Paper given at the conference "Bearbeitungspraxis in der Oper des späten 18. Jahrhunderts," Würzburg, 18–20 February 2005, and published in German translation (under the title "Bearbeitungen italienischer Opern für Wien 1765–1800"), in the conference proceedings, ed. Ulrich Konrad (Tutzing, 2007), pp. 81–101. The call to action in the final paragraph may have helped to inspire a project that began in 2009 and has gone far beyond the preliminary findings presented here: Opera Buffa in Wien (1763–1782), FWF-Forschungsproject under the direction of Michele Calella, with Martina Grempler and Ingrid Schraffl as scholarly collaborators.
In this paper I will focus on Bearbeitungspraxis in Italian opera in Vienna from 1765 to 1800. Since Ulrich Konrad will discuss Mozart, Robert von Zahn Guglielmi, Daniel Brandenburg Anfossi, and Martina Grempler and Klaus Pietschmann Cimarosa, I will direct my attention to Gassmann, Salieri, Weigl, and Paisiello. I will further limit the scope of my paper to the editing of operas written for cities other than Vienna.
Viennese musicians do not seem to have used the word Bearbeitung in referring to the editing of operas; at least they preferred the words Abänderung, Veränderung, and Verbesserung. So perhaps we apply the term Bearbeitung somewhat anachronistically to our period. Be that as it may, I understand Bearbeitungspraxis to cover at least three differend kinds of editing.
In category 1 is the relatively mechanical process of correcting mistakes, making the performance score and parts consistent with one another, and completing parts of the notation that the composer and copyists might have left incomplete in the performing score and parts.
In category 2 is the revising and recomposition of existing music, involving artistic decisions (unlike much of the editing in category 1) both musical and dramaturgical: cuts in recitative, the omission of entire numbers, transposing pieces up and down, shortening pieces, changing tempos, adding and subtracting instrumental parts, and so forth.
In category 3 is the insertion of musical numbers, either in addition to or in replacement of original music. The additional music can itself be already existing music, in some cases from another opera (category 3a) or it can be newly composed music (category 3b).
Editorial Personnel
In the Viennese court theaters of the last third of the eighteenth century these three kinds of editing were principally the responsibility of three people: the music director of the Italian opera, the music director's apprentice or assistant, and the theater poet. The following table lists those who served in these capacities during the last third of the eighteenth century.
Music Directors of the Italian Opera (Kapellmeister der italienischen Oper)
1765–1774 Florian Leopold Gassmann
1774–1776 Antonio Salieri
1783–1791 Salieri
1791–1800 Joseph Weigl
Apprentices or Assistants of the Music Director
ca. 1768–1774 Salieri
ca. 1785–1791 Weigl
Poets of the Italian Opera
1765–1772 Marco Coltellini
1772–1775 Giovanni Gastone Boccherini
1775–1776 Giovanni de Gamerra
1783–1791 Lorenzo da Ponte
1791 Caterino Mazzolà
1791–1794 Giovanni Bertati
1794–1800 De Gamerra
About the institutional framework within which these men did their editing, we can learn a little from Ignaz von Mosel's early biography of Salieri:
Im Anfange des zweiten Jahres seiner Anwesenheit zu Wien, also im Jahre 1768, ward ihm [Salieri] schon das Vergügen zu Theil, manche seiner Compositionen öffentlich zu hören. Gaßman stand damals der italienschen Oper vor, und theilthe die kleinen Veränderungen, die zu machen waren, seinem Schüler zu, weniger, weil er diesen dazu schon vollkommen fähigh glaubte, also um sich der Zudringlichkeit desselben zu erwehren, der ihn unablässig quälte, ihn doch irgend etwas von seiner Erfindung vor das Publkum bringen zu lassen.
From this passage we can assume that one of Gassmann's responsibilities as music director was "die kleinen Veränderungen, die zu machen waren" in the operas that were to be performed in the court theaters. A few pages later Mosel makes clear that "die kleinen Veränderungen" were insertion arias and ensembles: "die schon erwähnten, ihm [Salieri] von seinem Meister überlassenen kleinen Compositionen für das Theater, bestehend in Arietten, Duetten, Terzetten, einigen Ballett-Musikstücken, und kleinen, die Oper beschließenden Finalen..." So all this activity falls into the third of the three categories of Bearbeitungspraxis I enumerated above.
