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40 LOWELL LINDGREN AND COLIN TIMMS Gaetano Berenstadt (1687-1734) sang in London during the spring of 1717, in Dresden-at a salary of 3,000 dollars (Fiirstenau, Dresden, ii, 105n&in 17 17-1 8, in Rome, Bologna, Brescia, Florence, Milan, Padua and Venice in 1720-2, then for the Royal Academy in London in 1722-4 (Highfill, Biographical Dictionary, ii, 49-50; Lowell Lindgren, in New Grove 2, iii, 308-10; idem, 'Berenstadt', 42-68 and 101-8; idem, 'An Intellectual Florentine Castrato at the End of the Medicean Era', in "Lo stupor dell'invenzione", Firenze e la nascita dell'opera, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Florence, 5-6 October 2000), ed. Piero Gargiulo (Florence, 2001), 139-63; and Maria Augusta Morelli Timpanaro, 'Su Gaetano Berenstadt, contralto (Firenze, 1687-1734), e sui suoi amici', Studi italiani: Semestrale di letteratura italiana, 912 (1997), 145-21 1). S. Pallavicini to Riva Dresden, 25 September 1723 [Saturday] I received your most illustrious lordship's letter in Prague, and it gave me greater satisfaction than the solemnities and spectacles. I have deferred rendering thanks to you until my return [to Dresden], because I wanted to inconvenience you with the enclosed letters, which I could not write there. I hope above all else that the most courteous Le Coq has spoken to you of my concern when I was informed of the health of your m. i. lordship; whatever else he says is mere politeness. I was comforted by the good news that you sent about our friend Berenstadt, because I love him in proportion to his height. But how could I regale you in exchange for such a delightful tale? To help relieve my hypochondria, which is sometimes increased by excessive idleness, our most charming Pellegrini has come to Dresden [from Prague], and I hope that we will have him here for many months or even years. He greets you in particular, and I beg you ever to believe me. Ricevei in Praga la lettera di Vostva Signovia Illustvissima, e mi fu di maggior soddisfazione che le solennita e gli spettacoli. Ho differito di rendergliene grazie fin a1 mio ritorno, perch6 ero d'intenzione d'incomodarLa colle accluse, che di 18 non potevo scrivere. Desidero sopra ogn'altra cosa che il gentilissimo Monsieur Le Coq abbia parlato della premura colla quale mi sono informato della salute di V. S. Ill.""; il rimanente I! sua mera cortesia. Mi anno consolato le buone nuove ch'Ella mi ha date di Berenstatt nosno, perch6 [p. 21 l'amo quant'egli I! lungo. Ma di che potrei io regalarLa in contraccambio di quella istorietta cosi graziosa? In soccorso de' miei ipocondri, che qualche volta il troppo ozio dilata, I! venuto a Dresda il nostro amenissimo Pellegrini, e spero che l'averemo per molti mesi per non dir anni. Egli la riverisce particolarmente, ed io La prego sempre di credermi. The most splendid of the spectacles mounted for the coronation of Emperor Charles V1 as king of Bohemia was Johann Josef Fux's setting of Pietro Pariati's 'festa teatrale per musica', Costanza e fortezza (Prague, Hradschin, 28 August 1723), ed. Egon Wellesz in Denkmaler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich, 34-5, Jg. 17 (1910). On Berenstadt's great height, see Lindgren, 'Berenstadt', 58-9, idem, 'Intellectual Florentine Castrato', 142, and idem, 'Zamboni', 61. When Riva wrote from Hanover on 9 November 1723, he amusingly asked Zamboni to give Berenstadt an embrace 'if he is seated' ('s'bgli a sedere'). T. Pallavicini to Riva Dresden, 3 November 1723 [Wednesday] What will your most illustrious lordship say, seeing that I have interposed a month between your letter and my reply and that, having been ordered to let you read my tragedy, I have not THE CORRESPONDENCE OF AGOSTINO STEFFANI AND GIUSEPPE RIVA, 1720-1728 41 attended promptly to such a simple matter? I have needed all this time to decide whether to send it to you as it is, that is to say, as a sketch or a skeleton of a tragedy, or whether it would be better to wait until I had changed it in many places in order to make it more bearable. I have finally decided on this latter alternative, meanwhile thanking your m. i. lordship for the honour that you do me and reserving the right to beg you to give me your opinion of it, informed as I am of the perfection of your taste, which I respect by reserving this right. I must render thanks to you also for the letter from Berenstadt that you recently forwarded to me. He gives me excellent news of himself. It's an age since I received any about Abbot Mauro. Your m. i. lordship will do me a signal favour if you will tell me something [about Mauro] before your departure [from Hanover]; as this is probably drawing near, allow me to anticipate it with best wishes for a prosperous voyage, while I submit myself. . .. Che dira Vostva Signovia IUustvissima ch'io abbia frapposto un mese fra la Sua letteva e la mia risposta e che, avendomi comandato di farLe leggere la mia tragedia, io non l'abbia con prontezza in