Ritual, Liturgy, and the Venetian Theatrical Calendar

Eleanor Selfridge-Field

The Calendar Reform of 1582

In 1582, when the Church of Rome officially adopted what we now call the Gregorian calendar, its leading mathematicians were attempting to rectify a gradual drift of the Julian calendar away from the solar positions with which it had been aligned 1250 years earlier. In essence, the lunar "year" which determined the moveable feasts of the church was now misaligned with the events it represented by ten days. The Julian calendar in use since the fourth century reconciled the calendar to the earth's planetary motion by moving the spring equinox back one day in every 128 years. The practice had been established by the Council of Nicea in 325, when the date of the equinox, previously March 25, was reset to March 21. The sixteenth-century fix was to omit ten days from computed time and thus to restore the proper alignment of religious culture with the cycles of nature. Effectively the days 5-14 October never occurred, at least on the Papal calendar.

Mathematical, astronomical, and theological arguments had been made for generations, but there was no consensus about change. Calendars were a cohesive force in local cultures and a differentiating factor, much like language, across the broad spectrum of Christianity's realms. In both Christian and heathen climes, the day on which the year advanced was normally a feast day of some kind. The Church celebrated a great many feast days, and local traditions were highly varied in their interpretation of the advancement of the year. Ostensibly the year was measured by one complete rotation "of the sun around the earth." In practice the choice of dates on which the year was considered to advance hovered near the two equinoxes and the winter solstice. One common system of reckoning the year was from Christmas (25 December). Others included reckoning it from the feast of the Annunciation (25 March) or employing a moveable date, either Easter, or the Sunday following the feast of St. Andrew (30 November; Maiello 27). In a few locales along the Adriatic coast the Byzantine calendar, in which the year advanced on 1 September, was retained. The Venetian advanced their year on 1 March, so they had long been discrepant from the Florentines, Mantuans, and Bolognese (25 March); the Brescians and Modenese (25 December); the French (Easter); and the Germans (1 January).

The idea of calendar reform was no popular in the 1580s than the idea of establishing a common European currency was in the 1990s. Many who followed the debate feared the loss of cultural identity more than they welcomed a system of standardization that would be of value principally to record-keepers and accountants. Resistance was strenuous. Among the most vocal dissenters were Zarlino (1583), Montaigne (1585), Newton (1686), and Leibnitz (1703).

Disagreements over time-keeping systems spawned new ways of viewing the past. One advocated the separation of Achronological@ from Ahistorical@ time. That is, it sought to distinguish the newer practice of isolating events by date from the older approach of viewing time as a Acontinuum". Another advocated the development of a comparative view of time-keeping, for example by viewing the methods of Christian Europe against those of ancient Jewish or Chinese calendars (Maiello 21; Borst 104-117).

The ten-day-leap part of calendar reform rolled through Europe by fits and starts, making inroads here, sparking opposition there. Overall it was adopted much more rapidly in Roman Catholic lands than in Protestant or Orthodox ones, claiming France and Bavaria in 1583, Austria and Bohemia in 1584, and the Palatinate of Neuburg in 1615. In the Protestant north Denmark went forward in 1699, the Netherlands in 1700, England and Ireland in 1752. In Orthodox regions of Eastern Europe it was accepted only in the twentieth century—by Greece and the former U.S.S.R. in 1923.

After 1582 many cities of Italy, which functioned as centers of small principalities or republics, adopted the ten-day leap (it became eleven in the eighteenth century) without reforming the start of the new year. The Venetian new year was officially observed by government offices until the fall of the Republic in 1797. Priests were, however, obliged to recognize the Papal calendar. Practical time-keeping was managed by clerics and accountants, on whom the general population were dependent.

Dates were often designated by the commemorations on which they fell, that is as verbal expressions rather than as numerals. It was common parlance to say that a potentate would arrive "on St. Martin's" or that workers would be paid on "St. John's". These expressions did not have any religious meaning, but their continued use reinforced the cyclical (and liturgical) view of civic order.

