Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

By Kara Burritt

Dr. Anthony DelDonna studies music with the eyes of a historian, an artist, and a philosopher. As assistant professor of music in Georgetown University’s Department of Performing Arts, he teaches and researches from the perspective that music cannot truly be understood unless it is studied in its contemporary context.

"It’s one aspect of culture," DelDonna says of music. "It is analogous to a spider web, and you have all of these different strands. The spider web itself is that contemporary culture, but each strand is then woven into another and helps complete it."

DelDonna focuses his research on eighteenth-century music and more specifically, the musical tradition of that era in the Italian city of Naples. Born in Naples himself, DelDonna relishes the opportunity to pursue research there and has found it to be a hub of artistic culture. And as his work evidences, his research accounts nearly as much for culture as for the music itself. 

Undertaking the genre of opera in two current projects—co-editing 2009’s "Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera" and editing and contributing to 2008’s "Genre in Eighteenth Century Music"—DelDonna considers the social changes that elevated the genre’s popularity. Arising in eighteenth-century Italy before spreading throughout Europe, comic opera, in particular, is sometimes contested as less valid than classic heroic opera, yet it has instilled itself into the European canon because of its commentary on political shifts and customs of that period.

"If you want static reflexive images of sovereignty, you look at heroic opera," says DelDonna. "If you want to see how the Enlightenment really affects Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you look at comic opera."

One approach DelDonna has taken to verify the validity of this genre is referring to historical documents. For example, correspondence records of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, whose father exclusively patronized heroic opera, reference private comic opera performances being held at his royal palaces. This detail speaks to the European aristocracy’s growing acceptance of comic opera, the importance of which has been debated in the world of Mozart and Haydn-centric opera history.

Comic operas originally grew from humorous intermissions that divided the acts of traditional heroic opera tradition, which in Naples showed loyalty to the royal court by staging positive images of sovereignty. DelDonna demonstrates this through a case study in a 2007 article for the journal "Eighteenth Century Music": "Eighteenth Century Politics and Patronage: Music and the Republican Revolution of Naples." He draws on primary sources to document how the yearlong French Republican ruling of Naples affected the operatic stage, with those in power appropriating the theater, whether comic or heroic, to promote their agenda and decry the displaced monarchy. Though the Republic lasted only from 1798 to 1799, immediate influences were felt on the performers, practices, and repertoire of the operatic theater.

Such work understanding music in the context of culture demands DelDonna both carefully analyze musical documents as well as examine seemingly unrelated primary sources. DelDonna’s research involves coordinating music archives with historical documents, such as bank registers, journals, court records, and personal correspondence.

"First and foremost are the historical sources and you must be certain to read them more than once. You have to go back because there are always things you miss," explains DelDonna. Then he focuses on keeping up with recent research, examining archival documents, and analyzing musical scores and librettos. But DelDonna’s field, researching the music history of Naples, carries particular obstacles.

"It’s a challenge because the holdings for the eighteenth century were destroyed at the end of the Second World War, and you have only a handful of primary sources left," explains DelDonna. "So what you have to do is go look at secondary sources, which are quite broad and seemingly unrelated."

Such extensive investigation might sound daunting, but it can result in unprecedented findings. This month, DelDonna will publish an article in the music journal "Studi musicali." "A Documentary History of the Clarinet in the Teatro San Carlo Orchestra in the Late 18th Century," will challenge the long-held theory that wind instruments were used minimally in opera outside central Europe before the 19th century. 

DelDonna has been cultivating evidence to disprove this misconception throughout the past decade, since his interest in the topic was first piqued. To explain why he was finding parts written for wind instruments in the San Carlo opera orchestras, DelDonna sought evidence outside the music. Starting with archival documents such as payment registries, managerial evaluations of the theater, and account ledgers, DelDonna was able to cite fulltime clarinetists being employed and paid by the San Carlo Theater. Furthermore, analyzing pay rates implied that with time, professional clarinetists were being hired, which reflects cultivation of the instrument in the opera orchestra. And the performers’ names indicate that at least one of these early clarinetists was Viennese and actually traveled to Naples specifically to study in conservatories there.   

To confirm what the archival sources demonstrated, DelDonna examined all the operas performed at San Carlo between 1770 and 1799, creating a typology of the documented clarinet use: number of clarinets, type of clarinet, clef, key, and more. The growing centrality of the clarinet in operatic music at San Carlo was clear.

"What I found by coordinating the scores with archival documents and other sources is that the San Carlo Theater in Naples had fulltime clarinetists even before the National Theater in Vienna, which was the institution for which Mozart composed his principal operas," explains DelDonna. Because Mozart’s operatic works are considered the paradigm for the introduction and subsequent cultivation of the clarinet in stage dramas, DelDonna’s findings demonstrate that the San Carlo employed fulltime clarinetists as early as 1775, thus even before the National Theater, and Mozart and in turn refute long-held theory in musicological research about the instrument.
   
Researching non-traditional sources is a method to achieve his greater scholarly goal; placing music in its cultural context. Without studying correspondence between opera patrons or examining attendance records for the Teatro San Carlo, genres like comic or heroic opera, ballet or instrumental music would not be understood in their proper framework. And DelDonna holds firm in the idea that such interdisciplinary research has much to tell scholars of music, history, and many other fields: "the eighteenth-century is a watershed for culture; it’s so significant. What’s fascinating is these documents are quite substantive and illuminate the era so well."

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