Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Fischer, Christine

Titel

Engravings of Opera Stage Settings as Festival Books: Thoughts on a New Perspective of Well-Known Sources

Ist Teil von

• Music in art, 2009-04, Vol.34 (1/2), p.73-88

Ort / Verlag

New York, N.Y: Research Center for Music Iconography of the City University of New York Graduate School

Erscheinungsjahr

2009

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• As part of an approach to widen the perspective on the performance practice of opera in the seventeenth and eighteenth century at German courts, iconographical sources of stage design and theater decorations have to be reevaluated. Most of the relevant sources are found either in printed libretti or—less frequently—in printed scores: engravings of the original stage design, in many cases also featuring some of the characters in costumes and their specific gestures and placement on stage. The value and possible function of these sources in the process of trying to reconstruct the historical performance in question imply methodological questions which still have not been thoroughly dealt with. It is suggested to look at the engravings as part of festival reports, which were made and published in order to convey certain information about a performance, and not to enable the reader to gain an impression of the performance as a whole. They ought consequently to be regarded, in the first place, as documents of how a performance was intended to be experienced and only secondarily, as documents concerning the real stage design and scenery. This approach to the engravings is exemplified with the illustrated score of Maria Antonia Walpur gis's Talestri, regina delle amazzoni, published in Leipzig in 1765.