A calendar of Venetian opera

Abstract

Eleanor Selfridge-Field has been a major contributor to research on music in 17th- and 18th-century Venice for over 30 years. Readers may be familiar with her Venetian instrumental music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (Oxford, 1975), based on her doctoral dissertation, or her thematic catalogue of The music of Benedetto and Alessandro Marcello (Oxford, 1990). Her less well known ‘Pallade Veneta’: writings on Venetian music in society, 1650–1750 (Venice, 1985), a collection of edited extracts from a Venetian journal of the period, bore witness to her interest in Venetian culture and history in general. Her achievements are now crowned by the publication of A new chronology of Venetian opera…1660–1760, an encyclopaedic volume of 778 larger-than-A4 pages. Opera in Venice has been chronicled or catalogued many times before—by Ivanovich (1681, revised 1687), Bonlini (1730, with printed and manuscript additions to 1742), Groppo (1745, with Ms. addenda to 1767), Allacci (1755; first...