Operatic conventions and typical scenes in L’Eritrea (1652) by Giovanni Faustini and Francesco Cavalli

Abstract

L’Eritrea (1652) marks the last chapter of the ten-year collaboration between Giovanni Faustini (1615-1651) and Francesco Cavalli (1606-1676), which began in 1642 at the Teatro di San Cassiano and then continued with nine other drammi per musica performed in Venice. Operas by Faustini and Cavalli represent the predominant nucleus of the operatic production in Venice during the decade 1642-1652. The partnership between the librettist and the composer was decisive for the codification and consolidation of the main writing trends of Venetian opera in the mid-seventeenth century, through a production of plots that propose a canonical structure: the Venetian audience in 1652 could in fact recognize and appreciate in L’Eritrea a series of consolidated conventions and typical musical scenes, like madness and disguise. Starting from philological and dramaturgical criteria, this paper aims at reading L’Eritrea in order to analyse the librettist’s and composer’s writing technique in the context of seventeenth century Venetian Opera.