ABSTRACT
While the courts of northern Italy provided the birthplace for opera subsidized by princes and royal rulers, it was the more democratic and free spirited city of Venice that offered the most suitable artistic environment for the first commercial operas. The first opera for a paying public premiered in Venice in 1637. Andromeda—with music by Francesco Manelli (after 1594–1667) and a libretto by Benedetto Ferrari (ca. 1603–81)—opened at the Teatro San Cassiano, staged by a traveling group of professional singers based in Rome and under Ferrari’s direction. By the end of 1642, twenty-two operas had been produced in four separate theaters. From the 1640s until the opening of the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in 1678, audiences enjoyed up to eight productions in a single season at six different venues. Among those operas were three new works by Claudio Monteverdi, who wrote his final masterpieces for Venetian theaters. However, it was Monteverdi’s student, Francesco Cavalli (1602–76), who established the model of Venetian opera that was copied across Europe in the decades around 1700, composing twenty-eight operas over his thirty-year career in Venice.
