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Juan José Carreras
378
of royal magnificence. As in Madrid, the administration of the free admissions to the
opera, here on a yearly basis, lay in the hands of the Lord Chief Butler (Oberhofmar-
schall). From the theatre’s four floors of boxes, the exclusive first and second ranks
were mainly reserved, as would be expected, for the royal family, courtiers of higher
rank, ambassadors and government ministers. On the upper third and fourth floors,
court servants, librarians, the liberal professions and theatre staff such as stagehands,
tailors, carpenters and opera singers were present, suggesting a broader social range
than in Madrid. The crucial difference is apparent in the crowded stalls, where more
than four hundred spectators of lesser rank “from the court and the city” (“vom Hof
und aus der Stadt”) were accommodated on benches and in galleries set up in the
parterre.62
Fallen from heaven upon the earth
However, opera in the reign of Ferdinand VI was unique among all other court operas
for the presence of a great singer as its director. This occurred in absence of any official
appointment detailing Farinelli’s new extraordinary capacities. Expressed in current
terms, Farinelli’s position as head of the Buen Retiro opera joined simultaneously the
responsibility of a theatre’s artistic director (with ample financial powers) and that of a
stage director (with important musical prerogatives). Contemporaries were obviously
well aware of Farinelli’s new position. Anna Maria Peruzzi, a famous Italian soprano ac-
tive in Madrid in Farinelli’s time, refers to the castrato in a missive as “el Intendente de
la Música,” a position he ostensibly never possessed but effectively fulfilled.63 Titles such
as “Intendant des spectacles” or “Directeur des plaisirs” were current in courts from the
late 17th century onwards as a result of the growing importance of opera as a princely
entertainment. These posts were always given to a nobleman, since it would have been
unthinkable in the strongly hierarchical world of an absolutist court that such an influ-
ential post would have been held in other hands. Despite all the honours bestowed on
Farinelli by the Spanish Crown, he was never a member of the higher court nobility.64 In
62 For an excellent discussion on the audience and spaces of the court opera in Dresden on the basis of
exceptionally detailed documentation, see Mücke 2003, pp. 70–79; p. 73 reproduces the seating-plan
(‘Arrangement’) for the year 1755. The author notes a clear progressive increase in non-noble specta-
tors from the 1730s to the 1750s at the Saxon court opera (p. 74). The court opera of Dresden is named
together with the German court operas of Vienna and Berlin in Farinelli’s Descripción, see Broschi
1991, p.
69. It is also interesting to note that the Spanish court tried to hire Johann Adolf Hasse and his
wife Faustina Bordoni for the royal wedding celebrations of 1739, see the detailed memorandum by the
marquis Annibale Scotti, published in Carreras 2002, p. 222.
63 Carreras 2002, p. 227.
64 As is well known, patronage was a recognized means of entering the lower ranks of nobility by artists
and musicians pertaining to the personal sphere of the monarchs, see for instance Álvarez-Ossorio
2002, pp. 74–75; on the important research produced in recent years on the promotion and social mo-
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Buch Musiktheater im höfischen Raum des frühneuzeitlichen Europa - Hof – Oper – Architektur"
Musiktheater im höfischen Raum des frühneuzeitlichen Europa
Hof – Oper – Architektur
- Titel
- Musiktheater im höfischen Raum des frühneuzeitlichen Europa
- Untertitel
- Hof – Oper – Architektur
- Autoren
- Margret Scharrer
- Heiko Laß
- Herausgeber
- Matthias Müller
- Verlag
- Heidelberg University Publishing
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- deutsch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-947732-36-4
- Abmessungen
- 19.3 x 26.0 cm
- Seiten
- 618
- Schlagwörter
- Kunstgeschichte, Architektur, Oper, art history, architecture, opera
- Kategorie
- Kunst und Kultur