Introduction

From the mid-fifteenth to the late-eighteenth century, Italian theatre practitioners traversed the whole of Europe, promulgating musico-dramatic repertoires, artistic excellence, and socio-political ideas. From London to Vienna, from Dresden to Stockholm, from Madrid to Copenhagen and St Petersburg, there was hardly a court or city that did not employ Italian-born musicians, playwrights, singers, actors, dancers, theatre engineers, painters, and tailors. As crucial agents of cultural transfer and exchange, Italian artists actively contributed to the formation of many European values, institutions, and cultural identities. In the first decades of the eighteenth century, Italian theatre and its artists became vital to the Russian tsars, who wanted to emulate and surpass the examples of other European courts. They championed Italian opera and theatre as patrons, critics, and spectators, using them to amplify and mythologise their victories and to glorify their close ties to European modernity and Slavic identity.1 Russian rulers employed Italian musico-dramatic works to advance social and political goals, legitimise Russia’s position as a ‘European nation’, assert the Empire’s cultural competitiveness on the international stage, and emphasise Russia’s cultural uniqueness and cosmopolitan character. They designed their courts as theatres, in which theatregoing played a central role.

This book, as the first part of its title suggests, is about Italian musico-theatrical repertoires performed by Italian comici and operisti at the Russian imperial court. Geographically located between, and even straddling, Europe and Asia, the faraway Russian Empire boasted, rather unexpectedly, a more cosmopolitan repertoire than any other European court. While elsewhere in Europe Italian drama was performed in the original language or in a national vernacular, performance practice and repertoire in Russia was governed by the principle of multilingualism. The British, Habsburg, and Saxon-Polish courts reflected a decided preference for Italian theatre and opera; Sweden and Dresden were more aligned with French tastes. In Imperial Russia, on the other hand, a wide variety of dramatic works by Metastasio, Voltaire, Goldoni, Beaumarchais, Kotzebue, and Iffland (to name but a few) were performed in Italian, French, German, and Russian. Usually considered at best peripheral to Europe, eighteenth-century Russia provides us with a particularly compelling example of the mobility of theatre practitioners and the circulation of their artistic practices. Indeed, the influence of Italian theatre was more widespread and longer lasting in Eastern and Northern Europe in general, and in Russia in particular, than in other countries.2

The period covered in this volume begins in the early years of the reign of Anna Ioannovna, Empress of Russia (1693–1740, r. 1730–1740) and niece of Peter the Great (1672–1725, r. 1696–1725), the first of the Tsars to ‘modernise’ (i.e. ‘Europeanise’) the Russian Empire, who imported Italian theatre, opera, and chamber music to St Petersburg. My study extends to the end of the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (1709–1762, r. 1741–1762), Anna’s successor on the throne, who was also aware of the socio-political importance of the performing arts. Under her reign, opere serie and buffe were commissioned specifically for the Russian stage, as well as the first opera in Russian. Italian theatre and opera were imported, assimilated, and adapted to local tastes so that they came to serve as the quintessential Russian imperial genre and became part of Elizabeth’s political narrative.3

The reigns of Anna and Elizabeth received far less attention than that of Catherine the Great (1729–1796, r. 1762–1796), which was rich in literary and dramatic innovation. The surviving musico-dramatic repertoires of the Italian comici and operisti active in Russia in the first half of the eighteenth century are not yet available in modern critical editions and have rarely been studied by scholars. This is because they occupy a liminal space between disciplinary boundaries and the conventional outlines of national traditions. Supplementary archival material – such as press reports on public festivities, actors’ and musicians’ payrolls, diplomatic correspondence about their engagements, costume and scenery expense accounts, and records of passport issuance – constitute an invaluable scholarly resource for reconstructing the international careers and performance practices of Italian artists. However, their activities at the Russian court and their migration routes through Europe to Moscow and St Petersburg have not yet been adequately researched.

The reason for these oversights is threefold. A long line of dedicated theatre historians has collected documentary information on the emergence of spoken and sung theatre in Russia,4 and there has been a renewal of interest in recent decades in the French, German, and Italian troupes that performed at the Russian court;5 nevertheless, the role of theatre practitioners in the dissemination and transmission of artistic products and socio-political ideas is still not fully understood. From this point of view, this volume contributes to and complements research on foreign troupes in Imperial Russia. But it also productively explores other research avenues by shifting attention from the musico-dramatic works they performed to the complex processes of knowledge transfer that Italian theatre fostered in Western Europe and Russia. Unlike the valuable studies by Liudmila Starikova, Marialuisa Ferrazzi, and Alice Pieroni, this book does not limit itself to providing a more nuanced understanding of Italian theatre in Anna’s and Elizabethan Russia through analysis of multi-lingual and rarely evaluated musico-dramatic works. The Russian court, usually considered at best the periphery of Europe, is examined here as one of the cultural workshops that were central to societal developments in Europe in the early modern period. From this perspective, a “microhistory” of works performed by Italian troupes in a single location at the periphery of Europe can provide more broadly valid insights into the functioning of early modern theatre as a transnational medium.6 This volume combines a microhistorical study of dramatic works and individuals with a global historical approach that invokes the language of networks and circulation to explain the movement of specific groups across national ang global geographies of space, as well as the general processes that carried highly cosmopolitan theatre practitioners across the world.7

The second reason why many questions remain open in historical research on travelling theatre practitioners is due to their cosmopolitanism and the incomplete documentation of their whereabouts. Furthermore, their activities and migration routes across Europe to the Russian Empire have been insufficiently researched due to the serious hurdle of accessing data from Eastern European and Russian archives.

Thirdly, transnational and transdisciplinary studies on the mobility of artists and the related cultural transfer of theatre and music repertoires in Western and Eastern Europe are still scarce. Although a highly nomadic lifestyle was the norm and necessity rather than the exception for almost all professional theatre performers and singers from Italy who acquired artistic experience by relocating from one country or theatre to another, the geographical origin of comici and operisti still determine their position in the theatre and music historiography.8 The focus of this volume on imperial Russia is therefore new. It departs from the traditional historiographical emphasis on Western Europe and takes a transnational approach to theatre and music history. By examining a multilingual corpus of Italian musico-dramatic works and exploring the web of relationships between Italian theatre practitioners, their patrons, and their intermediaries, this volume not only offers a new perspective on Italian theatre as a cosmopolitan medium, but it also situates Imperial Russia more firmly within the transnational context of early-modern European culture.

In order to provide a new perspective on the dissemination and circulation of Italian theatre in East-Central Europe and Russia, the chapters of this book engage with three macro-topics mentioned in the subtitle: the itineraries of Italian theatre practitioners who were willing to cross multiple borders to include St Petersburg and Moscow as a part of their pan-European theatrical circuit; their transnational careers and practices before and after their sojourn in Russia; and the personal and professional networks and channels of communication used by Italian artists to facilitate their travels, acquire knowledge of the host country, negotiate contracts, and adapt to new contexts.9

Chapter 2 shows that the gradual integration of the Russian Empire into theatre networks, which had already established links between various European courts and entertainment capitals, took place thanks to the initiative of two companies of Italian actors, musicians, choreographers, dancers, and theatre architects active at the Russian court from 1733 to 1735. Reconstruction of the troupe’s membership and analysis of its repertoire of intermezzi comici (comic interludes) provides insights into the communication...