“Adelaide di Guesclino” al volgere dell’Ottocento

Gaetano Rossi adapted Voltaire’s tragedy Adélaïde du Guesclin into the libretto of the dramma di sentimento Adelaide di Guesclino with music by Giovanni Simone Mayr, first performed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 1 May 1799. Voltaire’s tragedy had already been used in a ballet by Augusto Favièr performed together with Sebastiano Nasolini’s La morte di Cleopatra (Venice, San Benedetto, 1794) and before that in a ballet by Carlo Lepicq performed together with Josef Mysliveček’s Ezio (Naples, San Carlo, 1775). A few months after the premiere in Venice, Mayr’s opera was revived as a dramma serio per musica for the 1800 Carnival season at the Teatro Sant’Agostino in Genoa, which continued to be successful in Northern Italy until 1810. The libretto was set to music also by Francesco Gnecco as another dramma serio per musica (Florence, 1800) and by Marcos Portugal as a dramma per musica (Lisbon, 1805). This case study provides insight into the intersections between tragedy, ballet and music, the distinction between semi-serious and serious works, and the fluctuating definitions of dramma sentimentale, dramma serio and dramma per musica in different theatrical contexts.