Traetta Tommaso

Main article: Music in Russia in the XVIII century

The career of Tomaszo Traetta (1727-1779) developed not in public Venetian theaters, but in Francophile courts - in Parma, Turin, Mannheim, Vienna. He was appreciated in a narrow circle of exquisite European courtyards, who believed that Italian serious opera had already exhausted itself and needed changes, in returning to ancient ideals and assimilating the experience of French musical tragedy.

By the end of the 1760s, his reputation as an opera reformer was firmly entrenched. Unlike Christoph Willibald Gluck, he did not leave any manifestos outlining his views on the development of the opera genre, but managed to create a lot of compositions in a new manner. The traditional norms of the Italian opera series were combined with techniques borrowed from the French lyrical tragedy: expressive recitation in recitatives, large choral scenes, ballet numbers.

1768: Chief Bandmaster of Catherine II

In 1768, as the chief court bandmaster of Catherine IIBaldassare, Galuppi was replaced by Tommaso Traetta, at that time one of the most prominent representatives of the Neapolitan opera tradition. How he was invited to replace the famous Venetian remains only to guess. In many ways, Traetta was the opposite of his predecessor.

Traetta's invitation to Petersburg immediately put the Russian capital in a series of the largest opera centers, which were not alien to opera experiments. It is unlikely that Catherine II deliberately implemented in this case some special aesthetic strategy, most likely, Traetta's fame in Europe and, not least, political interests played a role. The seven-year war (1756-1763) led to a diplomatic revolution: old and new "anti-Russian" alliances broke up, all with the participation of France, whose role quickly and significantly grew. For the visionary Russian empress, who had long-standing ties with France, the Italian composer with a "Gallic" bias at court was very ^[1].

According to the hypothesis of musician and researcher Andrei Penyugin, Tommaso Traetta was the first to use horns in the score. So, in the final scene of his opera "Antigone" there are two very strange fragments. In the midst of general jubilation, a small minor episode appears for three voices. The voices in the score are identified as Corni di Bosco. I.e. either forest or wooden. Probably, we are talking about wooden horns, the horns of which are enclosed in a resonator box (this design was described by Stelin). Thus, Traetta could hint that the happy ending of Antigone in the libretto of Coltellini is only a mask hiding the tragic ending.

Traetta worked in Russia until 1775.

In 1779, the composer died.

Шаблон:XVIII Century Music CD

Notes