著者

天堀 貴博

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

桃山学院大学人間科学 (ISSN:09170227)

巻号頁・発行日

no.45, pp.303-326, 2014-03-28

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Venetian opera was born in 1637 as the first commercial opera in the world. It contributed greatly to the development of opera as a genre. In Venice, opera flourished with as many as 17 theaters at its height. Opera was an important element of the culture of this city full of feasts and celebrations. However, after the drastic reduction of ticket prices which took place in the 1670's, the quality of Venetian opera began to deteriorate. At the same time, Neapolitan opera was growing. Thus the center of Italian opera moved to Naples from Venice, and many modern scholars think that Venetian opera declined in the end of the century. For such reasons a large majority of studies on Venetian opera have treated only the 16th and 17th centuries, neglecting the 18th century. And the approaches have been made almost exclusively in the fields of music and music history, whose interests are concentrated on opera writers and their works.This paper is an attempt to reconsider Venetian opera from a different point of view, namely from that of social history, and takes into consideration the 18th century also. It makes a quantitative analysis of new opera works put on the stage in Venetian theaters for the hundred years 1660-1760 using the data given by Selfridge-Field (2007), and then examines the theaters which were active during the period. This analysis reveals that Venetian opera saw its quantitative peak in the first half of the 18th century. That means that after the "price revolution" brought about by Teatro di Sant'Angelo in 1677, opera became popularized and obtained a wider range of audience. It led to easier production of public-oriented opera with low cost. We may call it "pop opera". But such a change did not occur to Venetian opera as a whole. The traditional type of refined opera was maintained by Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo, which was opened in 1678 and specialized in classical and mythological themes. We may call this type "sophisticated opera." Both of these theaters were very successful and determined the two main streams of Venetian opera. Teatro di Sant'Angelo and Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo were the most influential in the history of Venetian theaters. One with "pop opera" and the other with "sophisticated opera", they constituted the two wheels of Venetian opera. They were cohabiting, rather than conflicting each other. In conclusion, we should not look on the changes in Venetian opera as deterioration or decline but as the establishment of a new sort of opera. We should also appreciate the coexistence of the old "sophisticated opera" and the new "pop opera", which made Venetian opera more prosperous than ever.