Salieri, as Gassmann's assistant, also handled another kind of editing that falls into category 1: the correction of scores and parts during rehearsals, and consultations with copyists to make sure such corrections were entered into all the performing material. Here again I quote from Mosel a passage that refers to events around 1769:
Eines Morges, nach [einer Probe], war Salieri allein geblieben, um, in Erwartung des Kopisten, einige, in der Partitur irrig geschriebene Noten zu verbessern.... Der Kopist kam; Salieri sprach... mit ihm über die vorzunehmenden Abänderungen; der Kopist nahm die Partitur, und Beide verließen zusammen den Probesaal.
In the 1780s Salieri used his pupil and assistant Weigl in much the same way as Gassmann had used Salieri. Weigl wrote in one of his autobiographical sketches that Salieri assigned him the composition of insertion numbers "in verschiednen Opern, die zur Aufführung bestimmt wären und wo Musick Stücke entweder fehlten, oder für die Stimme der Sänger nicht anpassend wären."
Dadurch würde ich lernen, wie man für die Stimmen der verschiedenen Sänger schreiben müsse und zugleich den Effekt der Instrumentation praktisch erfahren... So componirte ich eine Menge solcher Arien, Duetten, etz., je nachdem der Bedarf war und lernte dadurch erkennen, was der Sänger zu machen im Stande ist, wie der deklamatorische Gesang behandelt werden, wo die Instrumentation kräftig seyn, wo die Singstemme delicat begleitet, wo der Ausdruck gehoben werden soll etz.
It is interesting to note that for both Salieri and Weigl the composition of insertion numbers was a part of their apprenticeship. This helps to explain why so many arias and other numbers were inserted into Viennese operas during our period. Gassmann and Salieri assigned the composition of insertions arias to their students in the hope not only of improving the effect of Italian operas performed under their direction, but also of enhancing the education of their apprentices.
Weigl also recalls that he directed rehearsals of both Figaro and Don Giovanni. Presumably he ran rehearsals of many other operas as well, rehearsals that must have involved a great deal of category 1 editing.
In much of their editorial work, Gassmann, Salieri, and Weigl collaborated with theatrical poets. The poet was in a better position than the music director to know what dialogue in recitative could be cut without seriously damaging an opera's dramatic integrity. Moreover, insertion numbers quite often used new texts, and these texts, though rarely attributed in librettos to any particular poet, were almost certainly, in most cases, provided by the house poet. In a contract signed by Giovanni Gastone Boccherini in 1772, the poet agreed "scortare, o sia accomodare tutti i libri delle opere italiane, che dalla Direzione si voranno dare su questi teatri." Although I know of no surviving contracts signed by the other Viennese theater poets, we can safely assume that all of them considered the editing of existing operas to be one of their most important responsibilities.
The Carvalhaes Collection, an important collection of librettos now preserved in the library of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, contains a copy of a Viennese libretto of Giuseppe Sarti's Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode into which someone has pasted the texts of three insertion arias. I believe that Da Ponte wrotes these texts (on stylistic grounds, and also because he was the theater poet in Vienna when Sarti's opera was being performed). I also believe (on the basis of the handwriting) that Da Ponte himself wrote out the texts, which, as far as I know, were never set to music. These pages (reproduced in my article "A Libretto collection from the Circle of Vincenzo Calvesi, Mozart's Ferrando," in Music Observed: Studies in Memory of William C. Holmes, ed. Colleen Reardon and Susan Parisi, Warren, Michigan, 2004, 429-45; on Academia.edu) offer us a rare glimpse at the process of Bearbeitung as it was actually happening in Vienna in the 1780s.
Categories of Scores Used in the Editing Process
Viennese Bearbeitungspraxis is documented in three kinds of operatic scores, which survive in various quantities, mostly in the Musiksammlung of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, but also in other libraries. In the Appendix I list some examples of these scores.
