Publications
Chapter | Portuguese Patronage in Rome and the Economics of Magnificence: La Virtù negl’amori by Alessandro Scarlatti at the Teatro Capranica (1721)
Cristina Fernandes, an integrated researcher at INET-md and coordinator of its research group dedicated to Historical and Cultural Studies in Music, is the author of one of the chapters of Noble Magnificence: Culture of the Performing Arts in Rome 1644-1740 (Brepols, 2024), a book coedited by Anne-Madeleine Goulet e Michela Berti.
The book is on open access and is the result of a multidisciplinar research conducted under the project PerformArt, funded by the European Research Council (Grant agreement nr. 681415, PI: Anne-Madeleine Goulet). On October 2019, the team of this project met, inviting several researchers, at NOVA University Lisbon and Palácio Fronteira, for a final encounter where results were presented and discussed, preparing the volume at hand.
The chapter authored by Cristina Fernandes, titled "Portuguese Patronage in Rome and the Economics of Magnificence: La Virtù negl’amori by Alessandro Scarlatti at the Teatro Capranica (1721)", is part of a section on "The Economy of Magnificience", combining musicology and economic and cultural history. As the great Roman families used the performing arts to mantain or increase their prestige and assert their power, so did the diplomats who represented Europeand Catholic monarchies in the papal city, adopting similar procedures and incurring in exorbitant expenses as a way of legitimizing and competing with each other.
The case study presented by Cristina Fernandes analyses the large investment made in this context by Portuguese diplomacy in 1721, for the celebrations of the solenne possesso of Michaelangelo dei Conti as Pope Innocent XIII.
First composed as a chamber cantata, La Virtù negl'amorie was transformed, for this occasion, into an operatic spectacle to be presented in the sumptuous Teatro Capranica. The hasty and challenging format change of La Virtù negl'amori allows us to glimpse at the motives of King João V and his representatives, and makes specially relevant the unpublished documentation in the custody of the Ajuda Library, in Lisbon, which the author uses to analyse the expenditure with artists, set, costumes and other elements of the production and promotion of the spectacle.
Abstract:
The election in 1721 of Michelangelo Conti, former apostolic nuncio in Lisbon, as Pope Innocent XIII was seen by King John V as an opportunity to elevate the prestige of the Portuguese monarchy in Rome. Thus, to celebrate the solenne possesso of the new Pope, the ambassador of Portugal, Andre de Melo e Castro, decided to transform the pastoral La virtù negl’amori, by Alessandro Scarlatti – initially commissioned as a chamber cantata – into an operatic spectacle at the Teatro Capranica featuring Francesco Bibiena’s scenography, stage machinery, lavish costumes and ballets. This decision involved higher costs according to the magnificence of the occasion and the usages of Rome. Unpublished sources from the Biblioteca da Ajuda in Lisbon bring to light most of the expenses with artists and artisans, goods and services. This essay analyses these data within the context of Roman society to investigate the economics of magnificence in the field of the performing arts and the spending models adopted by aristocrats and diplomats in the Eternal City in the early eighteenth century.
