{"id":620,"date":"2014-10-21T13:34:17","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T13:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/?p=620"},"modified":"2014-10-22T13:48:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T13:48:00","slug":"john-platoff-gives-common-hour-lecture-on-work-of-giuseppe-sarti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/2014\/10\/21\/john-platoff-gives-common-hour-lecture-on-work-of-giuseppe-sarti\/","title":{"rendered":"John Platoff Gives Common Hour Lecture on Work of Giuseppe Sarti"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, most people would think of an opera as a fixed piece of work, with musical numbers that don\u2019t change from one performance to the next. In the 18th century, however, that was not the case: when an opera arrived at a new company or in a new city, it was adapted for the performers. One opera with a particularly interesting history was Giuseppe Sarti\u2019s Fra i due litiganti<\/em>: the subject of a recent Common Hour lecture at Trinity by John Platoff<\/a>, professor of music.<\/p>\n

Fra i due litiganti<\/em>, as composed by Sarti, premiered in Milan, Italy, in 1782. A year later, it arrived at the Vienna Opera, where Francesco Benucci and Nancy Storace played the roles of Titta and Dorina, as they had in Milan. In an era when the performers were held in higher esteem than the composers or the piece itself, almost half of the arias were replaced for the stars in Vienna. Interestingly, the replacement arias were not composed by Sarti, but by anyone who happened to be available to help. It wasn\u2019t a glamorous responsibility, Platoff said, but instead was considered to be a kind of grunt work.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

John Platoff, Professor of Music<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cOperas were routinely altered when they moved to new cities with new performers,\u201d Platoff said during his Common Hour talk.<\/p>\n

However, Benucci and Storace were not new to Fra i due litiganti<\/em>, having originated the roles in Milan. Arias were usually replaced at the request of a new performer, Platoff said, not someone who had previously played the same role. But because the performers were new to Vienna and working to craft their operatic personas, they wanted pieces that better reflected the comedic nature of their characters and the roles they would play throughout their careers.<\/p>\n

Titta\u2019s act 1 aria, \u201cQuando saprai,\u201d was replaced with a new song, called \u201cDunque ascoltate\u201d After a few performances, however, Benucci returned to the original piece. Dorina\u2019s aria, \u201cNon fidarti,\u201d was replaced in Vienna with a new piece by Storace\u2019s brother, composer Stephen Storace. The replacement aria, \u201cCompatite,\u201d was a more comedic piece that better suited the character.<\/p>\n

But this is where the opera\u2019s history becomes even more interesting. The process didn\u2019t continue from city to city. Instead, however, the Viennese version became the standard, performed in cities throughout Europe with few, if any, changes.<\/p>\n

Platoff credits this phenomenon to the central role that Vienna played in 18th-century Europe. Though few today are familiar with Fra i due litiganti<\/em>, it was enormously commercially successful. In fact, Mozart quoted one of the hit songs from Fra i due litiganti<\/em> in his own Don Giovanni<\/em>, a testament to the opera\u2019s popularity and significance. The Viennese opera was home to Europe\u2019s best singers and became Europe\u2019s most reliable source of musical scores. So, it was likely that other companies would turn to Vienna\u2019s version for their productions. Lacking the resources of Europe\u2019s foremost opera company, they would simply perform the opera as they received it.<\/p>\n

This summer, Platoff was invited to discuss the development of Fra i due litiganti<\/em> and the importance of the Viennese version at a conference called \u201cGiuseppe Sarti: Individual style, aesthetical position reception and dissemination of his works\u201d at Berlin\u2019s Universit\u00e4t der K\u00fcnste. Additionally, Platoff will be presenting his research at this November\u2019s meeting of the American Musicological Society and submitting a paper to the Journal of the American Musicological Society<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, most people would think of an opera as a fixed piece of work, with musical numbers that don\u2019t change from one performance to the next. In the 18th century, however, that was not the case: when an opera arrived at a new company or in a new city, it was adapted for the performers. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,3],"tags":[177,176,174,105,175,178],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}