Publication details
Barsene: ein Pasticcio für die böhmische Königin aus dem Jahr 1743
| Title in English | dem Jahr 1743 / Barsene: pasticcio pro českou královnu z roku 1743 / Barsene: a Pasticcio for the Bohemian Queen from the Year 1743 |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Hudební věda |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.54759/MUSICOLOGY-2024-0301 |
| Keywords | Prague; Vienna; Maria Theresa; Viennese Court; Barsene; Argene; Bernasconi; coronation; opera seria; pasticcio |
| Description | The operatic pasticcio Barsene, which was performed in 1743 during the stay of the imperial court in Prague on the occasion of the coronation of Maria Theresa as Queen of Bohemia, is mentioned in historical sources sporadically. The only known contemporary reference is a sentence in the diary of the Imperial Obersthofmeister Johann Joseph Khevenhüller-Metsch. To this day, this opera is largely unknown and has received little attention from researchers. According to the current state of knowledge, the score from the performance of the work has not survived; only the libretto is known, of which – as has been discovered – there are only three surviving copies. The study summarises the current state of research and describes the political and staging context of the opera in detailed manner. Furthermore, an analysis of its dramaturgical approach is presented, as well as the character of the arias resulting from the text, based on the knowledge of the operatic running in the eighteenth century. The study identifies the text on the basis of which this operatic pasticcio was created. This was Domenico Lalli’s libretto for the opera Argene, set to music by Leonardo Leo. The work was premiered in Naples in 1731. The origins of the arias are clarified according to of the current state of knowledge. Determination the composers of the arias in Barsene is difficult due to the names of the singers are not given in the libretto and therefore their vocal ranges are not known. Therefore, the identification is methodologically approached on a combination of various possibilities arising mainly from contemporary librettos. The RISM database and some other selected musical scores were also used. Based on the research, a range of possible composers for each aria can be established, which includes especially Leonardo Leo, Giuseppe Antonio Paganelli, Ignazio Maria Conti, Paolo Scalabrini, Gennaro D’Alessandro, Leonardo Vinci and Andrea Bernasconi. The last-mentioned composer also comes to mind as a possible author of the pasticcio Barsene. |