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Per un secolo e mezzo, l’episodio della prima dell’Aida di Verdi al Cairo nel 1871 hacatturato l’attenzione degli studiosi, che non hanno mai esplorato sistematicamente il contestooperistico —allo stesso tempo locale e globalizzato— in cui quella vicenda si era inserita. Inrealtà l’Egitto stava vivendo una fase di grande interesse per l’opera e per i teatri all’europea,condivisa da molti altri territori dell’impero ottomano a cominciare dalla capitale Costantinopoli. Compagnie di cantanti italiani avevano già portato il repertorio più aggiornato dell’operaitaliana prima ad Alessandria e poi al Cairo e, negli stessi anni della produzione di Aida, unacompagnia era stata scritturata per una stagione di opere francesi e italiane, con la direzione diNicola De Giosa, compositore di scuola napoletana e primo vero direttore dell’orchestra del Teatrodi San Carlo. Come il prediletto di Verdi, Emanuele Muzio, anche De Giosa fu però scartato dalsovrintendente del teatro egiziano, che affidò la direzione di Aida a Bottesini. Alcuni frammentisuperstiti di documentazione consentono di intuire il peso della presenza degli artisti italianinella nascita del teatro d’opera vicereale al Cairo. Artisti e direttori itineranti, ma anche glialtri individui coinvolti nelle prime rappresentazioni di opere europee in Egitto, sono certamenteprotagonisti di una storia minore, ma che ci sembra interessante cominciare a ricostruire perinserire queste vicende di mobilità artistica in una più ampia rete dei teatri del Mediterraneo.

Alessandro Scarlatti (b. 1660–d. 1725) was one of the most celebrated composers of his time, probably the most important opera composer in Europe around 1700. He was called “the Orpheus of our times,” and musicians such as Handel, Hasse, and Quantz traveled especially to meet him. Yet, in the early 21st century, Scarlatti is one of the lesser-performed Baroque composers, and a considerable part of his immense production is still not well known. The renown of the “Palermitano,” as he was always called after his place of birth, started before he was twenty, in Rome with his first operas, thanks to the favor of Queen Christina of Sweden. Later he was to establish relationships with important patrons—such as Ferdinando de’Medici, James III Stuart (the “Old Pretender”), and Queen Casimira of Poland; cardinals such as Pietro Ottoboni; and the Spanish viceroys of Naples—who were all in turn responsible for stages in his international career. The sign of Scarlatti’s reputation among upper society was his acceptance into the Academy of the Arcadia. He was one of only three musicians of his time admitted to this Academy, along with Corelli and Bernardo Pasquini. Whilst his operas were produced in many important theaters in Italy and abroad, he was nevertheless continuously under pressure for money, as he had a large family. He had ten children, five of whom were born in Naples, including his celebrated son Domenico. He wrote no fewer than 60 dramatic works and more than 600 chamber cantatas. The favor granted to the cantatas—a genre much in fashion and in which he was considered the most prolific of Baroque composers—depended again on his need for financial support, assured to him by a large number of music lovers. The rest of his musical compositions, even if fewer in quantity, are not less important, including oratorios, liturgical music, and a few instrumental pieces. Scarlatti could also be credited with the beginnings of the international circulation of a repertoire from Naples. For that reason, local historiography from the end of 19th century claimed Scarlatti to be the creator of the “Neapolitan School,” a concept later contested by musicologists. Although he spent most of his life in Naples, his personality can be never recognized as “pure Neapolitan”; nonetheless, he greatly influenced the generations of Neapolitan composers that followed, including Durante, Leo, Vinci, Jommelli, and others.

