Just for the Ladies? Compilation, Knowledge Practice and Pasticcio in England around 1720

Abstract

In 1719, the Royal Academy of Music was founded with the purpose of setting Italian opera in England on solid ground. Previously, at least two thirds of the Italian operas staged in London had been pasticci. Much of the criticism of the Italian opera before 1719 concerned stylistic fickleness. This is just one reason why it seems likely that the declining number of pasticci after 1719 can be interpreted as an effect of the move against stylistic compilations in music. In fact, in the first period of the Academy’s opera management (from 1720 to 1728) the share of pasticci fell to approximately 10 percent or even less – depending on where the dividing line is placed at a time before the English definition of the operatic pasticcio was established. My paper focuses on some experiments between ‘opera’ and ‘pasticcio’, staged in the Royal Academy’s first period (particularly Muzio Scevola), presented against the backdrop of the audience’s more general cultural knowledge practices and the works’ appeal to female members of the audience.