Operatic Reform in Turin's Teatro Regio: Aspects of Production and Stylistic Change in the 1760s (review)

Abstract

Recent studies of operatic production practices have presented a wealth of new information and engendered a more thorough understanding of the complex artistic and social mechanism of eighteenth- century musical theater. An increasingly important mode of inquiry is the correlation of primary sources (specifically, surviving scores and libretti) with secondary archival documents, including the administrative records of the theater itself, the contracts of singers, instrumentalists, and even copyists, and sources related to the materiel requirements of stage productions. Margaret Ruth Butler's Operatic Reform at Turin's Teatro Regio: Aspects of Production and Stylistic Change in the 1760s is an important and significant contribution to contemporary scholarship on eighteenth-century opera and its production practices. Butler embraces this painstaking methodology as the basis for a scrupulously researched and in-depth portrait of late-eighteenth-century Torinese theatrical life at the Teatro Regio. As Butler notes in her introduction, the choice of Turin as the basis for such an inquiry was suggested by its "status as one of the largest, rapidly growing, and culturally active European cities of the era, ... its royal theater sharing the leading singers, dancers, designers, and other creative personnel with those of other prominent theaters" (p. xxvii). The most significant aspect of this study, however, is the recognition of Turin as perhaps the only Italian state to actively and thoroughly assimilate into local productions the French-inspired theatrical reforms of the mid- to late eighteenth century. With this objective in mind, Butler progresses beyond a simple recollection and interpretation of production materials and issues, instead offering an illuminating study of a heretofore unrecognized center of operatic importance.