In category 1 is what I call the "source score." This is the score that served as the source for the Viennese production. It documents the state of the opera before the Viennese editing process began. It is often of Italian provenance; often with a title page that refers to the opera's first production in an Italian city such as Rome or Venice. Sometimes (category 1a) the source score was left unedited, and it served only as the Vorlage for the performing score, in which all the Viennese editing was done. Sometimes (category 1b) at least some of the Viennese editing was done in the source score, and only then, after editing, did it serve as the Vorlage for the performing score. A third situation (category 1c) involves source scores that were edited in Vienna and then themselves served as performing scores.
The court theaters obtained source scores by several different means. Singers, especially those with contacts in Italy or who had themselves been to Italy, often sold scores to the theater management. Dexter Edge, in his dissertation Mozart's Viennese Copyists, mentions Francesco Bussani, Francesco Benucci, and Vincenzo Calvesi as among the singers who sold opera manuscripts to the management. Austrian diplomats also supplied scores. Edge documents the roles of Count Durazzo, the Austrian ambassador in Venice, and Norbert Hadrava, secretary to the Austrian ambassador in Naples, as suppliers of scores for the court theaters.
Emperor Joseph II probably provided source scores from his private collection or from the court library. In February 1783 Joseph wrote to Count Cobenzl, his ambassador in St. Petersburg: "Il ne me reste qu'à vous remercier de l'opéra de Paisiello [Il barbiere di Siviglia] ... Je compte le faire exécuter après Pâques par une nouvelle troupe de Bouffons Italiens que j'ai fait engager... Vous me ferés aussi plaisir de me procurer tous les ouvrages en ce genre et non sérieux de la composition de Paisiello à mésure qu'il en paraître de nouveaux." The score that Cobenzl sent is probably Mus. Hs. 17872, a copy that corresponds very closely to Paisiello's autograph and uses paper with a watermark identical to that on the paper in the autograph score (according to Francesco Paolo Russo in his critical edition of Il barbiere di Siviglia). Mus. Hs. 17872, in turn, probably served as the Vorlage for the score that was actually used in Viennese performances of Paisiello's opera. In the case of Guglielmi's Le vicende d'amore, Joseph, who may have seen the opera in performed in Rome during Carnival 1784, sent a manuscript from Italy, with the remark to his opera manager Count Rosenberg: "je crois qu'on pourra le donner également a Vienne." This score is probably the one preserved under the call number Mus. Hs. 17791, which likewise probably served as Vorlage for the score used in the Burgtheater.
The second type of score documenting Viennese Bearbeitungspraxis consists of what Edge calls "performing scores." Over 450 performing scores used in the court theaters during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are preserved in the Musiksammlung under the signature KT (Kärntnertortheater); a few others are preserved under the signature OA (Opern-Archiv). Most of the KT scores that I have examined (only a small fraction of the total) show signs of extensive editing, in all the categories enumerated above. Presumably this editing was done mostly during rehearsals and during the run of performances. (For a list of KT scores go to the ÖNB website.)
The performing scores vary a great deal, according to whether the Vorlage had itself been subject to editing in Vienna (in which case there might be relatively little editing in the performing score), and according to whether the performing score consisted of or incorporated parts of the source score.
These performing scores contain fascinating material, but in cases when an opera was performed over a long period of time, or revived one or more times, it is often difficult to date particular acts of editing recorded in scores. A KT score often contains evidence of the entire editorial evolution of an opera during the period of its performance in Vienna. But that evidence is often difficult to interpret.
The third category of scores documenting Viennese Bearbeitungspraxis consists of scores copied from the performing score—that is, scores for which the performing score served as Vorlage. Many category 3 scores were produced by the Sukowaty shop, which, as Edge has shown, was the court theaters' exclusive copying firm from 1778 to 1796. It is possible to date many Sukowaty scores through the identification (by handwriting analysis) of the copyists employed by Sukowaty on a particular score. (Sukowaty typically used a large team of copyists to produce an opera score. For example, my analysis of a category 3 score of Salieri's Axur (Mus. Hs. 17832) showed it to be the work of at least nine different copyists, all of whom Edge has identified as having contributed to other Sukowaty copies that can be dated to the period around the first performance of Axur in January 1788. If a category 3 score can be dated with some degree of accuracy, it can be useful in dealing with a performing score that contains editing done at different times. The main value of category 3 scores, in other words, is that (unlike performing scores) they document an opera at a single point in its editorial evolution. In the case of the above-mentioned copy of Axur, we can be fairly sure that it preserves a version of the opera roughly contemporary with the first performance.
