicians who followed Martucci included Camillo de Nardis, Antonio Savasta, Gennaro Napoli and F.M. Napolitano. Although the quality of the music was excellent, local tradition on one hand and the values of late Romantic culture on the other remained powerful influences. The task of rejuvenation and widening of musical horizons was undertaken in the 1930s by a handful of musicians, all born about 1900: Achille Longo, Renato Parodi, Terenzio Gargiulo, Mario Pilati, Antonio Cece and Jacopo Napoli. About the same time, Alfredo Parente and Guido Pannain gave a new direction to criticism and musical aesthetics, applying to the discipline the principles of Croce's philosophy. The results of archival and historical research already obtained in the previous century were consolidated, enlarged and corrected by such scholars as Salvatore Di Giacomo, Ulisse Prota-Giurleo and Pannain. An outline of the main musical institutions in Naples follows.

(i) Opera theatres.

The Teatro S Carlo (cap. 1530) is the only regularly active theatre; it has an opera season running from January to December, accompanied by a symphony season and occasional short additional seasons in the open air or elsewhere in summer. In the years after World War II (Pasquale di Costanzo was director and Pannain was artistic adviser), there were efforts to update the repertory and raise it to an international level. Important landmarks in this effort were the first postwar revival of Wozzeck (1948, conducted by Böhm), and the first revival of Schoenberg's Von heute auf morgen (1952, conducted by Hermann Scherchen), as well as the first Italian performance of Hindemith's Neues vom Tage (1954, conducted by the composer) and Prokofiev's The Gambler (1953) and Betrothal in a Monastery (1959). More recently the S Carlo has produced important stagings by Roberto De Simone of rare repertory (Pergolesi's Flaminio, Valentino Fioravanti's La cantatrici villane, De Simone's Eleonora etc.) and has succeeded in raising its performances to an international level.

In 1952 the Teatro di Corte del Palazzo Reale, destroyed during the war, was restored, reopening in 1954 with Paisiello's Don Chisciotte. Between 1958 and 1966 this was the location for the Autunno Musicale Napoletano, a small festival of 18th-century opera buffa organized by the S Carlo in collaboration with the RAI. The theatre has recently been used for occasional productions of 18th-century operas. (Latilla's La Fiuta cameriera was produced there in February 2000 and recorded by RAI.)

Of the numerous 19th-century Neapolitan theatres – the Goldoni (1861), Rossini (1861), Bellini (1864, destroyed by fire in 1868, rebuilt in 1878 in an enlarged and more ambitious form, seating about 1600), the Mercadante (1870), Politeamo Giacosa (1871), Teatro Sannazzaro (1874) and Filarmonico (1874) and others like Teatro alla Fenice, Mezzocarnnone or Partenope – only the Bellini was continuously active as an opera house. Converted into a cinema in 1950, the Bellini was restored in 1988 and is again being used as a theatre, although only occasionally for opera. The Teatro Mercadante was restored in 1987 and reopened that year with Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, directed by Roberto De Simone and conducted by Salvatore Accardo. Since 1999 it is used for special productions of Teatro S Carlo (as Provenzale's La Colomba Ferita).

(ii) Concert life.

For several decades the main centre of Neapolitan concert life was the Sala Grande in the Naples Conservatory. It was built in 1926 and named after Alessandro Scarlatti in 1955; in 1973 it was destroyed by fire and only restored, together with the smaller Sala Martucci, in the early 1990s. The RAI auditorium (cap. 1100) has been used since it was built in 1963, in addition to many Baroque churches.

Naples used to have two resident orchestras: the S Carlo orchestra and the Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti. The latter was formed immediately after World War II by the Alessandro Scarlatti Association and later (1957) became one of the resident orchestras of the RAI. Because of its modest size, its repertory was mainly of Baroque, Classical and 20th-century music. Its principal conductors were Franco Caracciolo (1945–65 and from 1972) and Massimo Pradella (1971). In the late 1980s the RAI disbanded all its regional orchestras, including the Scarlatti. More recent ensembles, partly created from the old Scarlatti, are active as chamber orchestras.