In Venetian theatrical history, one further complication arises. In addition to a new-style year suited to Vatican time-keeping and an old-style year which enabled the Venetian Republic to retain its identity, accountants employed a contractual year based on agrarian practices of much earlier times. By analogy with the practice of paying labourers on St. John' (6 May) for planting and on St. Martin's (11 November) for harvesting, theater managers paid theatrical singers and instrumentalists (as well as scenery designers and costume makers) for a "season" that extended from the early autumn through the end Carnival. They issued pay retrospectively, for the whole of that period, on the first day of Lent. In opera libretti works were sometimes described as having been "first," "second," or "third." These ordinals invariably refer to the chronology of one theater between early autumn and the start of Lent.

The Interpretation of Dates in Documentary Research

In dealing with dated documents (especially correspondence official records) from multiple parts of Europe that relate to a common subject, the use of multiple time-keeping systems has generated many traps for the unwary. One is that modern authors, unaware of the debates of the time, may fail to recognize that an old-style date is old-style. Less commonly, authors modernize without indicating whether they have or have not done so. They may, however, modernize dates in earlier secondary sources that have already been modernized.

The problem in Venetian studies is different from all of these: it is that records were kept in both styles but scribes of the time were not consistent. My search of a dozen parallel but incomplete series of archival documents compiled weekly (for the purposes of journalism, espionage, and church- and state-record keeping systems (more than 10,000 items in all) enables me to offer a provisional description based on document types:

1. Avvisi (weekly newssheets usually sold on a six-month subscription basis) from Venice: not consist in year-dating. A single scribe could facilitate from week to week. But avvisi were almost always compiled on Saturdays for dispatch by a weekly mail coach (staffiere). This enables the year to be deducible.

2. Censors' licenses to print the libretti required for public opera productions are entirely inconsistent in year-dating, sometimes varying from reference to reference within a single permission written in 50 words or less on a single folio. It is this vacillation which is replicated in the contradictory year-dates of printed libretti.

3. Mandates concerning the operation of theaters in the records of the Venetian Council of Ten and other highly placed government bodies are consistently dated in the old style, though they are not consistently indicated as such.

4. Notatorial and litigation records for official acts and citations authorized under the Venetian government are in principle dated in the old style.

5. Reports sent to the Vatican, irrespective of the place of origination of the local calendar, are uniformly preserved in the modern style.

The combination of day-of-the-week stability in the avvisi and the consistency of year designations in reports to the Vatican has enabled a corpus of some 10,000 references to Venetian opera in the period from 1660 to 1760 to be fitted into a coherent and nearly complete chronology.

From Liturgy to Calendar: The Seasonal Strata of the Venetian Theater

Although my original aims in approaching the problems of dating were the perfunctory ones of resolving a host of small contradictions and establishing a reliable "continuum" of venetian opera, the gradual accumulation of findings (establishing relationships for approximately 1,000 over the century under discussion) enabled me to perceive outlines of two phenomena with much broader significance. The first was that all the boundaries of the theatrical seasons in Venetice were controlled in some measure by feast days.10 Among these feasts, there was something close to balance between those primarily coincident with the liturgical calendar and those coincident with the calendar of the Republic. This became evident not from the viewing the three seasons per se but from piecing together the component parts of each of them from smaller entities which, for lack of a better word, I call "sub-seasons" or "season-
segments." A working calendar is shown in Table 1. The duration of these segments is, on average, three weeks, which was the average length of an opera production between 1650 and 1730.

The autumn theatrical season consisted of three periods, which I have called St. Luke's, St. Martin's, and St. Andrew's. Excluding the Novena of Christmas, when all theatres were almost always closed, the winter consisted of St. Stephen's, Carnival proper, and Fat Week (initiated by the Venetian observation of Giovedì Grasso, after which I have named it). The spring tehatrical season, short in duration and of limited important in the century at hand, was tied to the feast of Ascension. Within this scheme the saints' days were fixed, while the named feasts for moveable. The opening of the theatres in both the autumn and Carnival periods was permitted only by government decree, not by formula.