'Caravaggio's genre-like portraiture is found in all the figures, perhaps most strikingly in the topmost Mary with her individual features, arms flung upward' (Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (New York, 1983), p.176: the painting is reproduced on the cover of the book). This assessment of a painting such as the Entombment of Christ (Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana, dated 1603-04) outlines the role of gesture in Caravaggio's paintings; he is perhaps the first 'modern' painter to insert theatrical gestures in what we can define as a multimedia spectacle. His major contribution to the new Baroque aesthetics does not concern his use of light, but, as acknowledged by his contemporaries, the high degree of the naturalistic reproduction in his paintings. Assembling light and naturalist reproduction, Caravaggio used gesture to give movement to the characters. What we also gain from this painter's masterpieces is a fourth dimension: the sound that was in the background of his painted scenes. In 2002 the totality of Caravaggio's gestures, generating multimedia non-verbal suggestions (through light, costumes, body movements and dance, music), has been the centre of an extraordinary performance, presented by Deda Cristina Colonna (a well-known actress and dancer) and Mara Galassi (one of the best double-harp players of today). The performance, after a successful tour, is now a film, produced by the Marco Fodella Foundation for Early Music in Milan (www.fondazionemarcofodella.it). It was filmed in a very special place, the Basilica di San Marco in Milan, a medieval church reworked in the Baroque, and visited by the child Mozart. The church offers a stunning set: a splendid chess-board floor and carved wood choir. Francesco Vitali, director of the film and director of photography, as well as lighting designer for the performance, used this marvellous ambience to re-create the play of natural light in Caravaggio (using real candles). This was not mere chance: in addition to his activity as a director, Vitali has gained a reputation as a lighting designer and photographer. His use of the steadycam allows him to follow continually the movement of the actress-dancer, whom the spectator senses as so close as almost to be able to touch. Deda Cristina Colonna, a marvellous dancer and a magic voice for the rare sentences pronounced during the performance, wears various layers of costumes designed by Barbara Petrecca, reproducing the atmosphere, if not directly the source, of Caravaggio's original scenes. For the other protagonist of the film, the harpist Mara Galassi continually playing in a corner, Petrecca has also designed a single sumptuous costume from a late Renaissance model, evoking the celebrated Ladies of Ferrara, the trio of female professional virtuoso players that included the harpist Laura Peverara. Music is the connective tissue that ensures the project's continuity, while the images (drawn from different paintings) are presented in cycles. The gesture, the spoken voice and the music are the living parts of the performance, reflecting Caravaggio's main technique of painting: 'dal vivo'. It would have been quite easy to use the music directly inserted or referred to in Caravaggio's paintings (on which see the articles by Franca Trinchieri Camiz and Agostino Ziino cited below), but the authors preferred to let the music suggest a wider context: the places and events from the time of the painter. The same occurs with the spoken texts, including fragments from writers not only contemporary with Caravaggio, but also living before or after him. I will try to summarize here the succession of the main paintings cited or described during the film. (Only a title and a short reference will be given for each painting; in many cases the painting is extant in several replicas in different collections (with different titles).) The first is Saint Catherine of Alexandria (1597, original in Madrid, ThyssenBornemisza Museum), a motionless space entirely occupied by the dragging of the protagonist's dress: at the same time she listens to a Fantasia by Francesco da Milano, originally for lute but performed on the harp, and her voice reads an extract from Vasari's Life ofGiorgione. The dancer Colonna, then, acts a double role, impersonating in turn the young gentleman and the gipsy in the Fortune teller (1593-4, Paris, Louvre), accompanied by dance music on the harp (anonymous Italian manuscript of the mid-i6th century) to justify her shift from one character to the other.

