The National Palace of Queluz, an eighteenth-century baroque-rococo pleasure palace in a splendid park, was the summer residence of the first queen regnant of Portugal, Maria I, and her husband, King Pedro III. Nowadays it is the headquarters of the Centre of Portuguese Eighteenth-Century Musical Studies (Divino Sospiro-CEMSP), whose remit is the relationship between research and historically informed performance. Since 2014 it has hosted annual international symposia on music theatre devoted to highly original themes, which are mostly untreated in similar conferences; recent topics have included the operatic subgenres of the serenata and festa teatrale (2015), diplomats and aristocrats as patrons of music theatre of the ancien régime (2016) and the epistolary legacy that treats music and the stage (2018). Some themes have placed more emphasis on local practices in the western edge of the Continent, such as the cultural and diplomatic exchanges between Austria and Portugal (2017); another marked the tricentennial (2014) of Niccolò Jommelli and Pedro António Avondano, whose careers partially or entirely developed in Lisbon.

The most recent symposium, ‘Eighteenth-Century Theater Capitals: From Lisbon to St. Petersburg’, was intended to broaden conceptual and geographical perspectives on the pan-European macrohistory of music theatre. With its participants hailing from a dozen countries, the symposium brought together historians of art, theatre and dance, together with philologists and musicologists, all of whose presentations confirmed the current vibrancy of scholarship in the field. This transnational remit also challenged the orthodox conceptual distinction between cultural traditions in Western and Eastern Europe, weaving them into one single narrative.

The keynote lecture by Andrea Merlotti (Centro Studi sulle Residenze Reali Sabaude, Turin) treated the image and fortune of the royal courts as one of the principal themes emerging from studies of the ancien régime. Cultural and ceremonial patterns common to about 120 European courts created complex webs of meaning around the sovereign, communicated via the arts and expressed in an architectural, artistic and musical code. The existence of a common artistic language among European countries facilitated the circulation of musicians, artists and craftsmen within a single network. Merlotti devoted attention to the putatively peripheral courts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Vilnius, the Royal Castle in Warsaw and Edinburgh Castle, eloquently underlining the inadequacy of the still-common division of musical practices on the Continent into Western or Eastern. One of his central points, wittily demonstrated, was the rediscovered identity of court palaces and the transformation of their social and cultural function nowadays (but not as museums).

The other keynote lecture, by Solveig Serre (Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, delivered in absentia), singled out reasons for the perceived cultural isolation of France. Rehearsing the history of the failed attempts to import Italian opera, Serre interpreted the adherence to solely French genres as the product of a monarchical centralism that asserted the hegemony of the kingdom. The careers of foreign composers at the Académie Royale de Musique in a period between the two great ideological wars – the querelle des bouffons of 1752–1754 and the Gluck–Piccinni rivalry of 1774–1781 – uncovered an important shift, moving from Gallicism towards openness to cosmopolitan influences.

The establishment of Italian opera in Lisbon inspired a number of papers. Giuseppina Raggi (Universidade de Coimbra) discussed artistic exchanges between the kingdom of Portugal and the Papal States, particularly Bologna, showing the growing role of Emilian artists following the rupture of diplomatic relations between Portugal and the Holy See (1728–1732). Addressing the interrelations between music and architectural spaces in the capital, Raggi highlighted the art of the architects Antonio Canevari and the famous Bibiena dynasty, who followed Filippo Juvarra's pattern by promoting their careers in Lusitania. Ricardo Bernardes (CESEM/Universidade Nova de Lisboa) gave a comprehensive account of the flourishing of Italian opera in public and royal theatres during the period 1766–1774, owing to the activity of Nicola Setaro's company. He focused on the vicissitudes of the personal life and career of its maestro, Giuseppe Scolari, highlighting the then-popular dramma giocoso La Cascina on a libretto written for him by Carlo Goldoni. David Cranmer (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) examined the process of cultural transfer and changes in operatic scores that were motivated by local production needs and the personal preferences of the principal artists. As a result, operas lost some numbers and gained others, leading, in the most extreme cases, to the dismemberment of an original work. Cranmer's case study was Il disertore by Giuseppe Gazzaniga, premiered in Florence in 1779. The highly pastiched version produced in Lisbon was attributed to a ‘new’ composer, António Leal Moreira, who was in fact responsible only for one substitute ensemble.

One session was dedicated to the theatrical soundscape of Madrid: Josep Martínez Reinoso (Fundación Juan March, Madrid) addressed the problem of generic definitions of dramatic works on sacred topics produced during the Lenten period, both on stage and in concert form, analysing sacred plays performed in the so-called Academias Místicas. Frequently defined as pasticcios involving the incorporation of successful vocal numbers belonging to the same work, these miscellaneous concerts incorporated traits from oratorio and opera. Carlos Gonzáles Ludeña (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) concentrated on the stylistic complexity of Spanish comedias from the advent of the Bourbon dynasty and the activity of the Italian company ‘los Trufaldines’. Lorena Robredo García (Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid) examined Italian and French influence on Spanish theatre and the activity of the Compañía de los Reales Sitios that arose after Farinelli's departure from the court.

Eliza Cazzato (University of Sydney) brought to light the manifold activities of Italian craftsmen serving the French stage, focusing on Ignazio Degotti, the painter-in-chief at the Théâtre Feydeau and Théâtre de l'Opéra, the pyrotechnic masters the Ruggieri family, and the circus performer Antonio Franconi. Her discussion of the horseback riders that participated in the premiere of Gaspare Spontini's Fernand Cortez (1809) gave rise to a lively discussion. Similarly, Elena Mazzoleni (Università di Bergamo) directed our attention towards the international activity of Philip Astley, the English equestrian who is regarded as being the father of the modern circus. Maria Venuso (Istituto Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples) highlighted the obscure international career of the Neapolitan dancer and choreographer Giuseppe de Dominicis de Rossi, neglected by ballet historiography.