While almost all surviving scores in categories 1 and 2 can be conveniently studied in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, category 3 scores are much more widely disseminated. Paisiello's Il barbiere di Siviglia, whose sources have been carefully catalogued by Michael Robinson and Francesco Paolo Russo, may serve as example. Russo lists no fewer than five scores (in addition to the Viennese performing score KT 54) as being definitely or probably from the Sukowaty workshop. These scores are now in Zurich, Wolfenbüttel, Regensburg, Budapest, and Modena.
Who decided what changes to make in preparing existing operas for performance in Vienna?
In the first category of editing—musical corrections, Verbesserungen—the music director and his apprentice must have had a free hand.
In the second category of editing—the revising of existing music, and especially cuts—the music director and the house poet must have worked together, with the music director largely responsible for cuts and other changes within orchestrally accompanied numbers and the poet largely responsible for cuts within simple recitative.
The third category of editing—the insertion of foreign music, already existing or newly composed—involved a larger number of people: not only the music director and the house poet, but also the composer of the insertion number (who might or might not be the music director or his apprentice), the singer who was to perform it, the manger of the court theaters, and perhaps even the emperor himself.
Our sources are frustratingly vague about how all these people interacted. On 1 August 1771 Emperor Joseph II wrote of the first Viennese performance of Paisiello's Don Chisciotte della Mancia: "Don Quichotte a enfin paru hier pour la premiere fois, la musique est assés jolie... Gasman y a du mettre plusieurs airs." What does that mean: "Gassmann had to insert several arias"? Did Gassmann decide to replace Paisiello's arias? Did the singers demand new arias? The impresario who ran the court theaters at this time? The emperor himself? We just do not know.
The Viennese Tradition of Insertion Arias and Ensembles
Gassmann, in any case, started a tradition that continued to the end of the century of inserting numerous arias and ensembles into Italian comic operas performed in Vienna. During the period when he was in charge of Italian opera, such insertions were sometimes mentioned in librettos. For example, the libretto for L'isola d'amore, first performed in Vienna in 1769, carries the note: "La musica è del celebre Sig. Antonio Sacchini, a riserva de' Cori, de' Duetti, e de' Balli e Sinfonia, che son del Sig. Floriano Gasmann all'attual servizio di S. M. l'Imperatore." This inscription is silent on the fact that the opera also included two arias by the very young Salieri, who at some later time claimed authorship in a Viennese category 3 score (Mus. Hs. 17830: a score copied from the no longer existing performing score of L'isola d'amore). Salieri wrote in pencil above his arias "del Signore Tonino Salieri" (Tonino meaning "Little Antonio"—he was only nineteen at the time.) Salieri's arias, "T'amerò, sarò costante" and "È amore un certo mare," are unlisted in Angermüller's catalogues of Salieri's works, and are apparently unknown to Salieri scholarship. Systematic study of Viennese manuscripts of Italian operas performed in the court theaters during the late 1760s and the 1770s (especially the many category 3 scores) will almost certainly reveal the existence of other hitherto unknown music by both Gassmann and Salieri.
By 1774, the year of Gassmann's death, Salieri had almost completely taken over from his teacher the task of writing new arias for Italian operas. A Viennese category 3 manuscript records the state of Piccinni's L'astratto as performed in Vienna in 1774 (Mus. Hs. 17824). It contains one aria attributed to Pugnani, two attributed to Rutini, two attributed to Guglielmi, and five attributed to Salieri.
Again, we know nothing for sure about who chose these arias and why they were inserted. However, another Viennese manuscript of L'astratto suggests that certain singers influenced the decision to use insertion arias. In the Viennese performing score of L'astratto, KT 44 (one of the very few performing scores of Italian operas to survive from the 1770s) three of the insertion arias (by Pugnani and Guglielmi) bear the name of a single singer, the comic bass Andrea Morigi. This suggests strongly that Morigi brought these arias to Vienna and asked that they be incorporated into Piccinni's opera. Comparison of the two Viennese manuscripts of L'astratto show that the words of Guglielmi's arias were changed as part of the process of insertion. Probably Boccherini provided the new words.
