The Opera Orchestra in 18th and 19th Century Europe

The orchestra was the most stable and 'institutional' component of European operahouses during the 19th century. It became an increasingly important element in theproduction and realization of an opera, and, unlike the singers, it functioned as a stableprofessional entity that was increasingly identified as an inseparable part of the theatrein which it operated.Studies of the orchestra in general, as a unified whole and of orchestras in differentplaces, are numerous. The opera orchestra, however, has had less than its share of thisfield of research. These studies of opera orchestras in different countries, capitals, cities,provinces and courts contribute to an expanded knowledge, not only of the historicaldevelopment and institutionalization of a variety of individual orchestras some of whichhave scarcely been studied before, but also of the typology, or typologies, of the operaorchestra of the 18th and 19th centuries that evolved out of the development ofindividual orchestras through the ages.Part one of The Opera Orchestra in 18th- and 19th-Century Europe is made up of casestudies of individual orchestras. The emphasis is placed upon the professional, financialand social conditions of the musicians within these orchestras and justifies the subtitle ofthe volumes, The Orchestra in Society. It was impossible and indeed to some extentnot useful to cover the whole of modern Europe, country by country, within this project.Instead, different regions in which opera flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries havebeen selected for part one, in order to reproduce and synthesize the geography ofEuropean opera, and by consequence that of European theatres and orchestras, as acomplex cultural, social and economical system in which internal relationships andinfluences depended on several heterogeneous factors (e.g. politics, diplomacy, dynasticrelations, migration and fashion).