Name

Time-span designated

Autumn (St. Luke=s)

From the Monday before St. Luke=s (18 October) to the eve of St. Martin=s (10 November); the period of autumn villeggiatura for the Venetian nobility (precluding their presence at performances in the city).

Autumn (St. Martin=s)

From St. Martin=s (11 November) through the Saturday on which the Maggior Consiglio was reconvened. The nobility were drifting back to town.

Advent (St. Andrew=s)

From the first Sunday of Advent through 15 December. The government was in session and new posts were taken up.

Advent (Novena)

From December 16 through 24 (the Novena of Christmas) plus Christmas Day (25 December)

Winter (St. Stephen=s)

From St. Stephen=s (26 December) until the day preceding the opening of Carnival

Winter (Carnival)

From the day on which Carnival was permitted to open by the Venetian government until the Wednesday before Ash Wednesday.

Winter (Giovedì Grasso)

From Giovedì Grasso (the Thursday before Ash Wednesday) until Shrove Tuesday (or an earlier closing date of Carnival).

Lent; Holy Week

From Ash Wednesday through Easter.

Eastertide

From the day after Easter until the Tuesday before Ascension.

Ascension

From the Eve of Ascension through (usually) the 17 subsequent days

Summer (St. Anthony=s)

From St. Anthony=s (13 June) through 31 July;

The period of summer villeggiatura.

Summer (Assumption)

From 1 August through the Sunday preceding St. Luke=s. The government was in session and elected officers for the coming session at its close of business.

Table 1. Composite table of the demarcation of particular seasons for theatrical entertainments. No public theatrical performances were normally permitted during the shaded periods.

What reinforces the validity of this comparmentalization is that each of these periods had a distinct cultural and dramaturgical profile. This was to some degree rooted in liturgical tradition. St. Luke, the third evangelist of the Christian gospels, was a healer and was, appropriately, the patron of physicians and surgeons. During the period of autumn ushered in by his commemoration, Venetian nobles went to their countryside villas, where they hunted, gamed, read poetry and enjoyed the bounties of the season. They also gravitated towards Rovigo, where from the 1690s modest operas were given during the annual fair, which started on St. Luke's and lasted for eighteen days (i.e. through 5 November). To promote their own health, they could also visit the baths at nearby Abano and other venues at slight distance from their villas.

The St. Martin's period has a similarly distinctive profile. While there is some thinking that the Christian feast (11 November) may be traceable to Celtic origins, it is commemorates the poor son of a Hungarian soldier (hence the saint's charge as patron of the poor and of soldiers). St. Martin (of Tours) was also the father of French monasticism. The feast of St. Martin survives into the twenty-first century in Alpine regions as a recognized holiday associated with harvest, feasting, and thanksgiving. It has been an occasion for the eating of a "fatted goose," with the attribution of supernatural powers to the wishbone of a roasted fowl, with the opening of new bottles of wine, with predictions of winter weather, and with weddings (perhaps encouraged by its importance as an agrarian pay-day). In the Veneto it was the time to gather meats, wines, and grains from the countryside and ship them by barge to the lagoon. In warm, dry years the nobility remained in the countryside through this feast; in wet, cold ones they retreated to the city after All Saint's or All Soul's (1 and 2 November respectively).

The use of the label "St. Andrew's" (30 November) to designate the next period of time (which can be equated roughly to the first fortnight of December) is artificial. It was chosen as the most significant one occurring near the moveable date (the fourth Sunday before Christmas) on which the liturgical season of Advent began. The government was officially reopened on the preceding day, a Saturday. It was a sort of home-coming day and a time to focus on the strengths of the Venetian legacy. While the choice is arbitrary, St. Andrew is not without some resonance in Venetian lore. A fisherman and the first Apostle, Andrew was also, according to legend, the first bishop of Byzantium. Although the literary merits of such indigenous entertainments as eclogue pescatorie are hardly overwhelming, entertainments of cultural reconfirmation may have paved the way for the early practice (before 1680) of opening the winter Carnival during this period.