cosi leggier cosa ubbidita? Di tutto questo tempo ho avuto bisogno per risolvere se doveva mandargliela tale quale ella sta, vale a dire un abbozzo o uno scheletro di tragedia, o se tornava meglio aspettare che io l'abbia in molti luoghi cambiata per renderla piu tollerabile. [p. 2) A questo ultimo partito mi sono finalmente appigliato, ringraziando intanto V. S. Ill."" dell'onore che mi fa, e riserbandomi di pregarLa di dirmi sopra di essa il Suo parere, informato come io sono della finitezza del Suo gusto ch'io con questa riserva rispetto. Ho da renderLe anche grazie per la letteva di Berenstatt ultimamente trasmessami. Egli mi da ottime nuove di se. Di quelle del Signor Abate Mauro gl'I! un tempo infinito ch'io ne manco. Una grazia singolare [p. 31 mi fara V. S. Ill."" se vorra dirmene qualche cosa prima del suo partire, il quale probabilmente accostandosi, mi sia lecito di prevenirlo cogli auguri d'un prosper0 viaggio, mentre mi rassegno . . .. U. Pallavicini to Riva Dresden, 27 December 1723 [Monday] Le Coq's sojourn here of several further weeks has given me the opportunity to serve your most illustrious lordship by sending you my tragedy. Impelled by the stimulus that the aforesaid has provided on your behalf, I have applied myself by going through it once again and reworking it in many places. Be that as it may, I am obeying you by sending it, certain at least that it will not bore you with excessive length. It is not [only?] for this reason that I do not regret having recopied it. The only request that I have is that your m. i. lordship will not evade your duty; indeed, I ardently beseech you to tell me your opinion with as much candour as that with which I ask for it. If for any reason you regret your curiosity [to have a tragedy by me], as I have cause to fear, discuss it with the bombastic Berenstadt, who is biased toward me and has said good things about it. A letter from your m. i. lordship has kindly been delivered by Count Petronio, who arrived here two days ago. I shall be delighted to hear of your arrival in London, and I remain with the usual respect . . .. Il soggiorno di qualche settimana di piu, che ha fatto qui il Signor Le Cocq, mi ha dato luogo di servire Vostva Signovia Illustvissima con trasmetterLe la mia tragedia; poichC, mosso anche dagli impulsi che il suddetto mene ha dati in Suo nome, mi sono messo a ripassarla e rifriggerla in molti luoghi. Tale quale ella sia, ubbidisco, e glieLa mando, sicuro almeno che non L'annoiera per troppa lunghezza. Non per questo ha lasciato di rincrescermi il ricopiarla; e questo I! tutto l'obbligo Ip. 21 che pretend0 che V. S. Ill."" mene abbia, non per6 esimendola, anzi vivamente pregandoLa di dirmene il Suo parere con
42 LOWELL LINDGREN AND COLIN TIMMS altrettanta sincerita con quanta io glielo dimando. Che se avra di che pentirsi della Sua curiosita, come io ho motivo di temere, se la pigli coll'enfatico e mi parziale Berenstatt, che gliene ha detto del bene. D'una lettera di V. S. Ill."" mi ha favorito il Signor Conte Petronio, giunto qua due giorni sono. Godri, dei felici riscontri dell'arrivo di Lei a Londra, e sono col solito rispetto . . .. In 1720-1 Pallavicini and Steffani had agreed to revise Tassilone-a tragedia per musica (Dusseldorf, 1709)-for a production by the Royal Academy of Music in London, but this project had been abandoned for many reasons (see nos. 1-2, 4A, 7-8, 15, 18-19, 19A and 20, below). Five-act works labelled tragedia per musica were uncommon, but Tassilone was Pallavicini's third. The earlier ones were Telegono (Dusseldorf, 1697), which had been set by Carlo Luigi Pietragrua (the writer of letter J, above), and Arminio (Dusseldorf, 1707), a pasticcio drawn from Steffani's earlier works (see Croll, 'Chronologie'). Pallavicini could therefore have been writing another tragediaper musica in 1723. The setting envisaged for it might have been another pasticcio of arias by Steffani or a new score by Riva's favourite, Bononcini. It is conceivable, though highly unlikely, that Pallavicini made changes to Lorenzo Morani's text for Furnace (Venice, 1703), a libretto that Bononcini set for a London pre- miere on 27 November 1723. The adaptors of Morani's text are unknown, but one of them may have been Bononcini's brother-in-law, Luigi Riccoboni, the director of the commedia dell'arte troupe in Paris, where Bononcini performed during the summer of 1723. Bononcini's two most 'tragic' operas for London were Furnace and Astianatte (1727). On the latter, see nos. 43 and 47, below. o Count Petronio has not been identified. Postscript to L U Twenty-one additional letters from Pallavicini to Riva date from 1732 (nos. 211-16), 1733 (217-19), 1734 (220-2), 1736 (223-6), 1737 (227-30) and 1738 (no. 231). All but the last of these letters-three from Warsaw and seventeen from Dresden-were written to Riva after the latter had moved to Vienna. The final letter was written in St Pelten on 21 May 1738, shortly after Riva had moved to Modena. In no. 21 1 Pallavicini