In 1915, in the midst of war, a twenty-nine-year-old scholar by the name of Margherita Berio published an article that deplored the total lack of attention devoted to Niccolò Jommelli (1714–1774) on the bicentennial of his birth, the year before. ‘No one,’ Berio complained, ‘not even before the flogging war swept away in its own horror lives, things, memories – no one, I believe, has broken the silence around Jommelli’ (‘Un centenario silenzioso: Nicola Jommelli’, Rivista musicale italiana 22/1 (1915), 105). Berio was hopeful, however, stating that ‘an authentic glory of our [Italian] art’ had perhaps been ‘locked up, yet not suffocated’ by forgetfulness.

Although the name and legacy of Jommelli have still not fully recovered from oblivion, the future looks brighter than ever for the spearhead of mid-eighteenth-century opera seria. Not only are his operas being mounted again (most recently Fetonte in Schwetzingen, 2014, and Il Vologeso in Stuttgart, 2015), but scholarly interest in Jommelli's works has also seen a remarkable surge in recent years, with conferences being held in Reggio Calabria (2011) and Queluz (2014). Contributing to this vogue, Paologiovanni Maione and Francesco Cotticelli of the Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli (SUN) teamed up with Naples's early-music centre, the Fondazione Pietà de’ Turchini (FPT), to organize a three-day event entitled ‘Le stagioni di Jommelli’ (The Seasons of Jommelli).

Aversa, Jommelli's birthplace, provided the logical site at which to kick off the conference. On a dark Friday afternoon, the group of delegates defied cold wind and pouring rain – an unlikely combination in Campania – to reach the Teatro Cimarosa's ‘Salone Romano’, an early nineteenth-century (but eighteenth-century-looking) frescoed hall, for the first session. After welcoming addresses by the Syndic of Aversa and representatives from the SUN and FPT, Rosanna Cioffi (SUN) presided over five papers that explored the cultural ambit of Jommelli's activity. Riccardo Lattuada (SUN) surveyed the Italian fine arts, pointing to the ways in which baroque prospettiva and scenografia developed into the classicismo felice marking the paintings of Jommelli's time. Giulio Sodano (SUN) gave a brief introduction to the political context of Bourbon Naples, while Beatrice Alfonzetti (Università di Roma La Sapienza) explored ‘theatrical echoes’ between Rome and Venice in the period 1740–1770. A lack of direct relevance to Jommelli's career marred the presentation of Maria Luisa Chirico and Serena Cannavale (SUN), which dealt with the archaeological and philological interests of one Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi (1684–1771) in ancient Capuan spectacle culture. Co-organizer Francesco Cotticelli saved the session by refocusing on the conference's theme with a discussion of Neapolitan opera dramaturgy in the 1760s and 70s. Referring to writings by Charles Burney, Saverio Mattei and Pietro Napoli-Signorelli, Cotticelli examined Jommelli's ‘prestige ex cathedra’ and alleged ‘decadence’ upon his return to the Partenopean Bay. An all-Neapolitan recital of duets and cantatas by Jommelli, Nicola Fago and Leonardo Leo performed by the ensemble Dolce & Tempesta (starring a promising soprano from Calabria, Francesca Aspromonte) brought the day to a lyrical conclusion.

On Saturday, 6 December sunnier weather awaited the delegates at the seat of the FPT, the charming Chiesa di Santa Caterina da Siena in Naples. The morning session, chaired by Anna Maria Rao (Università di Napoli Federico II), began with a presentation by Nicolò Maccavino (Conservatorio di Musica di Reggio Calabria) and Paola De Simone (Conservatorio di Musica di Potenza) on their forthcoming edition of Cerere placata (1772). Besides discussing the provenance of and variations among the nine music manuscripts consulted for the project, the two speakers disclosed archival discoveries with respect to the size and composition of Jommelli's orchestra, the phenomenal fee (500 ducati!) paid to librettist Michele Sarcone and the construction of the Neptune machine in part 1, scene 5 of Jommelli's festa teatrale. Marina Marino (Conservatorio di Musica di Avellino) continued in an archival vein by offering fresh data about Jommelli's youth in Aversa and education at the Conservatorio Pietà de’ Turchini. Roberto Scoccimarro (Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln) made a structural comparison of Jommelli's comic intermezzos Don Chichibio (1742), L’uccellatrice (1750), Don Falcone (1754) and L’amante cacciatore (1771), while Paolo Sullo (Università di Roma Tor Vergata) analysed Jommellian sinfonias in Roman archives using Robert Gjerdingen's toolkit of solfeggi and partimenti (Robert O. Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)). Attention then shifted to the treasures of the Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli, in which Raffaella Passariello and Stefania Prisco (Istituto Superiore di Scienze Religiose San Pietro, Caserta) dug up maestranze (payment accounts) detailing Jommelli's return to Naples (1769) and the performance of Armida abbandonata (1770) at the Teatro di San Carlo. Co-organizer Paologiovanni Maione closed the session by demonstrating the dramatic finesse of Antonio Palomba's L’amore in maschera (1748), the libretto with which Jommelli made his one-time return to the Neapolitan Teatro dei Fiorentini.

