Ancestors and Stratification in Roman Baroque Opera: the Dramaturgy of Giulio Rospigliosi

This paper discusses one of the most celebrated and successful examples of 17th-Century Roman Opera: Giulio Rospigliosi (1600-1669), who became a Pope in the last two years of his life under the name of Clement IX. He wrote the librettos of many works staged at the papal court of brothers Barberini, cardinals and nephews of Pope Urban VIII. Musicology considers his librettos among those that contributed most to the development of Baroque opera. Rospigliosi’s dramaturgy has been fairly studied, but it has not yet been satisfactorily explored for how it was the “sounding board” for other works, topoi and literary models, that layered and settled on the theatrical culture of Baroque Rome. Certain operas, staged in the Barberini’s residences in the 1630s are characterized by a substantial factor: in the history of musical theatre they are the first to include some comic scenes in their dramatic structure in an organic way. The complex structures of these operas, the large number of thematic motifs they contain, the mixture of elements from upper class culture and commoner culture: all these aspects emphasize the influence of different genres and theatrical practices, such as the tragedies of the Roman Jesuit colleges, the pastoral tales thriving in the other Italian courts, as well as the Commedia dell’Arte of professional actors that reached Rome also through the filter of the "commedia ridicolosa" performed by amateur actors. Employing literary interpretive categories, this paper proposes to track and focus on those elements which, layering in Roman theatrical culture, characterize the dramaturgy of Rospigliosi. Looking at the same operas with historiographical categories, it is possible to reevaluate and reveal them as events charged of an ideological flow, an acme and vehicle for a specific political design of the Barberini patronage.