Just as Salieri took over from Gassmann, so Weigl took over from Salieri, transforming Paisiello's Nina in 1790, in collaboration with Da Ponte, into a very different opera, with eight new numbers by Weigl, and with the spoken dialogue in prose that constitutes one of the most remarkable aspects of Paisiello's opera replaced with conventional sung recitative in verse. Here again, as I argued in my dissertation on the operatic policies of Emperor Leopold II, a singer played a crucial role in the editing process, in this case Adriana Ferrarese. She may have been a great Fiordiligi, but she could not have portrayed innocent, childlike Nina without Paisiello's music being thoroughly revised.
Parenthetically, I should mention that Nina was subject to further revisions when it was revived in 1794; these later revisions, which involved the removal of most of Weigl's music, are recorded in the Viennese performing material. In order to study Weigl's 1790 revision, we have to go to a score copied from the Viennese performing score at around the time of the 1790 production. The manuscript of Nina in the Brussels Conservatory library, listed in the Appendix, is such a score.
Having promised to leave Mozart to Professor Konrad and Anfossi to Dr. Brandenburg, I will allude only briefly to the controversy over Mozart's composition of three insertion arias for Anfossi's Il curioso indiscreto in 1783. Mozart wrote to his father:
Ich glaube, ich habe Ihnen geschrieben, daß ich auch für den Adamberger ein Rondo gemacht habe. — Bei einer kleinen Probe (da das Rondo noch gar nicht abgeschrieben war) rufte Salieri den Adamberger auf die Seite und sagte ihm, daß der Graf Rosenberg nicht gerne sähe, daß er eine Arie hineinsetzte, und er ihm folglich als ein guter Freund rate, es nicht zu tun. — Adamberger, aufgebracht über den Rosenberg und — dermalen zur Unzeit — stolz, wußte nicht sich anders zu rächen, beging die Dummheit und sagt: Nun ja, um zu zeigen, daß Adamberg schon seinen Ruhm in Wien hat und nicht nötig hat, sich erst durch für ihn geschriebne Musique Ehre zu machen, so wird er singen, was darin steht, und seine Lebtage keine Arie mehr einlegen.
This passage suggests, again, the importance of the role singers played in decisions to introduce insertation arias. The phrase "sich erst durch für ihn geschriebne Musique Ehre zu machen" suggests that singers used Einlage-Arien to enhance their prestige. Adamberger was influenced on the one hand by Mozart, eager to show off his compositional skill at Anfossi's expense, and on the other hand by the music director Salieri and through him by the manager of the theater Rosenberg (who may have objected to the large role in the editing process being played by a composer who was not on the theater payroll—and who might consequently have hoped to be paid for his contribution). Mozart left the impression that neither Salieri nor Rosenberg could forbid Adamberger from singing Mozart's aria; it was apparently the singer's decision to make, and it was he who decided not to sing "Per pietà, non ricercate."
A Preliminary Case-Study: The Editing of Paisiello's Il matrimonio inaspettato, Performed in Vienna under the Title La contadina di spirito
I would now like to examine briefly the editing process as it was applied to a single opera, from the decision to perform this particular work to the first performance, and finally to its revival more than a decade later.
Emperor Joseph II, during a tour of Italy from December 1783 to March 1784 (coinciding, not by accident, with Carnival), heard many singers, carefully considering which might be suitable for his new Viennese opera buffa troupe. He reported his observations to Rosenberg in a series of letters that vividly document his operatic taste and style of management. The most important of his acquisitions was that of Celeste Coltellini.
A letter of 20 February 1784 shows that Joseph concerned himself with the arrangement of repertory according to the wishes of his new recruit, and got the editing process underway by supplying a source score and authorizing the production of a performing score: "L'Opera dans le quel la Coltellini veut debuter a Vienne est intitulé il matrimonio inaspettato dont la musique se trouve depuis deux ans entre les mains de Baron Swieten, que vous pourrés lui demander pour faire copier."