The Saturday afternoon session, chaired by Beatrice Alfonzetti, featured six further explorations of Jommelli's many-sided oeuvre. Maurício Dottori (Universidade Federal do Paraná) shed light on alternative ‘forms of religiosity’ nurtured by Pietro Metastasio and developed by Jommelli in his vesper and psalm settings for the Congregazione di Santa Cecilia in Rome (1750–1753). Alberto Beniscelli (Università di Genova) discussed Metastasio's correspondence with Jommelli, emphasizing how, in sixteen years, the composer degraded in the Cesarean poet's eyes from an ideal partner in his dramaturgical project to a ‘musician's musician’. Antonella D’Ovidio (Università di Firenze) surveyed Jommelli's ‘musica singolarissima’ (dixit Pier Leone Ghezzi, 1741; see Giancarlo Rostirolla, ed., Il ‘Mondo novo’ musicale di Pier Leone Ghezzi (Milan: Skira, 2001), 185 (plate 214)) for the Teatro Argentina in Rome. She offered analyses of characteristic episodes in Astianatte (1741), Cajo Mario (1746) and Didone abbandonata (1747), the last of which she has edited. Bruno Forment (Universiteit Gent / Vrije Universiteit Brussel) sought to explain the unusual success of Cajo Mario (fifteen complete revivals) in light of the opera's use of topoi, the arrangement of which he connected to the capriccio paintings of Antonio Joli. Francesca Menchelli Buttini (Conservatorio di Musica di Avellino) compared the Roman (1751) and Neapolitan (1753) versions of L’Ifigenìa (in Aulide), noting among other things the absence in its cast of Iphigenia's mother Clytemnestra, the libretto's indebtedness to Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis and Metastasio's Demetrio and Attilio Regolo, and the possible participation of a stage band. Rosy Candiani closed the session with a consideration of the Madrilenian Semiramide riconosciuta (1753), as reflected in Metastasio's correspondence with Farinelli.

The fourth and last gathering of ‘Le stagioni di Jommelli’, on Sunday, 7 December, again at Santa Caterina da Siena, was presided over by Sergio Morabito (Oper Stuttgart), who at that time was preparing a new production of Il Vologeso (1766) in Stuttgart with stage director Jossi Wieler and scenographer Anna Viebrock. A paper by Lucio Tufano (Naples) took its cue from ‘A Serpina penserete’ in Pergolesi's La serva padrona (1733), using the aria to analyse the ways in which a parte singing structures the compositional discourse of ‘Eccoti il figlio’ in Astianatte (1741) and ‘Dirò che fida sei’ in the Stuttgart Didone abbandonata (1763). Tufano's claim that asides required greater dramatic versatility from the singer was developed by Lorenzo Mattei (Università di Roma La Sapienza) within the context of Jommelli's Stuttgart operas. Mattei correlated the extension of tightly rhetorical, ‘madrigalist’ word–note relationships in Jommelli's writing with performative trends in Denis Diderot's domestic dramas and Jean-Georges Noverre's ballets d’action.

The conference concluded with four papers on Jommellian manuscript holdings in Italy: the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome (Giacomo Sances and Giacomo Sciommeri, Università di Roma Tor Vergata), the private collections in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Francesca Seller, Conservatorio di Musica di Salerno, and Antonio Caroccia, Conservatorio di Musica di Avellino; Sarah M. Iácono, Università del Salento 1) and the Neapolitan Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella (Rosa Cafiero and Giulio Giovani, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan). As regards the last collection, Cafiero and Giovani showed how Giuseppe Sigismondo's private score collection was acquired by the Conservatory through the mediation of Saverio Mattei, whose Elogio del Jommelli (1785) became a well-known biography of the composer.

‘Le stagioni di Jommelli’ thus presented a panoramic view of the composer's life and career. Although its twenty-three papers were uneven in quality and relevance, and an open call for papers might have averted the near-monopoly of Italian contributors and attendees (thus fully warranting the ‘international’ tag in the subtitle of the conference), delegates were treated to a number of the attractive aspects of Mediterranean life, including excellent catering and hospitality. Everything considered, the three-day event offered ample proof of renewed enthusiasm for ‘an authentic glory of Italian art’ and should make a lasting contribution to Jommelli's modern revival via its proceedings.