Although the term "Carnival" has been used universally, if vaguely, to refer both to festivities occurring between Christmas and the start of Lent and to the corresponding portion of the calendar, the latter has a much more precise and finite meaning in Venetian culture. The terminating date was, of course, governed by the moveable feast of Easter. The feast of St. Stephen's is recorded as the initiating date of Carnival in many Venetian studies, but this is not generally applicable in the century under study. Carnival proper coincided with the practice of permitting masking to begin each day after "pranzo," the midday meal, in contrast to masking only at night. The more generous allotment of hours obviously allowed seasonal activities greater scope for both length and breadth. Carnival in this strict sense was opened when the government, fearful of the public nuisances that the season often presented, mandated that it could be opened. This happened on short notice (i.e., within the day). To the extent that there was a theatrical period that could be labelled "Carnival," it began for much of the period between 1650 and 1725 (if not earlier) about one month before Shrove Tuesday. It subsumed the period I have identified separately as Giovedì Grasso.

This left a more ambiguous period from the feast of St. Stephen's (26 December) until the start of Carnival. The saint was commemorated as the first martyr of the Christian church. The feast date may have had pagan origins as a solstice festival. In Venice the feast was celebrated, somewhat idiosyncratically, with a water-borne procession across the bacino to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Numerous depictions show the doge and his counsellors embarking for the return trip with piffari to accompany them in separate gondolas. The doge would then give a banquet for his retinue. Musical entertainments of a faintly dramatic nature were a regular part of such occasions, but few details about them are known. It is incontrovertably true that the theatres reopened (after their closure for the Novena) on 26 December. It is generally not true either that Carnival opened on that date. It is not necessarily the case the new works opened on that date either, although they sometimes did.

The theatrical calendar of winter was disrupted numerous religious feasts. Theatres were required to be closed for the triduo (three-day feast) of Circumcision and veneration of the Cross (1-3 January, when lavish religious services were held in the Ducal Basilica, San Marco), for Epiphany (6 January, when shepherds' plays were given in the ospedali), on religious feasts with civic connotations on 8 and 14 January, and for the two-day observance of Santa Maria Formosa (2 February, corresponding to the Christian feast of Purification). Although theaters were closed at this time, dramatic cantatas were sometimes given in private academies.

This concentration of religious feasts was counter-balanced at the end of Carnival with the festivities of Giovedì Grasso ("Fat Thursday"). Although linguistically akin to Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday, which fell five days later), Giovedì Grasso commemorated to the Venetians their twelfth-century victory over the bishopric of Grado and Aquileia [xx] with the beheading of a bull. In later centuries the feast took on a popular character marked by a host of ritual entertainments in the Piazzetta. If anything, it was a time when the nobility (the customary audience of theatrical entertainments) retreated to private venues for balls and banquets. Masquerading in the street was, nonetheless, an activity in which all ranks of society participated.

Following Lent and Holy Week, during which activity in public theatres was invariably prohibited, there had been a practice in the sixteenth century of initiating a new comedy season on the Monday after Easter ("Angel Monday" or Lunedì dell'Angelo). This practice did not carry over into the opera era, when theaters were steadfastly closed until the approach of the Ascension fair. The clientele for these works were probably visitors attracted by the fair rather than the nearby merchants of the autumn or the nobles who came in the winter. Only three theatres of Venice's six participated in spring opera. There is no evidence of comedy productions in the spring, as comedy troupes found many other engagements at other fairs in other locales. Like the early winter period, the spring theatrical season was disrupted by Ascension itself, by the triduo of Pentecost ten days later, and sometimes (depending on how late Easter fell) by the retreat of the nobility to Padua for the feast of St. Anthony (13 June).

