Was Verdi or his librettist Somma aware of Isabella d’Aspeno, a big operatic hit at that time in Milano, when they started working on the dramatic plot of Un Ballo in Maschera? This paper attempts to answer this question by offering a comparative examination of the two operas, supplemented by a scrutiny of the other known prototypes of Un Ballo in Maschera, such as the works of Auber (Gustave III ou Le Bal Masquée), Gabussi (Clemenza di Valois) and Mercadante (Il Reggente).įocusing on a selection of musical works from within three genres –- symphony, string quartet, and the piano repertoire –- I argue that the experience of music from the late 20th and early 21st centuries must be understood in terms of its mediation by the continued presence of the past, not simply through reference to past musical formal materials, but also to the history of experience as musically mediated. Taking into consideration that Carrer’s Isabella (composed in 1853 and first presented in Italy in 1855) is anterior to Verdi’s Ballo (1859), it would be reasonable to wonder whether the work of the young composer from Zante was one of the prototypes for one of the major operatic creations of the incontestable king of the Italian opera. Both works dramatize the assassination of a sovereign by his political and erotic rival, which takes place during an official masquerade ball. The particularity of this work lies is its obvious thematic similarity to the celebrated Italian opera Un Ballo in Maschera by Giuseppe Verdi and Antonio Somma. The opera Isabella d’Aspeno opened in April 1855 at the Milanese theatre ‘Carcano’ and was considered one of the grands succès of the year, a fact confirmed by the numerous repetitions of the production during that year and the next. This paper paper focuses on an opera forgotten today, but popular in its time: Isabella d’Aspeno, a work by the Ionian composer Paolo Carrer and the unknown Italian librettist hidden behind the initials R.G.S.
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