Two current projects at the Universität Wien, ‘Apostolo Zeno: The Critical Edition of the Drammi per musica’ and ‘Viennese Opera by Italian Librettists (1620–1705)’, focus on the study of Italian librettos at the Habsburg Court in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This conference, the result of collaboration between the two projects, was organized by Alfred Noe, Adriana De Feo and Nicola Usula in order to stimulate and revitalize debate on a topic that is of high interest for the study of early modern cultural practices for a number of disciplines. The papers presented by the participants, among whom were many of the best-known scholars in this field, focused on the characteristics of the various testi per musica, their role and their importance for the Italo-Viennese music scene, as well as on the different dramatic genres – secular and sacred – that were in vogue at the imperial court during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Herbert Seifert (Universität Wien) opened the first session with ‘Drei “moralische” Libretti am Kaiserhof um 1650, ein Erzherzog als Librettist und ein Kaiser als Komponist’. This was a study of the opera morale, in particular the Drama musicum (1648) written by the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and set to music by his brother, the emperor Ferdinand III, which Seifert juxtaposed with Lo specchio di virtù (1642) by Orazio Persiani and the anonymous Attione da rappresentarsi in musica (1651). The paper ‘“Da recitarsi in musica” – Frühe dramatische Werke unter dem Gesichtspunkt ihrer möglichen Vertonung’ (‘Da recitarsi in musica’: Early Dramatic Works from the Perspective of Their Possible Settings) by Norbert Dubowy (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum) analysed various dramatic texts written by Cesare Gonzaga II, Urbano Giorgi and Prospero Bonarelli in the second and third decades of the seventeenth century and – mostly – commissioned by the Empress Eleonora Gonzaga. In his biographical study ‘Aurelio Amalteo: indagini in un campo pre-Minato’ (Aurelio Amalteo: Research in a Field before Minato) Paolo Fabbri (Università di Ferrara) described the beginning of Amalteo's career in Vienna and his presumed activities in Venice, setting him off against poets of the same generation, for instance Giovanni Faustini. Fabbri also illustrated the importance of scenes of madness and, more generally, of comedy in Amalteo's texts, concluding that for both genres Vienna seems to have functioned as a kind of poetic laboratory.

The second session started with a paper by Nicola Usula (Universität Wien) analysing the characteristics of ten secular librettos written between 1661 and 1669 by Antonio Draghi for Emperor Leopold I. Usula showed how his rather mediocre poetic gift was largely compensated for by his considerable dramaturgical talent in inventing convincing plots, an ability which was obviously enhanced by his personal experience (as a singer) of stage action and interaction. Next came two papers on Nicolò Minato: in ‘Comparing Tessalonica (1673) and Xerse (1655)’ Sara E. Stangalino (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) looked into the dramatic topos, maintaining that stage music can act as a connecting thread for the plot of a libretto, whereas Alfred Noe (Universität Wien) presented the corpus of Minato's sacred librettos in the specific context of the Viennese sacred music tradition of that period.

During the first afternoon session Matthias J. Pernerstorfer (Don Juan Archiv Vienna) presented his ongoing editorial project of publishing Reinhard Meyer's Documenta dramatica, and Anna Laura Bellina (Università di Padova) examined the growing popularity of the character of Scipione Africano in eighteenth-century operas, focusing on Apostolo Zeno's Scipione nelle Spagne (set to music in Barcelona in 1710 and Vienna in 1722) and its literary sources. The last three papers of the first day were dedicated to the creation of oratorios. Marko Deisinger (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) discussed the oratorios staged in Empress Eleonora's II private chapel, in particular Pompeo Colonna's Ratto di Proserpina. Elena Abbado (Florence) presented a paper on Francesca Manzoni's sacred texts: between 1734 and 1738 the poet wrote six azioni sacre for the Viennese court, among which Ester – set to music by Carlo Arrigoni (Vienna, 1738) – is particularly interesting because it was for a very long time attributed to Pietro Metastasio on account of its remarkable literary qualities. The paper ‘Von “Arcadien” an den Donaustrand: Deutschsprachige Oratorientexte unter dem Einfluss der Arcadia’ (From ‘Arcadia’ to the Banks of the Danube: German-Language Oratorio Texts Influenced by Arcadia) by Elisabeth T. Hilscher (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) concluded the first day. Hilscher gave an overview of German oratorio librettos based on Italian texts, focusing on Mater Dolorum (1729), which is an adaptation of Metastasio's La passione di Gesù Cristo.

The second day's opening session was dedicated to Metastasio: Reinhard Strohm (University of Oxford) analysed the different conceptions of ritual found in Metastasio's libretto Didone abbandonata and in Virgil's Aeneid, its literary source. The eighteenth-century concept seems to be the result of a secularization brought about by the specific rituals that had for centuries been ruling life at monarchical courts. In ‘L'officina del Metastasio: le annotazioni di soggetti nel Cod. 10279* della Österreichische Nationalbibliothek’ (The Workshop of Metastasio: Subject Annotations in Cod. 10279* of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) Tarcisio Balbo (Modena) carefully examined Metastasio's handwritten annotations by presenting a typology of possible subjects and by showing what devices were used to achieve a well-constructed mise en intrigue. In ‘Raffazzonatori, epitomisti e metastasiasti’ (Punters, Epitomists and Metastasio Enthusiasts) Marco Beghelli (Università di Bologna) outlined the reception of Metastasio's librettos up to the late nineteenth century, drawing attention especially to various hitherto unknown aspects of this process.