Joseph's way of referring to the score of Paisiello's opera as being "in Baron [van] Swieten's hands for the last two years" suggests that Van Swieten did not actually own the score, but that, as court librarian, he controlled access to it. The score to which Joseph refers is probably the manuscript of Italian provenance preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek under the call number Mus. Hs. 17808, which probably originated with the production of Paisiello's opera in Naples in 1781. If this score belonged to Joseph or the court library, it would explain why he wanted to have it copied for use in the theater: if he had allowed it to serve as the performing score, he would have essentially been giving it away. It would also explain the absence, reported by Edge (p. 2197), of any record of payment by the court theaters for a score of Il matrimonio inaspettato.
The score Mus. Hs. 17808 almost certainly served as the source score for the Viennese production of Il matrimonio inaspettato, or, as it was known in Vienna, La contadina di spirito. For us, Mus. Hs. 17808 serves the very useful function of recording clearly the state of the opera before the Viennese editing process began.
Joseph's instructions that this score be copied resulted in the production of the manuscript now known as KT 91, entitled La contadina di spirito: a Viennese score probably produced by the Sukowaty workshop. KT 91 records the whole gamut of editorial alterations to which every Italian opera was subject in Vienna. But its use is complicated by the fact that La contadina di spirito was revived in 1798; presumably some of the editing in KT 91 was done in preparation for that later production.
Two kinds of sources are potentially useful in distinguishing the editorial work (probably by Salieri) of 1785 from that (probably by Weigl) of more than a decade later. The first consists of various copies of the libretto published for the first Viennese production: "La contadina di spirito, dramma ridicolo in due atti da rappresentarsi nel Teatro di Corte l'anno 1785." The second consists of manuscript scores for which the performing score served as Vorlage. One such score is the Sukowaty score from the Esterházy archive, probably ordered in preparation for the Eszterháza production of La contadina di spirito in 1788, and which was almost certainly copied from KT 91 after its initital editing in 1785 but of course well before the opera was prepared for revival in 1798. Another Sukowaty score is in the Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv in Wolfenbüttel. Yet another is in the Toggenburg Collection in Bolzano (see Tarcisio Chini and Giuliano Tonini, La raccolta di manoscritti e stampe musicali "Toggenburg" di Bolzano (secc. XVIII-XIX), EDT/Musica, 1986, 408).
On the title page of the Bolzano score we read: "Wienn zu haben beÿ Wenzel Kukowatÿ Copist in D. D. National Hoftheater wohnhaft am Peters Plaz in Mazischen haus No 554 in dritten Stock im Hof." Since a renumbering of Viennese addresses that took place in 1795 resulted in Sukowaty's address number being changed to 554 to 614 (Edge, 1306), we can be fairly sure that this manuscript represents the opera as performed in 1785, not 1798.
I have not had a chance to examine the Esterházy, Wolfenbüttel, and Bolzano scores, so the following remarks are subject to further study. But I have been able to compare the source score, Mus. Hs. 17808, the performing score KT 91, and several copies of the libretto for the first Viennese production.
In reference to the libretto, I should mention that one area where Sartori's great catalogue of librettos is weak is in its coverage of Viennnese libraries. Sartori lists only one copy of the libretto for the Viennese 1785 production of La contadina di spirito, in the Nationalbibliothek. Last week in Vienna I saw four copies: two in the Nationalbibliothek, one the Stadtbibliothek (Wien Bibliothek), and one in the Österreichisches Theatermuseum. All four copies seem to have been printed before the Viennese editing process got underway, and three of them hardly reflect it all. This illustrates something about Viennese librettos in general, which is that they seem to have been rarely produced in more than one edition. The opera might have evolved, but the libretto stayed the same. Viennese audiences did not apparently expect that their librettos would necessarily correspond closely to what they heard and saw on stage.
However, one copy of the libretto—the one in the Theatermuseum—is of exceptional interest. It seems to have been used by a prompter during the first production. Someone has written stage directions in the margin referring not to the character's names but to the singers who portrayed them in 1785: Benucci, Mandini, and Coltellini. In order to be useful to the prompter, this libretto had to be altered to reflect the ongoing editing process. The various alterations in the libretto, involving red crayon and pieces of paper pasted in, almost certainly record the state of the opera as edited before and during the 1785 production.