The principal concert society is the Alessandro Scarlatti Association, founded in 1919 by F.M. Napolitano and Emilia Gubitosi. Since its orchestra became associated with the RAI the activity of the association has been confined almost entirely to organizing concerts of chamber music. The association has also established the prestigious Settimane di Musica d'Insieme (1971–94, and revived in 1998), and the summer festival Musica e Luoghi d'Arte. The Accademia Musicale Napoletana, founded in 1933 by Daniele Napoletano and Alfredo Casella, is very active; it organizes, among other things, the biennial Alfredo Casella International Piano Competition.

The RAI established a production centre at Naples in 1962; its auditorium was used for annual seasons of public symphony concerts until the orchestra was disbanded. Apart from the Settimane Musicali Internazionali of the Scarlatti Association, series of open-air summer concerts have been organized in the Bourbon palace in Capodimonte (Luglio Musicale di Capodimonte) and in October (Autunno Musicale Napoletano), a small festival devoted mainly to early Neapolitan music. Short seasons or festivals devoted to early music (Giugno Barocco, Ars Neapolitana) and contemporary music (Dissonanze) are also a feature of the city's musical life.

The Centro di Musica Antica ‘Pietà dei Turchini’ was founded in 1996 in the Conservatorio della Solitaria of the monastery of S Caterina da Siena. Its purpose has been to explore the early Neapolitan repertory through the collaboration of musicians (the Cappella della Pietà dei Turchini, founded in 1987 by its conductor Antonio Florio), musicologists and cultural historians. In 1996 the Cappella started a series of recordings of unpublished Neapolitan music from the period 1470 to 1800 (Opus 111, ‘Tesori di Napoli’) and has performed operas and sacred vocal works by Provenzale, Caresana, Vinci, Jommelli, Sabatino, Latilla and Piccinni.

(iii) Education.

The S Pietro a Majella Conservatory is the direct descendant of the Naples Conservatory, and the custodian of its traditions. After Martucci, its directors have included G.A. Fano, Cilea, Adriano Lualdi, Napolitano, Jacopo Napoli, Terenzio Gargiulo, Ottavio Ziino, Irma Ravinale, Roberto De Simone and Vincenzo Di Gregorio. In 1898 Sigismondo Cesi and Ernesto Marciano founded the Liceo Musicale di Napoli, which flourished in the first half of the 20th century; among its teachers were Gennaro Napoli, Antonio Savasta and Cesi and Marciano themselves. The first chair in the history of music was created at the Università Federico II in 1982, and has been occupied by Agostino Ziino and, since 1997, by Renato Di Benedetto. The library of the S Pietro a Majella Conservatory is one of the most important music libraries in the world, with 200,000 manuscripts dating from before 1850. The small music collection of the Casa Oratoriana dei Girolamini (1500 manuscripts) is the principal source for 17th and 18th-century Neapolitan sacred music, mostly in autograph scores.

(iv) Local traditions.

