Salieri’s La locandiera and Its Viennese Versions: A Codicological Examination

Abstract

The production of eighteenth-century opera buffa often involved modifications to its poetic or musical text. Italian comic operas written for Vienna during the second half of the century, however, were rarely modified during a performance series and were even more rarely revived. The present article examines a well-known exception to this “rule,” Antonio Salieri’s La locandiera, which was first performed in the Habsburg capital in 1773 and restaged there nine years later. The nature of modifications applied for the revival has not been acknowledged in scholarly literature. A first glance at the musical sources suggests a seemingly uneventful performance history, with no apparent differences between the version of the premiere and that of the 1782 revival. However, a codicological examination of one particular surviving copy— conducted as part of the research on Viennese opera scores from 1760 to 1775 by the project Paper & Copyists—revealed some irregularities: not only did it contain a substituted aria for the servant character Lena, but it also featured a paper with a watermark not consistent with those used in the early 1770s. The internal differences among the copies, all written by professional Viennese scribes, prompted me to examine the only surviving autograph of the complete opera. This source has previously been studied by musicologists and has formed the basis for all musical and dramaturgical analyses of La locandiera to date. Salieri’s manuscript, however, revealed inconsistencies similar to those in the previously examined copy, and it contains parts of the later version of the opera.

The information gathered in the Paper & Copyists database, along with a thorough codicological examination and comparison of all surviving Viennese sources, has helped me to illuminate the 1782 restaging of La locandiera. It reveals a degree of musical rethinking by the composer, mostly done to accommodate the new cast of singers.