TWO EARLY ROMANTIC OPERAS WITH IBERIAN ROOTS: "IL CONTE DI SALDAGNA" AND "INES DE CASTRO"

Abstract

In the spring of 1787 La Scala in Milan produced a trail-blazing opera entitled 77 conte di Saldagna, which the libretto called a tragedia. Angelo Tarchi, maestro di cappella at La Scala, had composed the music, and the innovative Milanese librettist Ferdinando Moretti had provided the libretto, perhaps from St. Petersburg, Russia, where he had been in residence for a year.1 For carnival in Venice, 1793, Giuseppe Giordani composed yet another opera based on Iberian history, Ines de Castro, on a text by an anonymous librettist. In the second opera, an excellent example of the new style in opera seria of the 1790s, can be found many of the innovations pioneered in the first. A consideration of the two together reveals the dramatic change that took place in opera seria within a brief period of six years and pinpoints the beginnings of Romantic or revolutionary opera in Italy.2 // conte di Saldagna was revolutionary on many counts. It was the second opera within months to stage a murder, thus challenging venerable