From Calendar to Dramaturgy

Although the distinct dramaturgical propensities of each seasonal period varied somewhat over time, each of these seasonal segments can be tied to specific propensities of dramatic genre. In all of its phases of evolution the liturgical practices of the middle ages have cast their shadows. Specific associations are summarized in Table 2.

Briefly, theatres were only opened sporadically in the St. Luke's period, and almost always for comedies rather than operas. Such operas as were given in the early autumn were relatively light works by relatively unknown composers. This suggests that they were produced on a low budget, which was a practical strategem, given the absence of the nobility. After 1680 there was a progressively greater tendency for the second-tier theatres such as Sant' Angelo, San Cassiano, and San Moisè to present an opera in the St. Martin's period. These works usually remained in production during the St. Andrew's period, when the very rich Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo and its one-time rival San Salvatore often opened. The subjects became progressively grander and the creators of higher profile as the year progressed towards its conclusion.

The weeks after St. Stephen's (that is the weeks preceding the formal opening of Carnival) were often marked by state visits, particularly of potentates from duchies and states of the Italian peninsula. Entertainments given publicly during the St. Stephen's period were often directed towards an Italian but non-
Venetian noble public. Themes from the histories of the Roman Empire and decisive battles involving foreign invaders were especially popular topics of operas of this period. Operas for Carnival proper distinguished themselves first by catering for the foreign (i.e. German, Austrian, French, English, or Scandinavian) nobility who passed through Venice either (ostensibly) to conduct business with the government or to visit a religious shrine. Works given during this period were the longest and most serious of the entire year. They involved the most lavish staging, the biggest budgets, the most highly respected composers and librettists, and the largest audiences.

Dramatic works which were given publicly during the last days of Carnival tended to be abbreviated. In some cases only the first act of an opera was given. In others, a revue of the theatre's "greatest hits" of the past season was performed by its most popular singers. There was little dramatic integrity in this fare, but presentation and performance skills were valued.

The short spring season, which was not formalized until 1722, usually began on the eve of Ascension (a Wednesday night) and lasted for two-and-a-
half weeks. It catered for a mercantile audience by offering works which were shorter than the works of autumn of spring, less serious, and more generic. Pastoral topics and works based on fantasia or preposterous assumptions gradually became hallmarks of this period. Balli were numerous and often involved large numbers of dancers (i.e., ten). Some became so self-important towards the middle of the eighteenth century that their libretti were printed separately from those of the works in which they were performed.

Name

Dramaturgical associations

Autumn (St. Luke=s)

This had long been a season of comedy since at least the middle of the sixteenth century. The comedy tradition continued; only rarely were operas (often pastoral in nature) given in this period. They were low-budget works with music by little-known composers.

Autumn (St. Martin=s)	St. Martin's became a period in which some theatres continued to present comedies but others gradually began to offer serious opera (suited to the returning nobility). The works were more modest than those of the winter.

Advent (St. Andrew=s)

This seems briefly to have been a prime period for the start of "Carnival" operas in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. When Venice was under strict papal rule (which was rarely), no operas or comedies were given in Advent.

Advent (Novena)

Period of religious devotion. Theatrical performances were generally outlawed during this period.

Winter (St. Stephen=s)

Theatres reopened on St. Stephen's but not always with new fare. Opera prevailed over comedy but was not as lavish as in Carnival proper. Subjects commonly focused on historical legends from their respective traditions and patriotism generally.

Winter (Carnival)

Carnival was the period during which long, serious operas were most prevalent. Tragedies can be associated with this period. Historical plots drawing on legends from the history of Germany, Austria, France, Scandinavia, and the Eastern Empire (even occasionally Britain or the Far East) were concentrated in this period.

Winter (Giovedì Grasso)

The last days of Carnival saw a frenzy of activity. Many special, short works were given but they contained little serious dramatic focus. Some final performances were simply revues of the season's most popular arias or singers.

Lent; Holy Week

Period of religious introspection. Public theater performances were strictly forbidden.