stated that 'the singing of the marvellous Farinelli [manifests], besides the calls of all kinds of birds, various other resemblances to them' ('il cantare del mirabil Farinello . . . oltre il verso d'ogni sorta [sic] d'uccelli, varie altre somiglianze'); he then greeted the singer Barbara Pisani and the costume designer Antonio Daniele, Count Bertoli (1678-1743), and asked Riva to inform Berna-if he wrote to him-that Pallavicini was anxiously awaiting letters from him. Bertoli, who was employed in Vienna from 1707 until his death (Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker and Hans Vollmer, eds., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Kunstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1907-50), iii, 507), was mentioned in four more letters (nos. 212, 216, 221 and 224). Berna, who was mentioned in two more (nos. 215 and 218), was presumably Gaetano Berenstadt, who wrote to Pallavicini but whose 'ragings' ('smanie') rendered his 'fantasia' unintelligible (nos. 219-21), presumably because he was outspokenly opposed to the political changes in Tuscany (Lindgren, 'Berenstadt', 89-98; idem, 'Intellectual Florentine Castrato', 152 and 159-62; Morelli Timpanaro, 'Berenstadt', 180-6). Pallavicini delivered his judgment on the new vocal style in no. 216, dated 17 November 1732: 'the singers of our day, by wanting to imitate Faustina, have deformed music; I don't know what the imitators of Farinello can possibly do' ('i cantori de' nostri giorni per voler imitare Faustina anno deformata la musica; ne so cosa possa restar a fare agl'imitatori di Farinello'). On 3 September 1732 Pallavicini asked Riva to find a post in London for his friend and collabor- ator Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692-1753), a musician who had been unjustly released from the ser- vice of (August 11) the king of Poland (no. 213; cf. Sven HanselUWolfgang Hochstein, in New Grove 2, xxi, 443-5). Ristori was 'an able musician who composes with naturalness, writes well for the church, and is an excellent accompanist at the harpsichord, as are all those who were trained in Bologna' ('bravo musico, compone con naturalezza, fa bene da chiesa, ed e ottimo accompagnatore THE CORRESPONDENCE OF AGOSTINO STEFFANI AND GIUSEPPE RIVA, 172G1728 43 di cembalo, come quello ch'e della scuola di Bologna'). Pallavicini recommended 'some permanent post at the Academy' ('qualche cosa di fisso da quella Accademia'), presumably because he did not know that the Royal Academy had exhausted its funds and ceased its operations in June 1728 (Deutsch, Handel, 224-7). Ristori could serve it well, 'because, apart from playing in the orchestra, he will know the best way to revise those operas that are brought over from Italy from time to time' ('oltre il sonare in orchestra egli sarebbe il caso casiscimo per rifrigger quell'opere, che di quando in quando fanno venire d'Italia7). If Senesino was in London, he was to be asked for an opinion, since he had known Ristori at the Dresden court. Pallavicini abandoned this quest after Riva informed him of the sad state of operatic affairs at London in 1733 (no. 215). Pallavicini looked forward to the new Metastasio librettos that Riva sent him (nos. 214-16, 218, 221 and 224) and discussed his own translation, publication and distribution of Horatian odes in 'versi Toscani' (nos. 21627), but he hardly mentioned his creation of librettos for operas and sere- natas (nos. 228-9). He gave the precise date, 3 February, when Hasse and his wife Faustina Bordoni arrived in Dresden in 1734 (no. 220). He complained, on 21 January, that they had not yet arrived in 1737 (no. 227), presumably because Hasse was to set his new libretto, Senocrita, which was premiered on 27 February (Sven Hansell, in New Grove 2, xi, 110). Copies of two further letters from Pallavicini to Riva, dated 22 March and 7 May 1737, are pre- served in I-MOe Archivio Muratoriano, filza 86, fasc. 4.B. l l. Extracts from these are printed in Marri, 'Italienischer Dichter', 169, nos. 2 and 4. Counterpoint, 1-50: The Steffani-Riva Correspondence The numbered letters given below include twenty-eight from Steffani to Riva and twenty-two sent by Riva to Steffani. They are supplemented by two from Pallavicini to Steffani (nos. 4A and 19A), two from Nicola Francesco Haym to Steffani (43A and 48A), and a letter and an undated work-list sent by John Ernest Galliard to Riva, who forwarded them to Steffani (48B and 49). This section is named Counterpoint for two reasons: unlike the Preludes, both 'voices' of its correspondence sur- vive, and unlike the Preludes, which largely concern searches for young or up-to-date singers, the five 'contrapuntal' writers frequently frowned upon the new-fangled, non-contrapuntal frills of the pre-Classical style. They favoured instead the old-fashioned 'Renaissance' masters-Steffani (b. 1654), Tosi (b. 1654), Bononcini (b. 1670) and Cuzzoni (b. 1696tand definitely disliked any- one
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