Music as Cultural Mission: Explorations of Jesuit Practices in Italy and North America. Edited by Anna Harwell Celenza and Anthony R. DelDonna. [Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts, Vol. 9.] (Philadelphia: St. Joseph's University Press. 2014. Pp. xii, 229. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-916-10180-0.)After eight volumes devoted mainly to the painting, emblems, and other visual objects of the Jesuits' "cultural mission" during the first three centuries of their history, the present volume is devoted to music. Since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, the order's members discovered the power of music in their missionary action, creating a sense of community and good for teaching the Christian principles in places as diverse as Brazil and India. But this volume is not about their wellknown activities in South America or Asia. Instead, the book focuses on less explored areas: Naples and Milan in Europe and North America from the seventeenth century to the end of the ancien regime. The editors both teach at Georgetown University (chapter 9, by coeditor Anna Harwell Cerenza, traces the importance of music at this Jesuit institution from 1789 to 1930). Her coeditor, Anthony DelDonna, edits the first part of the book, which is devoted mainly to Naples but includes an interesting chapter by Emanuele Colombo on the Jesuit Oratorio in Milan. The remaining five chapters of this section are written by Francesco Cotticelli, Paologiovanni Maione, Ausilia Magaudda, Danilo Costantini, Francesca Seller, and Antonio Caroccia, which describe in detail the history and activity of the five pedagogical institutions created by Jesuits in Naples: the old Collegio "Massimo" at the Church of Gesu Vecchio, the Collegio of San Ignazio al Mercato, San Giuseppe a Chiaia, San Saverio a Toledo, and the very influential Collegio of Nobles. DelDonna, in addition to a general introduction ("Jesuit Music in Eighteenth-Century Italy: North versus South"), offers a case study on the influence of Jesuit culture on Neapolitan society, through the oratorio Trionfo per lAssunzione della Santissima Vergine by Nicolo Ceva (1705); Ceva was a lesser known professional musician educated in the Neapolitan conservatory system who became a Jesuit and an influential figure in the Society's Neapolitan circles. The survival of Ceva's score in the Librar)' of the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella is quite exceptional, since most of the primary materials on Jesuit music activities in Naples have been scattered. The mentioned scholars have used alternative sources to reconstruct those activities: for instance, the Gazzetta di Napoli provides many records of musical events not only in Naples but also in the provinces (those from 1675 to 1768 were published in 2011). …

s was available both to aid in choosing which sessions to attend and to compensate for those that were missed.3 The different sessions aimed to present the most recent international tendencies in Baroque research. Some, organized along national lines, covered Baroque music in Italy and England in particular, but also in France and Eastern Europe; others were devoted to source studies, patronage, musical analysis, and research methodologies. A special session, a somewhat unusual compliment at a conference like this, was dedicated to Women and Music, and seemed to promise, in the fascinating title of Linda Austern's paper, "The Siren, the Muse, and the God of Love," and with the participation of Jane Berdes (whose paper was read by Elsie Arnold), Suzanne Cusick, and 270 Lydia Hamessley, somewhat more than the sympathetic speakers could offer in the way of new and significant information. The papers and roundtables dedicated to English sources seemed a good deal richer in documentation and original prospectives for research. Already the first session of the conference, devoted to "Instrumental Music Manuscripts of the Seventeenth Century," offered, in addition to studies on the instrumental music of Giuseppe Colombi at Modena (John Seuss), the instrumental sources of Antonio Bertali (Niels Martin Jensen), and on the collections of instrumental music in the Lichtenstein archive in Kromeriz (Jiri Sehnal),4 a paper by Peter Allsop on English sources of Italian instrumental music, which also clarified a series of old misunderstandings regarding the structure and terminology of the Italian sonata as it was used in English territory. Two further sessions were more directly concerned with English musical patronage. The first, entitled "Sources and Patronage in England," offered papers by Robert Thompson (on the singer F. Withey's role as copyist at Oxford, 1670-1727), Jane Clark (on the intricate relationship between art and the espionage activities of the nobleman 3 "Fourth Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, Abstracts of Papers Read and Conference Programme," edited by Geoffrey Chew, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London (Egham, 199o). 4 At a later session, Senhal presented another paper, on the musical sources of Hradisko in Moravia, which provided a small taste of the surprises in store for musicologists from the unknown archives of the East that finally are beginning to be open to the West. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.137 on Fri, 27 May 2016 06:02:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

