This conference was organized as part of the five-year research project WoVen (Women, Opera and the Public Stage in Eighteenth-Century Venice), headed by Melania Bucciarelli and based at the Institutt for musikk of the Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet. It brought together leading specialists and young scholars in the fields of musicology, theatre and literature to explore the role of women in the Serenissima and more broadly in European operatic culture.

The event opened on the evening of 10 April with a concert entitled ‘Che cosa son le donne . . .’, given by the acclaimed Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra Baroque Ensemble, which included instrumental works by Venetian composer and opera singer Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen and arias written for Faustina Bordoni. The pieces explored many of the emotions underlying the poetics of eighteenth-century opera, and most of them were newly recovered from original manuscripts and related directly to the research presented at the conference. The sessions started with keynote lectures by Anna Bellavitis (Université de Rouen), ‘Gender and Agency in Early Modern Venice’, and Irene Zanini-Cordi (Florida State University), ‘Bridging Social Capital: Women's Education and Cultural Networks in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, addressing socio-historical contexts and broader critical discourses on women's education and their place in society in early-modern Venice.

The session on women's participation in the opera business began with my own paper (Adriana De Feo, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna), ‘Luisa Bergalli as Librettist and the Correspondence with Apostolo Zeno’. Through the analysis of two of Bergalli's drammi per musica – Agide re di Sparta (1725; music by Giovanni Porta) and Elenia (1730; music by Tomaso Albinoni) – I explored Zeno's influence on Bergalli's literary career, but also her artistic departure from him, with the development of her own poetic canon in the multifaceted operatic life of the lagoon city. In ‘The Entrepreneur's Trial: Teresa Colonna and the Grimani Theatres in 1762’, Giovanni Polin (Conservatorio Antonio Vivaldi Alessandria) focused on the fascinating figure of the dancer and singer Teresa Colonna, and in particular on her experience as an impresaria, which lasted only one season. Katja Radoš-Perković (Sveučilište u Zagrebu), in ‘Vainglorious and Poor: Opera Singers in Goldoni's Oeuvre’, explored character development in works such as La bella verità, Il teatro comico and L'impresario delle Smirne, taking into account lesser-known aspects of Goldoni's poetics, such as the stereotype he offered of female singers.

The afternoon was devoted to two sessions on the subject ‘Performing Celebrity on the Venetian Stage’, starting with the third keynote address, ‘Promoting Celebrity: Venetian Opera Singers in the Pages of the Gazzetta Urbana’, given by Berta Joncus (Goldsmiths, University of London) together with Myriam Guglielmo (independent scholar, Padua). Important sources revealing the mechanisms behind the creation of celebrity were also considered by Margaret Butler (University of Wisconsin) in ‘Celebrity Culture and Its Musical Prints: Luigi Marescalchi as Media Worker in Late Eighteenth-Century Venice’. She focused on this Venetian music publisher who, in the last decades of the eighteenth century, printed music in a wide range of genres, marketing these publications through the use of the singers’ names on the cover pages. The approach proposed by Clorinda Donato (California State University Long Beach) in her paper ‘The Fate of the Commediante in Novels, Treatises and Correspondences in Eighteenth-Century Italy’ was very compelling. Bringing together Pietro Chiari's novel La commediante in fortuna (1775), Giovanni Bianchi's In Lode dell'arte comica (1752) and the correspondence between Bianchi and the ‘attrice comica and cantatrice’ Antonia Cavallucci, Donato used these sources to explore the status of actress-singers in the eighteenth century. Elena Abbado (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna) presented new evidence about the Venetian period of Elizabeth Billington, one of England's most famous virtuose, considering also her years in the Veneto, where she had settled with her second husband and where she later died (near Treviso).

Christine Jeanneret (Københavns Universitet) kicked off the final part of the day by exploring the role of costume as a visual means of communication. She described the shift in the eighteenth century towards simpler, more naturalistic costumes that allowed greater mobility on stage and went hand in hand with new acting techniques. The relationship between eighteenth-century female fashion and opera costumes was also illustrated through Anton Maria Zanetti's caricatures and costume drawings by Leonardo Marini in his Ragionamento intorno alla foggia degli abiti teatrali (1771). Finally, two important singers were the focus of the presentations given by Paologiovanni Maione (Università della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli) and Anne Desler (University of Edinburgh). Maione discussed the influence of Nicola Grimaldi, ‘Nicolino’, on the career of singer Lucia Facchinelli in Naples and Venice. The latter developed her own artistic identity alongside the castrato. Anne Desler examined Grimaldi's strategies for increasing his celebrity, which lasted long into old age, thanks to his extensive vocal training, high social status and a wide range of roles.

