Acknowledgments
My first debt is to the staff of the Austrian National Library, especially that of the Musiksammlung, and that of the Wien-Bibliothek, along with the Österreichische Staatsarchiv at its two branches, including the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. I am also grateful to Dr. Rudi Risatti and Dr. Thomas Trabitsch at the Österreichisches Theatermuseum, and to Dr. Andreas Gamerith at the library of Stift Zwettl. Further thanks are due to Franco Colussi, Rubens Bertini, and Tommaso Sabbatini for checking on various matters in Italy. But this book could not have been finished without the aid of Austrian colleagues: Martin Eybl, Gernot Mayer, and Franz Eybl. The previous work on the overall Viennese repertory by Herbert Seifert, Steven Saunders, Alfred Noe, Andrea Sommer-Mathis, Harry White, Marko Deisinger, Çiğdem Özel, and Janet Page has been of enormous aid, and I strongly recommend reading their works in conjunction with the present study. For art-historical advice, I am indebted to Alice Jarrard and Walter Melion; for expert wisdom in historical acoustics, to Dorothea Baumann; and for guidance in political history, to Georg Michels and Gianvittorio Signorotto. My thoughts about tonal constructs in this repertory are predicated on the fundamental work of Gregory Barnett and Michael Dodds. Helpful critiques of chapters were provided by my 2016–17 colleagues at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, not least its director, James Chandler, and by the readers for the University of California Press. Just as the final version went in, the performance of Le Memorie dolorose by New York City’s Tenet and Acronym ensembles gave me the privilege of hearing one of these rare works come to life, for which I am grateful to Kivie Cahn-Lipman and Jolle Greenleaf. For counsel in literary matters, I thank Armando Maggi, Erminia Ardissino, and Eugenio Refini. At a key point, Jonathan Glixon encouraged me to tackle prejudice in the texts head-on. I remember Ray Gadke, who, alas, passed away just as the manuscript was completed, for his unending help with microfilms and many other library moments. Other individuals and institutions were also vital sources of information: the Biblioteca Federiciana of Fano; Dr. Angela De Benedictis at the Paul-Sacher-Stiftung; Michele Chiappini; the Archivio Segreto Vaticano; Nicoletta Pisu in Trent; and, for special help in Mantua, Licia Mari at the Archivio Storico Diocesano. I am grateful to Andrew McManus for running the music examples, and to Clare Snarski for Photoshop expertise. As always, Lucia Marchi has aided the book’s gestation in many ways.
One other scholar, from the past, deserves commemoration here. It must not have been easy for Flora Biach-Schiffmann, older than the other students and from a Jewish family, to complete her dissertation in art history at the University of Vienna in the 1920s on Giovanni and Ludovico Burnacini’s set designs for operas, oratorios, and sepolcri, given that the faculty members Professor Josef Stryzgowski and his Assistent Karl Ginhart espoused racist theories or were even Nazi Party members. Still, she published her work in 1931, and it remains the starting point for work on theater design in this repertory. Along with her husband, she was deported from the temporary mass housing for Jews in Vienna’s Second District, via the Aspergbahnhof, to Theresienstadt on 22 July 1942 and was murdered on 13 October of that year. At a moment when many phantoms of hate have come back to haunt Europe and North America, remembering past wrongs becomes more important than ever.
Abbreviations and Notes on Sources
| ASDMant | Archivio Storico Diocesano, Mantua |
| ASMant | Archivio di Stato, Mantua, Archivio Gonzaga |
| ASMod | Archivio di Stato, Modena |
| ASV, Germania | Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Segreteria di Stato, Germania |
| A-Wn | Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (standard siglum from RISM; for other sigla see below) |
| DBI | Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1960–; online at www.treccani.it) |
| HHStA | Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna (Minoritenplatz); ÄZA=Ältere Zeremonialakten; AZP=Alte Zeremoniellprotokolle; HK=Hofkorrespondenz |
| ÖStA | Österreichische Staatsarchiv, Vienna (Erdberg); FHKA= Finanz- und Hofkammeramt (therein: HZAB=Hofzahlamtsbücher; available at www.oesta.gv.at/site/6662/default.aspx) |
All the musical scores of Leopold’s Schlafkammerbibliothek in A-Wn have been digitized and are available at www.onb.ac.at, also the site for Minato’s 1700 collection of sacred libretti, Tutte le rappresentazioni sacre (Vienna, 1700; A-Wn, *38.J.133, here abbreviated as RS), an edition typographically but not textually different from the first editions of his libretti. The pre-1670 and post-1698 libretti, along with the post-1705 scores, in A-Wn have not yet been made available on the Internet. Italian poetic meters are indicated either by the technical term or by numerals and the abbreviations: p=piano; t=tronco; s=sdrucciolo. For indications of local pitch centers within pieces, I have used pitch-class names and an indication of either durus/mollis signatures (natural or 1 flat) or of seventeenth-century transpositions (e.g., “2 flats” indicating a “church-key” down a major second). Appendix 2 lists the home tonal centers of the surviving repertory according to this terminology, a practice used also in the text.
Libraries bear the standard RISM sigla, available at www.rism.info/en/sigla. Historical information on Vienna in and out of the Hofburg, if not cited specifically, has been taken from F. Czeike’s Historisches Lexikon Wien (Vienna, 1992–97), online at http://www.digital.wienbibliothek.at/wbrobv/content/titleinfo/1112764. In order not to confuse readers, I have employed the forms “Eleonora Gonzaga” (II, of Mantua/Nevers, 1630–86) and “Eleonore Magdalene” (of the Palatinate/Neuburg, 1655–1720) for Leopold I’s stepmother and third wife, respectively. All translations are mine.
Introduction
The Holy Sepulcher is unveiled; onstage there is an image of Job surrounded by his afflictions; above him, in the air, a Crucifix, with the motto “In hoc signo vinces”; and above this, a partial image of heavenly Glory with a choir of angels. First there is a sweet, not sad, instrumental introduction; then “Love of God” and “Faith in Christ” appear.
Love of God: Whoever does not love You is indeed ungrateful, / Anyone is impious who does not adore You, / God, You Who have given essence to nothingness, / Eternal Creator.
Faith in Christ: Anyone must be made of stone, or have a serpent’s heart, / who has no faith in these Wounds / whence the incarnate Redeemer / poured forth all His blood.
a2: Infinite/incarnate all-powerful One,
Love: Without You, Who created it, / Just as before [creation] it was naught / the world still would be just nothing.
Faith: Without You, Who redeemed them, / souls would still be slaves / of the devil and of sin.
a2: Whoever does not love You is indeed ungrateful, / Anyone is impious who does not adore You, / God, You Who have given essence to nothingness, / Eternal Creator.
This scene of wonder, with its three-plane set design by Lodovico Ottavio Burnacini, its theatrical text in Italian by Nicolò Minato, and its music by Antonio Draghi, was the opening of a central devotional moment for the Habsburg court in Vienna on Good Friday afternoon in 1697. Its emphasis on divine goodness seems at odds with both its set design—the Cross and the afflicted Job—and its ritual context, the aftermath of the morning’s ceremonies for the Adoration of the Cross and the Deposition of Christ. At the same time, the most important audience—and musical contributor of five arias—for the piece, La Virtù della Croce, was represented onstage by the biblical sufferer: Emperor Leopold I (1640–1705). He had already reigned for almost forty years, and in the preceding months had lost his sister Mariana of Austria and his second-youngest daughter to death, having previously witnessed his brother, his first two wives, three fathers-in-law, and some nine other children suffer the same fate.
With its “sweet” opening sinfonia, such a rounded and duetting moment