Female operatic cross-dressing: Bernardo Saddumene’s libretto for Leonardo Vinci’s Li Zite ’n galera (1722)*

Leonardo Vinci’s Li zite ’n galera (The Newlyweds on the Galley) ¹ has been afforded a moderate degree of attention by musicologists because it is the first Neapolitan commedia per musica to survive with music almost completely intact. ² It is also Vinci’s first extant opera, and has thus been considered in terms of the light it sheds on the style of his later drammi per musica ³ for which he is better known today. ⁴