The article is focused on certain critical questions of the position of early Italian opera in contemporary culture. For a long time both performers and scholars considered it as an outdated genre meriting only historical interest. This state of affairs began to change in the 1970s, when a series of facsimiles prepared by Garland Publishing revealed a certain number of published opera scores and librettos. Over the past 50 years, three trends have emerged in the scholarly approach to early Italian operas. The first is that of deconstruction of the prevailing and largely erroneous stereotypes. The second is that of reconstruction, filling in the gaps of knowledge (compilation of encyclopedias, catalogues, works on the history of opera, and monographs about composers). The third is that of interpretation of the 17th- and 18th-century European musical and theatrical heritage in the context of culture and style. In this regard, a special position is held by the issue of performance interpretation. The postmodern era has transformed the early opera from an antique rarity into a topical musical and theatrical phenomenon. The dimension has opened up for directorial experiments aimed at projecting this genre onto the topical problems of today, bringing it closer to the perception of the mass of listeners – each and every one. The plotlines based on ancient myths and historical legends, conventional comedic and farcical situations referring to the earliest literary specimens are easily adapted to the realities of the modern theater: one convention becomes replaced by another, the wigs and camisoles of the 18th-century singers are replaced by army camouflage. Most of these productions provide interpretations not so much of the early opera as such, but particularly of us, bringing our own existential fears and ambitions onto the stage, playing on our political sympathies and antipathies. But there also exists an opposite side. It finds expression in the manner of singing and instrumental playing which comes close to the norms of three and four centuries ago, i.e., historical performing practice, which in our conditions is perceived by everyone as exquisite, designed for the refined taste of the elite, and in this sense of the “aristocratic” listener, rather than the general masses. Thus, in many cases there arises a combination, which is paradoxical in its essence – an unreasonable duality. Interpretation of the essence of early Italian opera is becoming acutely relevant as the path for this art to regain its previously lost artistic integrity.

At present, the theory of musical form is still dominated by the notion that elements of sonata form in composition began to penetrate into vocal genres or, more specifically, into the opera aria only by the end of the 18th century, when they had already been fully established in instrumental music. In the latest studies devoted to sonata forms, both in Russia and in other countries, there is no mention of the emergence or manifestation of the principles of sonata in opera and vocal music. Nevertheless, in Italian aria (both in serious and comic opera) the principles of sonata form have been forming intensively since the end of the 1720s, i.e., long before these processes were noted in instrumental music.The article analyzes the composition in a number of arias from serious and comic operas by Leonardo Vinci, Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and Gaetano Latilla. In these arias, the sonata principles are reflected in the compositional, thematic and tonal-harmonic planes. All arias are variants of the early two-part (binary) sonata form enclosed by the outer sections of the da capo. The conclusions are as follows: 1) sonata form in arias is based on interaction with the strophic arrangement of the poetic texts containing figurative contrast; 2) sonata form was established in stages, from a distinctly structured exposition (without clear signs of sonata in the second section of the form) to a full binary sonata form with thematic repetition and tonal subordination in the reprise, the priority role in this process played by comic opera.The article contains musical examples and tables.

Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno was the first comic opera, which opened the Venetian era in the history of opera buffa. Contemporary dictionaries name Carlo Goldoni (text) and Vincenzo Legrenzio Ciampi (music) as its authors. The detailed review of the manuscript (preserved in the Estense Library in Modena) undertaken in the article for the first time, reveals the original “pasticcio” nature of this opera. An analysis of the handwriting and various markings shows that the score contains musical material representing two different productions of the opera: the Venice premiere in 1749 and a performance in London in 1755. Ciampi, who wrote about one third of all the musical numbers for the Venetian premiere of the opera in 1749, was apparently joined in his work by other composers. For the London production in 1755 Ciampi added a newly composed portion of musical numbers, however, still almost a quarter of the entire score remained consisting of insertions of music by other composers. The surviving music also makes it possible to establish exactly what material from the Venetian production was used in the parodies on this opera composed in Paris: Bertholde à la ville by Louis Anseaume (1754) and Le Caprice Amoureux, ou, Ninette à la cour by Charles-Simon Favart (1755). The study of Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno expands our understanding of the practices of opera buffa at the early stage of its history.