Mapping Artistic Networks: Eighteenth-Century Italian Theatre and Opera across Europe ed. by Tatiana Korneeva (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mapping Artistic Networks: Eighteenth-Century Italian Theatre and Opera across Europe ed. by Tatiana Korneeva Anna Giust Mapping Artistic Networks: Eighteenth-Century Italian Theatre and Opera across Europe. Edited by Tatiana Korneeva. (Music History and Performance: Practices in Context, vol. 5.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. [231 p. ISBN 9782503584959 (paperback), $157.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. Mapping Artistic Networks, the fifth volume of a series directed by Christine Jeanneret, contains eleven essays selected and revised from papers presented at the conference Mapping Artistic Networks of Italian Theatre and Opera across Europe, 1600–1800, held at the Freie Universität Berlin on 11–12 April 2019 (p. 21). The essays are organized in three parts: "Itinerant Italian," with articles by Melania Bucciarelli, Marc Niubo, Anna Parkitna, and Gesa zur Nieden (pp. 27–85); "Russian Italians," with articles by Tatiana Korneeva, Nadezhda Chamina, Anna Korndorf, and Bella Brover-Lubovsky (pp. 89–170); and "Translational Encounters," with articles by Javier Gutiérrez Carou, Piermario Vescovo, and Massimo Ciavolella (pp. 173–222). The volume opens with Tatiana Korneeva's "Introduction: Italian Theatre Reverberated" (pp. 11–21). Korneeva's research focuses on dramatic theater, opera, and cultural transfer and transmission in early modern and eighteenth-century Italy and Russia. Her choice of these two paradigms for comparative studies probably stems from her education in classical philology (MA from Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov) and in classical languages, linguistics, and history (PhD from Scuola normale superiore). In recent years, Korneeva has been gradually shifting her focus from classical to Russian studies and notably to opera and commedia dell'arte, which she views from the perspective of a literary scholar. She has produced a substantial number of publications in the field of Italian theater and musical theater in Russia in the eighteenth century, including the coedited critical edition of commedia dell'arte texts staged in St. Petersburg between 1733 and 1735, Edizione scientifica digitale e la traduzione italiana della raccolta degli scenari delle commedie dell'arte rappresentate alla corte di San Pietroburgo dal 1733 al 1735 (2021; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5802046, accessed 21 January 2023). Korneeva's volume offers a selection of case studies for a wide range of musical activities, from opera seria to opera buffa, following individuals and their careers from Italy to the rest of Europe. While the first part presents cases of actor–singers active in cities such as London ("Italian Singers on the Move," pp. 27–40), Prague ("The Italian Opera in Prague in the Eighteenth Century," pp. 41–52), and Warsaw ("Pursuing Enlightenment Delights," pp. 53–63), the second part is devoted entirely to Russia. This part maintains a heterogeneous character through a rich variety of perspectives, from the survey of biographical data on individuals ("Italian Operisti in Early Eighteenth-Century St Petersburg," pp. 89–110)—which is also present in part 1 ("Operatic Patchworks and Their Crossings," pp. 65–85)—to visual aspects ("The Scenographic Fantasies of Giacomo Quarenghi," pp. 111–24, and "Italian Stage Designers and the Staging of the First Russian Epic Drama," pp. 125–41), to the relationships between individual works and the political context in which they were produced ("Andromeda Rescued on the Banks of the Neva," pp. 143–70). In part 3, the discourse [End Page 625] turns back to the dissemination of works by prominent Italian playwrights and librettists, such as Pietro Metastasio ("The Textual Evolutions of Metastasio's Semiramide," pp. 173–202), Carlo Goldoni ("Carlo Goldoni's Repertoire in Dresden," pp. 203–11), and Giacomo Casanova ("A Mirror of Deceit," pp. 213–22), who is considered here in the context of his literary production rather than his notorious adventures. It is therefore difficult to give a synthetic account of the volume as a whole and to assess it from a specific point of view, apart from noting that thematic consistency may have been a challenge for the editor too. As one can see from the way the book is presented, the volume and conference were conceived as a contribution to research in music and theater mobility, a theme that has become à la page in the last decades. "The mobility of Italian musicians in Europe in the eighteenth century with the...