A Scholarly Edition with Exegesis of Niccolò Piccinni's Dramma Giocoso: 'Il Regno della Luna' (1770).

Abstract

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 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’.