ABSTRACT
In France after 1789, the revolutionary government in Paris encouraged opera as part of its self-presentation, in spite of the genre's tradition as a showpiece for the court and the Ancien Régime. In an Italy still divided by the powers of Spain, Austria, and the Papacy, the creation of opera librettos began to change under the influence of the ideas of Vittorio Alfieri. Operatic expressions of the Zeitgeist coincided in the 1790s with formal changes in operatic structure and diction. The innovations in Italy resulted as much from the influence of native comic opera as from the theoretical manifestos of Gluck and Calzabigi for Vienna and Paris. The opera as a whole contains many of the structural elements inherited from the changes in the previous generation of operatic writing and particularly from French Revolutionary opera- duets, ensembles, elaborated choruses, and complex act finales.