Eastertide

In the sixteenth century a new comedy season had begun the day after Easter. By the seventeenth century, neither opera not comedy was given during this period.

Ascension

The Ascension opera season, in which comedy houses were closed, began in the 1720s. It featured short works, often of a pastoral or superficial nature. The clientele were likely to be merchants attending the annual fair.

Summer (St. Anthony=s)

Theaters in Venice were closed, but in nearby Padua, which was surrounded by country villas, both comedies and operas were sometimes produced.

Summer (Assumption)

The nobility were at work, but the theaters were closed. Garden and canal concerts were common.

Table 2. Composite table of dramaturgical associations of the seasons. Theatres were normally closed during shaded periods.

Linking the Past with the Future

Possibly the most far-reaching deduction that can be made from an integrated view of the calendar and its dramatic associations is that this formative and amazingly energetic period in the development of the Venetian theatre represents the keystone of a very broad arch linking dramatic traditions of medieval times with the operatic stage as it evolved over the next 150 years (1750-1900), if not beyond. If we look beyond Venice and beyond the 1650-1750 century, we see both the preservation and dissipation of these links. Since the dates of most music dramas produced in other venues is much less ambiguous than that for Venice, it is a relatively easy matter to determine to what degree their patterns of production and topic corresponded to those for Venice. Relationships can be viewed from the perspectives of both seasonal typologies and seasonal production patterns.

One example of the "St. Luke's" model is offered by Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (30 September 1791). Fittingly, it was performed at the Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna. The more general tendency of autumn works to be written by those not yet well known or to be experimental in nature is borne out to some degree even on the East Coast of America. Consider, for example, the legacies of George Gershwin: Funny Face (New York, Alvin Theater, 22 November 1927) or the American folk opera Porgy and Bess (New York, 10 October 1935). Autumn has traditionally been an important season for operetta on Broadway.

It must be emphasized that the general skew of the theatrical year was often inverted from the Venetian autumn-winter-spring trajectory to a spring-
summer-autumn trajectory. This was especially true north of the Alps, where climate had a marked influence on what was considered practical and desirable. Excuses to be outdoors in the warmer months were welcome in Northern and Central Europe. These periods were intended for masses, not for important dignitaries willing to interleave business with entertainment.

The winter season almost everywhere served as a magnet for long, serious music dramas. Consider these St. Stephen's openings:

$ Mozart: Mitridate, re di Ponto	(Milan, 1770)

$ Donizetti: Anna Bolena	(Milan, 1830)

$ Bellini: Norma	(Milan, 1831)

$ Donizetti: Lucrezia Borgia	(Milan, 1833)

$ Gershwin: Of Thee I Sing	(New York, 1931)

This effect can be explained away by the fact that the first four works were premiered in Milan, where a closer affinity for Venetian practice might be expected. Milan, nonetheless, had been politically separate from Venice. Like the Venetian theatre of San Giovanni Grisostomo, it gravitated toward the Austrian sphere of influence. The date of 26 December was a ubiquitous one for premiers of opera seria in many European cities.

The relationship between the St. Stephen's and Carnival periods seems to have been generally maintained elsewhere. Both catered for serious works which were lavishly produced, but between them Carnival captured the works which were most markedly of this kind. Composers of high regard prevailed in both segments, but more particularly in the latter. The career trail from autumn or spring to winter can be seen in the worklists of dozens of opera composers.

The Carnival period, generally coincident with the month of February, remained the most coveted territory for those intent to recognition for classical dramas, particularly tragedies. The number of Armides, Medées, and Antigones which opened during this period seems almost countless. Other examples notable premieres from this period include such works as