cept, but the execution was rather informal, as though the audience was sitting in on a dress rehearsal. The second featured David Breitman (fortepiano) and Brian Brooks (violin) playing Schuster's Divertimento da camera, followed by Mozart's K303 and K306, then Abel's Sonata in A major, op.5 no.5, paired with K526. There was a performance on Saturday night by Tafelmusik, featuring Malcolm Bilson as soloist in Mozart's Concerto in G Major, K453. After the intermission Bilson also played the Rondo, K485. Neal Zaslaw, chair of local arrangements, deserves credit for organizing the informative and integrated exhibits and concerts that accompanied the paper sessions. The exhibit is accessible online via the Kroch Library at Cornell.* The conference was co-sponsored by the Department of Music and the Institute for German Cultural Studies at Cornell University.

International audience; Après avoir rappelé le contexte individuel, institutionnel et méthodologique de cette contribution, la personnalité des deux collectionneurs (famille, éducation, activités) est évoquée. Leur rôle respectif dans le domaine et la musicologie, de la vie musicale et du patrimoine est précisé (création et direction de La Revue musicale pour l'un, création et animation de la Société de musique d'autrefois puis direction du Musée Instrumental pour l'autre). Le contenu et le développement des deux collections (musique et iconographie pour l'un, musique et instruments pour l'autre), leurs liens et leurs différences sont ensuite analysés. L'importance de ces deux collections parmi les collections nationales (Bibliothèque nationale de France, musée de la Musique) et internationales et les conditions de leur valorisation sont enfin soulignées.

International audience

International audience; Auguste Tolbecque (1830-1919), à la fois violoncelliste professionnel, violiste assidu dans les années 1880 et luthier, collectionna dès les années 1860. Il vendit sa première collection d'instruments anciens au Conservatoire de Bruxelles en 1879. Mais il continua à rassembler plusieurs centaines de spécimens jusqu'à sa mort. Dans sa romantique demeure de Fort-Foucault, près de Niort, où il s'était installé dès 1858, il exposa ses collections dans une scénographie grandiloquente jamais surpassée. Tolbecque fut aussi historien de la lutherie (il rédigea son fameux Art du luthier paru en 1903), et il rassembla une abondante documentation iconographique afin de réaliser des reconstitutions et des répliques de toutes époques dans un esprit d'archéologie expérimentale. Il se flattait en effet de les jouer et faire jouer, ce que confirme une correspondance inédite conservée au musée de la Musique concernant les trente deux instruments réalisés pour l'Exposition de la musique et de la danse présentée au Trocadéro en 1896.Eugène de Bricqueville (1854-1933) propose une autre forme d'érudition. Organiste, historien de l'opéra, il est l’auteur régulier d'articles historiques sur les instruments, notamment dans les colonnes du Ménestrel, à partir de 1889. En 1898 et 1899, il se consacre presque exclusivement à son instrument favori, l'orgue, rédigeant de courts articles sur Haendel, sur l'orgue français au XVIIIe siècle et sur certains aspects de sa technique. Il composa sa collection entre 1887 et 1895 dans un esprit témoignant de la profondeur de ses connaissances historiques, comme l’attestent les trois catalogues publiés par ses soins. Pendant ces années, Bricqueville noue des contacts fréquents avec les principaux spécialistes de l'histoire des instruments, entretient par exemple une abondante correspondance avec Victor Mahillon à partir de 1891 et acquiert une notoriété de collectionneur comme d'érudit. Tout ceci concourt à le faire désigner comme membre du jury et rapporteur de la Classe 17 (Instruments de musique) à l'Exposition Universelle de 1900. En 1904, il crée l’ensemble musical La Couperin afin de rendre ses collections à leur vocation première.Ces deux amateurs praticiens et érudits ont profondément changé l'esprit de collection en cette fin de siècle. Alors que leurs écrits constituent une étape importante de l’historiographie dans le domaine des études organologiques, ils ont tracé le chemin aux grands ensembles patrimoniaux privés du XXe siècle, tandis que leurs collections se retrouvent dans d’importantes collections publiques.