In the first of the three categories of editing mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the Viennese editors made many corrections and clarifications. Dynamics have been regularized and extended from one part to others. Where in Mus. Hs. 17808 dynamics are indicated only between the two violin parts, editors have added the same dynamics to the bass part in red crayon. For example, in Tulipano's aria "Se si guarda all'antica propagine," the "sotto voce" between the two violin lines was extended to the basso part by the editor's "p" in red crayon.
In the same passage a Viennese editor enriched Paisiello's texture by adding a simple viola line; the editor enlivened the passage by adding a "forte" at the word "gazzette." These changes belong in category 2 of my three categories of Bearbeitungspraxis. Another example of category 2 Veränderung: in the chorus "Evviva la sposa," an editor has elaborated the texture by adding two oboes and a new bass line.
We find many other indications of recomposition in the performing score of La contadina di spirito. Most common are cuts in both simple recitative and orchestrally accompanied numbers. A Viennese editor used a combination of red crayon and pasted-down paper to delete a long passage in the introduzione. Since this cut does not involve the omission of any words, the Theatermuseum libretto cannot tell us when it was made.
The simple recitative that follows, several measures have been crossed out with red crayon. These words are also cancelled in the Theatersammlung libretto, allowing us to assign these cuts, and many other cuts in the recitative throughout the opera, to the 1785 production. Likewise a cut of several pages in the finale of act 2 involves the omission of four lines of text. Since these lines are crossed out with Röthel in the Theatermuseum libretto, Paisiello's setting of them was probably cut in 1785.
The Viennese editors showed themselves to have been impatient with repetitious cadences. In Tulipano's aria "Guardami in volta e poi" they used red crayon to cancel the fourth and fifth statement of a cadential idea; in Vespina's aria "Quando penso che son ricca" they struck out a single measure in which a cadential idea is stated for the third time. Again these cuts do not involve the omission of any words, so it may be impossible to date them.
The editors enriched Paisiello's orchestra by calling for the use of timpani in several numbers. They wrote "Timp" in red crayon at the beginning of the overture, a march in act 1, and the finale of act 2, but they did not write a part for the timpani, presumably expecting the timpanist to improvise on the basis of a trumpet or horn part.
Finally, the editors replaced three of Paisiello's numbers with different music, all of which is unattributed in KT 91. They replaced Vespina's aria in act 1 "Se fedele a me sarete" with a duet for Vespina and Georgino, "E rimasto già confuso." In act 2, they thoroughly transformed the countess's part by replacing both her arias. They replaced "Dirà lo sposo mio" (in E flat) with a new aria in B flat on the same text, and, in place of Paisiello's aria "Scommodarmi da palazzo," they inserted another, "Se invan pietade io chiedo." Neither of the two new texts is in the Theatermuseum libretto. Furthermore, the scores of both Einlage-Arien were made by copyists different from those who copied the rest of the manuscript. These two facts together lead me to believe that these numbers were added to the opera in 1798.
Celeste Coltellini arrived in Vienna as planned. She made her first appearance at the beginning of the theatrical year 1785, and in the opera mentioned by Emperor Joseph more than a year earlier. The Viennese applauded warmly, and Joseph wrote happily to his brother Leopold in Florence: "Yesterday la Coltellini made her debut here and she had a complete success."
Conclusion
The vast complex of manuscript and printed sources documenting the production of opera in the court theaters of late eighteenth-century Vienna—hundreds of sources scores, performing scores, and Sukowaty copies, manuscript copies and prints of individual numbers, librettos, letters, and financial documents—constitutes a challenge to us. To study these materials fully—their paper, handwriting, and musical contents—is a task well beyond the capabilities of any single scholar. It would require international teamwork on a scale rarely achieved in the history of musicology. Perhaps it is foolish, in an era when many musicologists tacitly denigrate the values of source studies, to propose such a project. Yet its potential benefits are so obvious and great that it would be foolish not to undertake it. Although I, and several American scholars, would be happy to participate in the project, it seems to me that a European ought to initiate and lead it. I urge you all to think about ways in which this project could be organized, launched, and successfully completed in our lifetime.