The second day began with the main keynote address by Reinhard Strohm (University of Oxford): ‘The Question of Agency in Italian Opera Productions, 1700–1740: Singers, Composers, Poets, Patrons and “Bears”’. Here, this leading scholar examined many aspects of the complex opera production system in the first half of the Settecento in Venice and beyond. In particular, he focused on the participation of women in Italian opera, on impresarios (‘bears’) and on the role played by singers in the practice of transferring arias, leading to the phenomena of arie cambiate and arie di baule. After this rich and multifaceted presentation, the first part of the session ‘Singers, Roles and (Musical) Dramaturgy’ began with papers by Francesca Menchelli-Buttini (Conservatorio Gioachino Rossini, Pesaro), ‘Roles and Aria Types for Vittoria Tesi on the Venetian Stage’, and Judit Zsovár (WoVen), ‘Maria Camati detta “La Farinella”: A Venetian Soprano on Venetian Stages’.

Melania Bucciarelli (NTNU), with ‘“Si può cosa bramar, ch'ei non ti doni?”: Faustina Bordoni and the 1729 Carnival Season’, presented her research on another important protagonist of the opera-seria season. Alongside questions of agency and self-representation in the operas in which Bordoni appeared as prima donna, Bucciarelli focused on her activity as an impresario in partnership with Sebastiano Ricci. The figure of the famous Venetian singer was also at the core of the paper by Brad Carlton Sisk (NTNU), which focused on the ‘Addio Roma’ topos in the Venetian collaborations between Bordoni and Giuseppe Maria Orlandini. In the same session Francesca Greppi (Università di Bologna) presented an interesting case study of casting policy on Venetian stages in the first half of the eighteenth century, considering the example of the soprano pairing of Margherita Durastanti and Diamante Maria Scarabelli at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo.

In her keynote address, ‘Penelope's Progress’, Wendy Heller (Princeton University) explored the role of women on stage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By analysing the role of Penelope in different operas, she identified a significant development towards greater complexity and emotional depth. This was followed by two sessions on women's roles and images of femininity on the Venetian stage, beginning with Berthold Over (Zentrum für Telemann-Pflege und -Forschung, Magdeburg), who presented ‘A Mirror for Princesses? Images of Femininity and Power in Il vincitor generoso and La principessa fedele (Both Venice 1709)’. He examined two librettos based on the highly unusual character of Cunegonda, probably alluding to Electress Therese Kunigunde of Bavaria, who lived in Venice from 1705 to 1715 during her forced exile from the Munich court. The perception of femininity was also investigated by Bella Brover-Lubovsky (Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance) in her paper ‘The Virtue of Epponina: Sarti's Giulio Sabino’, on the musical rendition of the prima donna Epponina's wifely virtues in Sarti's operatic score and in a sonata for harpsichord or fortepiano with obbligato violin based on this work (Giulio Sabino ed Epponina: Sonata caratteristica (Vienna: Artaria[, 1785])). Portrayals of women on stage and gender-related issues were at the core of the last three papers of the day. Magnus Tessing Schneider (Aarhus Universitet) presented ‘The World Upside Down: Gender Reversals in Eighteenth-Century Venetian Opera’, showing women in positions of power. Mari Holder (NTNU) examined Maria Maddalena Pieri's interpretation of male roles in Vivaldi's operas, emphasizing that the Venetian composer gave her parts that embodied power and masculinity, and that these required specific dramatic and vocal skills. Finally, discussing ‘Portrayals of Women in One-Act Operas’ in the late eighteenth century, Ruhama Santorsa (Università di Firenze) noted that despite the dominant themes of family and authority, many of the female characters showed qualities of courage and self-determination.

The last day of the conference began with papers about audiences and (musical) collections. Tatiana Korneeva (NTNU) focused on the noblewomen who were the dedicatees of operas staged in Venetian theatres from the early 1700s to 1750, outlining the network of patronage and cultural contacts that flourished in connection with these commissions. Silvia Urbani (Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello Venezia) analysed a collection of opera arias found in the music archives of the Ospedale della Pietà and Britta Kägler (Universität Passau) sought to identify which references to women's networks can be drawn specifically from Bavaria to Venice in ‘German Courts as Training Centres and Career Springboards, but Venice as Destination of Success: “La Bavarese” and Other Singers and Musicians in the Eighteenth Century’.

The second part of the morning was dedicated to the topic ‘Performing (Gender in) Eighteenth-Century Opera Today’, which focused on the challenges of staging baroque opera. After opera director and choreographer Deda C. Colonna (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis) discussed her latest production in ‘The Impossible Escape from History: Staging Graun's Adriano in Siria in Potsdam, 2024’, Christine Jeanneret and independent designer Silvano Arnoldo explored the creative possibilities of costume design. Finally, Anne Desler's paper ‘Vocal Ornamentation in [the] Early Eighteenth-Century dramma per musica: Period Performance Practice versus Historically Informed Performance Practice’ offered advice to singers on their interpretation of treatises from the era and emphasized that the sound of eighteenth-century opera was very different from that of modern-day productions.

A roundtable, with stimulating debates and reflections on the thorny issue of authenticity, concluded a conference that was multifaceted in its approach to research, without being disjointed.