Mays, Lawrence John
Description
Niccolò Piccinni’s dramma giocoso Il Regno della Luna
premiered in 1770, at a time when Europe and the world in general
were changing at an almost unprecedented rate. New scientific
discoveries, global exploration, colonialism, and interaction
with non-European ‘others’, combined with evolving
philosophical concepts of epistemology, sociopolitical structures
and human emotions culminated in a mid-century reappraisal of
future directions for European states. A...[Show more] distinguishing
characteristic of societal discourse in latter half of the
eighteenth century was that knowledge previously considered
beyond dispute became open to question. The libretto of
Piccinni’s opera canvasses a broad range of contemporaneous
issues in a uniquely confronting manner. Exploiting the trope of
an ‘other world’ and ‘other time’ setting, it concerns a
visit in the future by Earth people to a fictive Lunar society
which has a radically different socio-political structure from
that in contemporary Europe. Women have political control through
an elected female monarchy, and the society is predicated on a
dominant position of women in interpersonal relationships. The
Lunar society evinces several contrasts with ‘sacred’
European institutions such as the nuclear family, monogamy and
patriarchy. The libretto also engages with polemics on issues
such as militarism, unfettered trade, colonialism and the
dichotomy between science and mythology.
Musically it demonstrates Piccinni’s importance in the
development of late eighteenth-century opera. In common with the
works of others who sought to reform the genre, Piccinni subverts
and experiments with the dramma giocoso conventions of strict
correspondence between musical style and social status. With its
flexible overall structure and in the varied forms of set pieces,
the work aligns with the late eighteenth-century concept that the
composer’s primary task was to support the drama by reinforcing
meanings immanent in the text. It also engages with changing
concepts of human emotion from the Cartesian static model to the
associationist model of constant flux. Piccinni’s score
provides unusually precise information on expression and
articulation. As such, this scholarly modern edition makes a
significant contribution to our knowledge of late
eighteenth-century operatic performance practice. With its
implication of cognitive displacement in time and place, the
opera could be interpreted as prototypical science fiction.
However, the pre-eminent interpretation of the work is that it is
a satire on the constraints which some elements of European
society sought to impose on the social and political position of
women. In a very real sense it was an opera for ‘the century of
women’.
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