The following session's subject was the oeuvre of Apostolo Zeno, Metastasio's predecessor at the Viennese court. In my own paper (Adriana De Feo, Universität Wien) I analysed Zeno's Viennese poetics (1718–1729), comparing them to those he developed in Venice – where, between 1695 and 1717, he worked for the public theatres – in order to highlight the differences between two theatrical realities. Silvia Urbani (Venice) pointed out the changes that Zeno himself obviously deemed necessary in his Venetian dramma Venceslao (1703) when he resumed work on it in 1724 in Vienna, and she also described the dramma’s manuscript version held in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. A paper on the staging of Zeno's Euristeo by Giovanni Polin (Conservatorio Gesualdo da Venosa di Potenza) allowed an interesting insight into musical life at the Viennese court: the dramma was set to music by Antonio Caldara (Vienna, 1724) and performed by members of the imperial family, among them Charles VI at the harpsichord.

In the first afternoon lecture, ‘I primi libretti comici a Vienna (1731–1748)’ (The First Comic Librettos in Vienna (1731–1748)), Lorenzo Mattei (Università di Bari Aldo Moro) considered so-called adattamenti, the revival of older librettos (often based on texts by Minato) connected with the nascent opera buffa. Francesca Menchelli-Buttini (Conservatorio Statale di Musica Nicola Sala, Benevento) described adaptations of librettos by Zeno and Metastasio between 1748 and 1751 – set to music by Jommelli and Wagenseil, among other composers – showing how the originals were adapted to the taste of the Viennese audience. In his paper ‘Cultural Nationalism in German Adaptations of Opera Buffa Libretti for the Viennese National Theater, 1778–1783’, Martin Nedbal (University of Kansas) analysed the interpolations in Italian opera buffa librettos that helped to transform them into the German singspiel versions performed at the Viennese Burgtheater. The final session of the second day dealt with the last period of Italo-Viennese opera: Magnus Tessing-Schneider (Stockholms Universitet) focused on Lorenzo Da Ponte's minor and less well known opera buffa texts, especially La caffettiera bizzarra (Vienna, 1790), which is an interesting case of rewriting – the main character, Giovannina, being a kind of female alter ego of Don Giovanni. Elena Biggi-Parodi (Conservatorio di Musica Arrigo Boito, Parma) discussed the numerous printed versions (eighteen) of Caterino Mazzola's La scola de’ gelosi (music by Antonio Salieri). Lucio Tufano (Università di Palermo) concluded the session with a paper on Marco Coltellini, highlighting dramaturgical aspects and raising questions of textual criticism relating to the Viennese years (1763–1771) of this not very well-known poet.

The subject of the morning session of 23 June was ‘Music and Political Power’. In the first presentation, ‘Maria Teresa, Francesco I e la rappresentazione operistica degli Asburgo-Lorena’ (Maria Theresa, Francis I and the Operatic Representations of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine), Michele Calella (Universität Wien) outlined the repertory of the Viennese court in the hitherto rather neglected period 1745–1751, one significant feature of which was the return to the stage of seventeenth-century drammi. The paper by Andrea Sommer-Mathis (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) presented an interesting case in the history of reception: works performed at the Kärntnertortheater, the first public theatre in Vienna, whose repertory between 1728 and 1748 comprised approximately 150 librettos, most of them Venetian. Konstantin Hirschmann (Universität Wien) explored the celebratory topoi (centring on male and female virtues) in librettos written for Joseph I (1705–1711) and his wife Amalia Wilhelmine. In ‘“Su, su, danzate / e festeggiate”: l'Introduzione al balletto tra Sei e Settecento’ (‘Up, Up, Dance / and Celebrate’: The Introduzione al balletto in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) Angela Romagnoli (Università di Pavia, Cremona) delineated the role, social context and structure of the introduzione al balletto, which she argued should be seen as a separate genre. In his paper on Pietro Antonio Bernardoni, Nicola Badolato (Università di Bologna) concentrated on the specific sources for this writer's librettos. Alexander Rausch (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) pointed out the philological difficulties involved in making a critical edition of Dafne in lauro by Pietro Pariatis when the only surviving source for the libretto is the score. The last session was reserved for comic or tragicomic librettos: Livio Marcaletti (Universität Wien) discussed the genres and stylistic aspects of, and sources for, comic opera during the reign of Charles VI, and Teresa Megale (Università degli Studi di Firenze) traced the odyssey of Carlo Goldoni's famous La locandiera through the history of versions of its libretto.

The conference proceedings are due to be published by Böhlau, in Vienna, in 2021.