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Music and Drama in the Operas of Giovanni Bononcini
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1974
Extract
Giovanni Bononcini was born at Modena on 18 July 1670. Not long after the death of his father in 1678 he moved to Bologna, where he completed his musical education, held his first posts as a church musician and published his first eight collections, largely of instrumental music. He left Bologna for Rome in 1691 and composed there his first operas, beginning with Xerse in January 1694. To this period also belongs the opera Il trionfo di Camilla, Regina de' Volsci which was first performed at Naples on 27 December 1696, and achieved international renown. By 1699 he had moved to Vienna where he wrote music for 21 dramatic works of various sorts between that year and 1710, including ten full-length operas. Two serenatas for Berlin and one opera and part of a pasticcio for Italy also date from this period.
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References
1 The work is often erroneously attributed to the composer's brother Antonio. A study of Bononcini's life and works with particular reference to the many versions of Camilla is in L Lindgren, A Bibliographie Scrutiny of Dramatic Works Set by Giovanni and … Antonio Maria Bononcini (unpublished dissertation), Harvard University, 1972 (University Microfilms No 74–25, 641). A study of the Vienna operas (excluding Caio Gracco but including the Naples Camilla) is in K. Hueber, Die Wiener Opern Giovanni Bononcinis von 1697–1710 (unpublished dissertation), Vienna University, 1955. See also A. Ford, ‘Giovanni Bononcini, 1670–1747’, The Musical Times, cxi (1970), 695–9, which also footnotes other Bononcini sources. For a discussion of Xerse, see Powers, H. S., ‘Il Serse Trasformato, The Musical Quarterly, xlvii (1961), 481–92, and xlviii (1962), 73–92.Google Scholar
2 Three of these were revisions of Roman operas.Google Scholar
3 It is based on Francesco de Lemene's libretto set as a pasticcio at Lodi in 1693. A drastic revision of the text was made for a performance, conceivably with Bononcini's music, at Modena in 1698. This revision was the basis for the Vienna work. The differences between this libretto and others set by Bononcini in Vienna can thus be partly explained by the different librettist and earlier date.Google Scholar
4 The exceptions are the first version of Erminia (Rome, 1719) and Alessandro in Sidone, both in five acts.Google Scholar
5 This work, referred to here as Muzio II, was Bononcini's second setting of the story. It originated in his first version, Muzio I of 1695, based on Silvio Stampiglia's revision of a libretto by Nicola Minato. The 1710 opera incorporated several alterations in music and libretto, notably the omission of the comic scenes of the first version. His third setting, Muzio III of 1721, was a pasticcio for London to a libretto by Paolo Rolli. Amadei provided the music for Act I, Bononcini for Act II and Handel for Act III.Google Scholar
6 La bellezza della volgar poesia, Rome, 1700; cited in N. Burt, ‘Opera in Arcadia’, The Musical Quarterly, xli (1955), 154.Google Scholar
7 For example, Bononcini's Astarto (London, 1720) has only two continuo arias, Griselda (1722) only one and Alessandro (1737) none.Google Scholar
8 Endimione (1706), Turno Aricino (1707), Mario Fuggitivo (1708), Abdolomino (1709), Caio Gracco (1710) and Muzio II (1710).Google Scholar
9 The second Endimione example, Aurilla's entrance aria in Act II scene II, does in fact break the rule. However it is not by Bononcini at all, but by the Emperor Joseph I. The aria, ‘Si trova in tempeste’, is printed without the concluding ritomello in Musikalische Werke der Kaiser Ferdinand III., Leopold I. und Joseph I., ed. G Adler, Vienna, [1892–3] (reprinted Farnborough, 1972), ii. 237–9.Google Scholar
10 See below for their examination in another context.Google Scholar
11 Published in Giovanni Bononcini, Anas from the Vienna Operas, ed. A. Ford (The Baroque Operatic Arias, i), London, 1971.Google Scholar
12 The same principle is used again in ‘Dovrò dir’ from Abdolomino, discussed below.Google Scholar
13 Usually without harpsichord support, at least in the ritornelli.Google Scholar
14 For a study of staging in Bononcini's day see Dean, Winton, Handel and the Opera Seria, London, 1970, which also contains a plan of the King's Theatre, at which Bononcini's London operas were performedGoogle Scholar
15 ‘Tortora che si lagna è l'alma mia.’Google Scholar
16 ‘Scorro di lido in lido lagrimando d'amor di gelosia.’Google Scholar
17 This principle took many yean to establish (see Powers, op. cit.). It became crucial once the number of arias was reduced and their size increased.Google Scholar
18 Flora is a dea ex machina who only appears in the final scene.Google Scholar
19 Librettist of most of Bononcini's Vienna operas and of the early Italian works.Google Scholar
20 Published in Arias from the Vienna Operas.Google Scholar
21 ‘Sento che l'alma mia’ in British Library, Add. MS 22102, f. 37.Google Scholar
22 It is perhaps significant that the only other aria of this type in Abdolomino, in Act II, is given to Clomiri's beloved, Rosmeno.Google Scholar
23 We have just encountered an example of the type in ‘Sempre con bella fede’.Google Scholar
24 The opening ritornello of this duet is printed in Ford, ‘Giovanni Bononcini’, The Musical Times, cxi. 699.Google Scholar