The figure of Pietro Metastasio occasioned a number of insightful presentations. Javier Gutiérrez Carou (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) deployed quantitative tools to demonstrate the revisions the poet made to some of his major dramas at the request of Farinelli for the court of Fernando VI in Madrid. Luca Beltrami (DIRAAS / Università di Genova) unveiled the support given by Metastasio to the Florentine poet Giuseppe Bonechi in his transfer from St Petersburg to the court of José I in Lisbon in 1755, abruptly terminated because of the earthquake, then to a new diplomatic position in Naples. Beltrami focused on Bonechi's adaptation of Metastasian dramas and their dissemination in Portugal, drawing on his digital edition of Metastasio's correspondence.

An inspiring communication from Alessandra Mignatti (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan / Università di Bergamo) revealed an unexplored facet of courtly etiquette: the passages of young princesses from one capital to another for dynastic marriages or other institutional purposes. Such events, she demonstrated, gave rise to a broad variety of expressive codes and allowed an intense circulation of craftsmen and artists. By comparing three such passages – Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick's transfer to Milan and Barcelona to marry the future emperor Charles VI (1708), her daughter Maria Theresa of Habsburg's arrival in Milan (1739) and the Spanish infanta Isabella of Bourbon-Parma's move to marry Joseph II (1760) – Mignatti showed the progressive change towards a more modest ceremonial protocol.

Oakjoo Yap (Mahidol University, Thailand) addressed the pan-European notion of turquerie, highlighting the different transcultural representations that mirrored the political and state agendas of European monarchies. Singling out the seraglio opera as a vehicle of such turquerie, she concentrated on local colour and accessibility to the respective regional audiences. An unknown activity of Antonio Caldara at the Viennese court was uncovered by Livio Marcaletti (Universität Wien): although this composer's fame leans on his dramme per musica, Marcaletti discussed his two commedie per musica and one opera serioridicola based on Don Chisciotte (librettos by Giovanni Claudio Pasquini), demonstrating the figures of speech of the comic and satiric characters and their style of vocal delivery. Marcaletti's paper addressed the characteristics of these operatic subgenres in order to define Caldara's commedia per musica in the context of contemporaneous opera buffa.

Turning to the premiere of Cimarosa–Bertati's Il matrimonio segreto in 1792, Federico Gon (Universität Wien) focused on Cimarosa's attempts to adopt some features associated with the soundscape of the Habsburg capital that would appeal to the local audience. Cimarosa's allusions to Viennese style in selected numbers of the original score, absent in the version prepared for Naples (1793), enabled Gon to shed light on subtle variations in the music-textual discourse of this masterpiece. Flora Mele (Sorbonne Université) uncovered the multifarious career of Charles-Simon Favart: his relationships with Voltaire and Giacomo Durazzo, his founding of the Comédie italienne in France and participation in théâtres de société. Her careful study of Favart's correspondence in the archive of the Bibliothèque de l'Opéra de Paris shed light on European cultural exchange.

A group of papers presented information on ‘peripheral’ theatrical venues that have remained in the shadow of the Habsburg and Bourbon domains. Armando Fabio Ivaldi (Ordre des Experts Internationaux, Geneva) shared the interim results of his systematic catalogue of ballet in eighteenth-century Genoa, revealing his findings on the still little-studied area of ballet, scenography and stage technology in the Ligurian centre. Leonardo Spinelli (Università Gabriele d'Annunzio, Chieti-Pescara) spoke on the theatre at the Villa Medici of Pratolino. The metatheatrical relations in the social and political environments of the overseas regions of the Portuguese colonies were discussed by Marta Brites Rosa (Universidade de Lisboa), concentrating on the figure of the impresario, actor and playwright António José de Paula. I (Bella Brover-Lubovsky, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance) spoke on the inauguration of the Hermitage court theatre in St Petersburg in 1786, celebrated with a performance of Armida e Rinaldo by Giuseppe Sarti on a libretto by Marco Coltellini, originally prepared for Vienna and Salieri. The dramatic function of five substantial ballets in Sarti's score as scenic representations of the abridged text of Salieri's version reveals the cultural preferences of Russian court. Finally, János Malina (Hungarian Haydn Society) discussed the overlapping histories and curious pattern in the employment of musicians in two relatively remote courts, St Petersburg and Eszterháza. He demonstrated how a number of the star singers were contracted in both venues consecutively, despite their great geographical distance both from the renowned capitals and from each other.

The conference enhanced our knowledge of the cultural context of European theatre, demonstrating an impressive variety of viewpoints and approaches; its intense schedule included a roundtable discussion on possible directions for future research. It also saw the launch of several new publications: Paologiovanni Maione (Università di Napoli Federico II) presented the critical edition of David Perez's serenata L'isola disabitata, composed in 1767 for Queluz, prepared by Iskrena Yordanova (CEMSP) and published by the Istituto Italiano per la storia della musica (Rome, 2017); and the proceedings of the previous conference were launched (in the series Cadernos de Queluz (Vienna: Hollitzer, 2019)). Finally, the attendees enjoyed music by Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti (commemorating the three hundredth anniversary of the latter's arrival in Portugal) in a thoughtful performance by the Divino Sospiro orchestra, under the baton of Massimo Mazzeo.