An accurate distinction must be drawn between the manifestations of authentic musical folklore and those of the Neapolitan song. Traces of the former are to be found in the cries of street vendors (now almost vanished) and in the rituals connected with some religious festivals, such as that of the Madonna dell'Arco, which, beneath a Christian veneer, conceal a fundamentally pagan nucleus (see Italy, fig.20); the latter, although cultivated and widespread among all social strata, belongs to a higher cultural sphere. Indeed, in Neapolitan song, popular tradition is blended with elements derived from 19th century melodrama and drawing-room song; and it is also significant that the main exponent of its golden era, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was a refined poet such as Salvatore Di Giacomo (even Gabriele d'Annunzio wrote the lyrics for a Neapolitan song), while its musicians were not (except in the case of Salvatore Gambardella) uncultivated if talented improvisers, but artists who had a perfect command of the technique of composition such as Paolo Tosti, Luigi Denza and Enrico de Leva. The characteristics of these drawing-room songs are apparent simplicity allied to an extremely fluid harmonic structure. The collaboration between Di Giacomo and Pasquale Mario Costa (composer of such works as Scugnizza and L'histoire d'un Pierrot) was particularly fruitful, and produced a vast number of successful songs, such as Catarì, Era di maggio and Lariulà. Expressed alternately in a sentimentality now languid, now passionate, and a light and pungent wit – and occasionally in a skilful blending of the two – Neapolitan song was able to maintain, at least until the 1940s, a reasonably high artistic level: an inferior one, no doubt, but indisputably full of vitality; for nearly a century the traditional song festival on 7 September, coinciding with the enormously popular feast of the Madonna di Piedigrotta, has been a major event in Neapolitan life. After Di Giacomo, the most outstanding poet was Ferdinando Russo. In addition, the poets Pasquale Cinquegrana, Ernesto Murolo, Libero Bovio and E.A. Mario (who also wrote the music for his own songs), and the musicians Evemero Nardella, Ernesto Tagliaferri, Ernesto de Curtis and Eduardo di Capua, must also be remembered. In the years after World War II the remarkable efforts of some poets and musicians (Antonio Vian, Domenico Modugno) to breathe new life into the genre have not sufficed to avert its inevitable decline. Neapolitan songs continue to be listened to in Naples and, intermittently, to have a place in the panorama of recent Italian light music (Murolo, Ranieri, Arbore, D'Angelo, Grignani).

The most authentic Neapolitan folk music is that found in the countryside surrounding the city; since the 1970s this has been revitalized through the ethnomusicological research of Roberto De Simone, and by its revival in modern arrangements, principally by the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare, and in various stage works of which the most famous is La gatta Cenerentola, 1976). This has resulted in, among other things, the vigorous rediscovery of the 16th-century villanella.

Naples

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A General. B Theatre and Opera. C To 1500. D 1500–1800. E After 1800.

a: general

RosaM

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b: theatre and opera

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F. Degrada: ‘L’opera a Napoli nel Settecento’, Storia dell’opera, ed. A. Basso and G. Barblan (Turin, 1977), 237–332

L. Bianconi: ‘Funktionen des Operntheaters in Neapel bis 1700 und die Rolle Alessandro Scarlattis’, Collopuium Alessandro Scarletti (Tutzing, 1979), 13–117

G. Hardie: ‘Neapolitan Comic Opera, 1707–1750: some Addenda and Corrigenda for The New Grove’, JAMS, xxxvi (1983), 124–7

D.A. D’Alessandro: ‘L’opera in musica a Napoli dal 1650 al 1670’, Seicento napoletano: arte, ambiente e costume, ed. R. Pane (Milan, 1984), 409–30

F. Degrada: ‘La commedia per musica a Napoli nella prima metà del settecento: una ricerca di base’, IMS Bologna 1987, 133–170

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M.F. Robinson: ‘A Late 18th-Century Account Book of the San Carlo Theatre, Naples’, EMc, xviii (1990), 73–81

B.M. Antolini and W. Witzenmann, eds.: Napoli e il teatro musicale in Europa tra Sette e Ottocento: studi in onore di Friedrich Lippmann (Florence, 1993)

F. Cotticelli: ‘Dal San Bartolomeo al San Carlo: sull’organizzazione teatrale a Napoli nel Primo Settecento’, Ariel, ix (1994), 25–45

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D. Fabris: ‘España y españoles en el teatro napoletano del siglo XVII’, Artigrama, no.12 (1996–7), 179–91

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c: to 1500

N. Pirrotta: ‘Scuole polifoniche italiane durante il secolo XIV: di una pretesa scuola napoletana’, CHM, i (1953), 11–18

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d: 1500–1800

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G. Amalfi: La canzone napoletana (Naples, 1909)

G. Pannain: Le origini della scuola musicale di Napoli (Naples, 1914)

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S. di Giacomo: Maestri di cappella, musici ed istromenti al Tesoro di S. Gennaro (Naples, 1920)

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