English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Within the aesthetic framework of the work concept and author-centred approach to music history, the practice of aria substitution in the eighteenth-century Italian  dramma per musica  has frequently been viewed as hostile interference with the composer’s authorial intention and attributed to singers’ vanity, laziness and ignorance. However, the substitution of both the texts and musical settings of arias constituted the default production practice in a period in which scores were not conceptualised as fixed texts but functioned as performance materials for specific productions. Moreover, the practice of aria substitution was deeply rooted in the socio-cultural context of opera production and the arts consumption practices of the social elite. A manifestation of period preoccupation with displaying and gauging rank and status, it was crucial to singers’ professional success. Analysing the reasons for the substitution of three specific arias in revivals of settings by both Hasse and Vinci of Metastasio’s  Artaserse  in 1730 and 1731, this paper accounts for typical scenarios for this practice in opera production. Rather than focusing predominantly on the arias’ musical parameters, it also evaluates their dramatic features, scope for stage action and potential for engaging period audiences. Brief consideration is also given to two unusual  drammi per musica  of 1734 featuring an exceptionally high number of  arie di tempesta.

‘Per desiderio di farsi onore’: Singers and the Adaptation of Arias in Italian drammi per musica of the Early Eighteenth-Century Italy