Why the first opera given in Paris wasn't Roman

Abstract

Genealogies persist in the writing of histories, if not to suggest lineages then to delight or dismay us with the effects of accident and circumstance. The first generation of Italian operas were all court, that is private, entertainments, whether produced in Florence, Mantua, Rome or Turin. When this new form of entertainment first emigrated, it spoke Italian in foreign courts (except in Madrid), perhaps because it was so identified in its novelty with still novel Italian musical styles, with the dramaturgy of Italian spectacle and above all with the Italian way of singing. It travelled to the Habsburg imperial court early, in Prague, 1627. Like this performance, later occasional stagings in Vienna and Innsbruck remained in Italian and at first by Italians, though eventual progeny included scores by Gluck and Mozart. The court in Madrid, however, heard in 1627 a version of opera with a libretto by Lope de Vega, La selva sin amor; its score was by a theatrically inexperienced Tuscan lutenist, Filippo Piccinni. Madrid did not essay opera again until 1660. The court of Sigismund III in Warsaw heard Italian opera beginning in 1628, possibly with a Mantuan score. Opera made its way to Paris only in 1645, where, after acquiring a French text and French dancing and singing, it became one of the glories of the royal court. The cradle of opera, in all these cases, was the court, with all its resources in terms of money, an obligated audience and more than willing professionals, whether imported or local.