Page - 375 - in Musiktheater im höfischen Raum des frühneuzeitlichen Europa - Hof – Oper – Architektur

Farinelli’s Dream: Theatrical Space, Audience and Political Function of Italian Court Opera 375 Spanish court. Writing on Friday the 4  April 1755, he mentions the atrasos, the delays to the regular schedule of planned performances: “I reckon the Court will be moving to Aranjuez about the 20th  [of April]. We are now paying ourselves los arrasos  [atrasos] de operas we lost during Her Catholic Majesty’s indisposition. We have one to night, and another on Sunday, and three I suppose in the next week.”48 Another complementary perspective to Keene’s is given by a series of letters of the Spanish Infanta Maria Antonia of Bourbon, who wrote regularly to her mother the widowed Queen Elisabeth Farnese, then banished from court to the royal site of San Ildefonso.49 According to these letters, pervaded by her weariness of the ritual duties pertaining to her rank,50 the Infanta attended to twenty performances at the Buen Re- tiro of two operas and two serenades between 19  December 1748 and 13  April of the following year. This sheer intensity of performances, registered as court events in the Infanta’s correspondence among other entertainments such as Spanish spoken plays and balls, clearly contrasts with only three references to operas in the Gaceta de Madrid during the same months.51 Three days before Lent, the Infanta explained to her mother that from the Sunday before Lent to Shrove Tuesday balls were planned every day af- ter the opera and that it was “understood that the two operas would alternate with the serenata.”52 The number and extent of these performances were naturally subordinated to the contingencies of the ups and downs of court life, such as, for instance, the noto- riously weak health of the Queen Barbara de Braganza, as the Infanta reports in detail to her mother. For this reason, for instance, on one occasion the queen “ordered that only half of the arias  [of the opera] should be sung, to finish sooner.”53 Court opera in the 18th century was thus a compulsory iterative performance for many courtiers, an 48 Letter dated 4  April 1755 (Keene 1933, p.  401). I read atrasos in place of arrasos, which makes no sense in Spanish. 49 Extracts of these letters were published by Cotarelo y Mori 1917, pp.  134–139. 50 In addition to repeated complaints about the temperature and narrowness of the boxes of the Coliseo, the Infanta reports of one performance causing overwhelming sleepiness (“me da un sueño terrible”) or being terribly boring (“me cansa infinito”), see Cotarelo y Mori 1917, pp.  137–138. 51 The Gaceta reports on 7  January 1749 on the Twelfth Night performance of “la nueva Opera en Música intitulada Artaxerges.” On 21  January, the same paper mentions “la Opera intitulada Poliphemo y Gala- thea, últimamente mejorada con la variación de su Música, y nuevas Partes” performed the day before to celebrate Carlo di Borbone’s birthday. On 25  February, the Gaceta ireports generically on “la diversión de Comedias Españolas, Operas Italianas, y Bayles Franceses” at the Buen Retiro palace. 52 “Hasta aquí no habíamos tenido baile: mañana los habrá después de la ópera, que se hará también los tres días: se entiende alternando las dos óperas con la Serenata,” Letter from 15  February 1749, cited by Cotarelo y Mori 1917, p.  138. 53 “anoche en la ópera (.  .  .) envió a decir que no cantasen más que la mitad de las arias para despachar más pronto,” cited by Cotarelo y Mori 1917, p.  137.