Appendix: Three Categories of Operatic Scores Associated with the Viennese Court Theaters, 1765–1800, with Examples of Scores in Each Category
1. Source Scores
a. Scores from cities other than Vienna, left unedited and used as Vorlage for performance scores
Guglielmi, Le vicende d'amore, Mus. Hs. 17791: "Le Vicende d'Amore / Intermezzi a' Cinque Voci / Rappresentati in Roma nel Teatro Valle / Il Carnevale del 1784"; probably the score sent from Italy by Emperor Joseph II in 1784 (Edge, Mozart's Viennese Copyists, 2195); probably served as Vorlage for KT 465
Paisiello, La serva padrona, Mus. Hs. 17802; dedication signed by the composer and dated St. Petersburg, 30 August 1781; probably served as Vorlage for the lost Viennese performing score
Paisiello, Don Chisciotte, Mus. Hs. 17809; does not include the several arias composed by Gassmann for the production of this opera in Vienna; probably served as Vorlage for the lost Viennese performing score
Paisiello, Le due contesse, Mus. Hs. 17802; probably served as Vorlage for KT 92
b. Scores from cities other than Vienna, edited in Vienna and then used as Vorlage for performing scores
Cimarosa, L'italiana in Londra, Mus. Hs. 18051: "L'Italiana in Londra / 1779 / Intermezzo a Cinque Voci / Musica / Del Sig. Domenico Cimarosa." Possibly one of the several scores sold to the court theaters in 1783–84 by Count Durazzo (Edge, 2193); probably served as Vorlage for KT 228
c. Scores from cities other than Vienna, edited in Vienna and used as performing scores
Gazzaniga, La vendemmia, KT 459: contains a mixture of Italian and Viennese materials
Paisiello, La frascatana, KT 168: "La Frascatana / Dramma giocoso 1774 / In San Samuele L'autuno / Musica / Del Sig. Giovanni Paisiello / D. Giuseppe Baldan / Copista di Musica a S. Gio. Grisostomo. Venezia"
Piccinni, L'astratto, KT 44: "L'Astratto / O sia il Giocator Fortunato / Opera Giocosa / In S. Samuel il Carnovale del 1772 in Venezia / Del Sig. Niccolo Piccini"
Sarti, Giulio Sabino, KT 188: printed score published by Artaria (Vienna, n. d.), bound together with extensive manuscript material containing music composed by Salieri for the Viennese production and other music, by Tarchi and others, sung in the Viennese productions of 1785 and 1805 (Armbruster, "Salieri, Mozart und die Wiener Fassung des Giulio Sabino von Giuseppe Sarti")
2. Performing Scores
See also category 1c, above
Bianchi, Il disertore, KT 112; Viennese score; overture by Paul Wranitzky
Paisiello, Le due contesse, KT 92; insertion arias by Weigl and Rauzzini
Paisiello, Nina, OA 464; incomplete, and subject to revisions associated with several different productions
Seydelmann, Il turco in Italia, KT 452; Viennese score; "rappresentata nel Teatro di Corte in Vienna l'anno 1789"; insertion arias attributed to Cimarosa, Pitticchio, Moneta, Guglielmi; sketches by Salieri, probably in preparation for the recompostion of a chorus
3. Copies Using Viennese Performing Scores as Vorlage
Cimarosa, Amor rende sagace, D-F, Mus. Hs. Opern 108, probably based on lost Viennese performing score
Paisiello, La contadina di spirito, H-Bn Ms. Mus. OE 25, from the Sukowaty shop; probably based on A-Wn, KT 91
Paisiello, La molinara, DK-Kmk, R402, probably based on A-Wn, KT 298; includes rondò by Cimarosa
Paisiello, Nina, B-Bc, 2271 K, ca. 1790; probably based on A-Wn, OA 464, but before this performing score was altered in preparation for productions of the opera after 1790; includes several numbers by Weigl that are no longer in OA 464
Paisiello, Il tamburo notturno, Mus. Hs. 17801; based on a lost performing score; includes arias attributed to Guglielmi, Monza, Piccinni, Salieri (3), and Traetta
Piccinni, L'astratto, Mus. Hs. 17824; based on KT 44
Sarti, Fra i due litiganti, H-Bn, OE 4, Sukowaty copy dated 1783, with arias by Anfossi, Martín, and Storace; probably based on a lost performing score