$ Mozart: Idomeneo	Munich, 29 Jan. 1781

$ Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots	Paris, 29 Feb. 1836

$ Verdi: I lombardi	Milan, 11 Feb. 1843

$ Verdi: Un ballo in maschera	Rome, 17 Feb. 1859

$ Verdi: Otello	Milan, 5 Feb. 1887

$ Verdi: Falstaff	Milan, 9 Feb. 1893

$ Massenet: Cleopatra	Monte Carlo, 23 Feb. 1914

While these examples are suggestive rather than definitive, their comparison with periods of productions for works of different natures by the same composers does not weaken the point. The Carnival typology is not evident, however, in England or in other countries of the Protestant north. Theater in Protestant lands was more a commercial matter and less one of church/state negotiation. Handel's operas, for example, did sometimes open during Carnival, but the performance pattern was entirely different. In many cases as few as four performances constituted an entire production, and these could be spread over several weeks. Neither is the typology applicable to revivals, which were often presented to fill in a void left by an unsuccessful work.

France necessarily had a different seasonal profile, since much serious opera was initially produced at court rather than in public houses. However, when comedy and lighter works, including performances at fairs and in public theatres broadly defined, are taken into account, Paris very matched the Venetian profile with the single difference that spoken drama dominated a larger portion of the year.

By Verdi's time the prohibition against performing operas during Lent had eased. Early Lent became a sort of super-Carnival period for grand opera. Some of the most intense works belong precisely to that once-forbidden period. It is ironic that these works many of these works were premiered in Venice. Some examples are these:

Attila	Venice, La Fenice	17 March 1846

Macbeth	Florence, Pergola	14 March 1847

Simon Boccanegra	Venice, La Fenice	12 March 1857

Don Carlos	Paris: Opèra	11 March 1867

The dramatic prototype of the Ascension period is not missing in the landscape of later opera. In fact many of the most popular opere buffe and kindred genres opened in the spring, frequently in May. Among them are Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1 May 1786) and Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore (Milan, 12 May 1832). The relaxation of restrictions against Lenten opera in Catholic Europe did, by extending serious opera into March, also push lighter works into the summer months.

Cultural translations of these typologies may be seen in an outer ring of theatrical residues found outside the precincts of France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and adjacent countries. Calendar convergence is evidence even where cultural convergence may have been minimal. In St. Petersburg Araia's setting of Metastasio's Artaserse premiered on 10 February (new style) 1738, while Paisiello's setting of Goldoni's spaceship fantasy Il mondo della luna was an autumn work, opening on 5 October (new style) 1783. Tchaikovsky's Hamlet (Moscow, 1891) was a Carnival work, as was Musorksky's Boris Godunov (St. Petersburg, 1928!). Stravinsky's Firebird (1910) and Petruschka (1911) were summer works given in Paris in June of their respective years. Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex is a particularly interesting case, because its first performance was as concert one (Paris, May 1927) but its first staged performance coincided with high Carnival (Vienna, Staatsoper, 23 February 1928).

This account leaves many backwaters unexplored. There were inevitably composers who never made it to the first ranks and therefore never saw their operas produced in the serious winter period. There were composers who were left to the mercy of political upheavals that caused them to be transplanted to new cultures with unfamiliar customs. There were to be sure theatres which failed to thrive in difficult times. Yet such phenomena have not completely eradicated the outlines of a long evolution. Traces of ritual as an expression of cultural control still survive in music drama. In the ever more remote circles of tradition, the influence of planting and harvest festivals of earlier times can therefore still be perceived.

Eleanor Selfridge-Field

26 March 2002

5380 words

Works Cited

Borst, Arno. The Ordering of Time: From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer, tr. Andrew Winnard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Cappelli, A[driano]. Cronologia, cronografia, e calendario perpetuo dal principio dell=era christiana ai nostria giorni, 3rd edn. Milan: Hoepli, 1969.

Maiello, Francesco. Storia del calendario: La misurazione del tempo, 1450-1800. Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1994.

Richards, E. T. Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History. Oxford University Press, 1999.

Selfridge-Field, Eleanor. The Calendar of Venetian Opera. 2 vols. Forthcoming from Stanford University Press.

Don't think I used these:

Abbreviations Used

I-Rvat	Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica, Archivio

I-Vas	Venice: Archivio di Stato