A "Sociable Moment": Sienese Opera Patronage and Performance, 1669-1704

FAIN: FA-55677-11

Colleen Ann Reardon
Regents of the University of California, Irvine (Irvine, CA 92617-3066)

Sociability--a term that seeks to define the various ways in which human beings interact with one another--has attracted scholars in a number of fields as a way of understanding the development of civil society and the public sphere in early modern Europe. Sociability studies have informed research into trends among opera-going audiences in the 19th century, but no one has yet attempted to look at the entire operatic enterprise as a search for the appropriate "sociable moment." My project uses Georg Simmel's thesis concerning the egalitarian nature of the "sociable moment" to examine operatic patronage, production, and performance in Siena from 1669-1704. Such a thesis challenges the standard thrust of patronage studies, which look to find self-interest at every possible turn. Sociability studies provide a new way to frame the pan-Italian expansion of opera during the late seventeenth century and to understand how opera functions in contemporary culture.

Associated Products

A Sociable Moment: Opera and Festive Culture in Baroque Siena (Book)
Title: A Sociable Moment: Opera and Festive Culture in Baroque Siena
Author: Colleen Reardon
Abstract: After their military defeat by the Florentines in the mid-sixteenth century, the citizens of Siena turned from politics to celebratory, social occasions to express their civic identity and show their capacity for collective action. In the first major work of its kind, Colleen Reardon opens a window on the ways in which the Sienese absorbed the new genre of opera into their own festive apparatus and challenges the prevailing view that operatic productions in the city were merely an extension of Medici power to the provinces. It was, rather, members of the expatriate Chigi family who exploited the festive impulse of their countrymen, coordinating operatic performances with their triumphant visits home by activating ties of friendship and family as well as connections to Sienese institutions, most notably the Assicurate, possibly the first all-female academy in Italy. If the Chigi proved successful at inserting opera into larger patterns of sociability that conveyed the very essence of what it meant to be Sienese (senesità), their successor, the flamboyant playwright and librettist Girolamo Gigli, struggled in his attempts to transform operatic performances into professional enterprises. Fluidly written and richly embellished with anecdotes from historical chronicles, A Sociable Moment offers insight into the Sienese experience with opera during the genre's rapid expansion throughout the Italian peninsula during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Year: 2016
Publisher: New York: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0-19-04963
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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