Alexandra Denzer Die Entwicklung der italienischen Opernarie im 17. Jahrhundert

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The seventeenth century has received very little attention in musicological research. Even the Italian opera of these days is considered only sporadically in the theoretical and practical examinations of music, although it sets the foundations for an important and still popular genre of music history. The aria in particular as its musical centrepiece has risen to great prominence from the seventeenth century onwards. But Alexandra Denzer’s dissertation in two volumes is the only extensive study following the Italian operatic aria from its beginnings up to the fully developed da-capo-aria in the early eighteenth century so far.

Through years of analytical work, Denzer has compiled a large and representative inventory of operatic texts and scores from the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Using a wide data corpus, she follows the Italian opera and its arias from their beginnings in Florence and Mantua around 1600, through their continuation and first boom in Rome in the 1620s and 1630s, their consolidation in Venice in the middle of the century, and up to their eventual spread throughout Italy around 1700. In addition to familiar she also includes less-known composers and librettists of outstanding importance.

The history of development of the Italian operatic aria in the seventeenth century is supplemented with detailed information on the sociopolitical and cultural contexts and on libretto. This information precedes the separate chapters in the form of handbook-like summaries.

Moreover, the book provides numerous data which enable quick and clear access to the subject matter and which encourage further work on it. In the first volume, the underlying data is presented in tables and is illustrated through various diagrams. The second volume is an appendix which gives an overview about the opera productions in Florence/Mantua, Rome, and Venice, and which lists the characters and numbers of all operas analysed, including a great number of newly-scored musical examples.