The Entrepreneurial Adventure of Music in the 1800s: The Places, the Protagonists, the System of Production and Fruition, Publishing

The spread of opera had begun in the mid-seventeenth century and continued in an immediately extraordinary way until well into the nineteenth century. Its theatrical system, although not regulated and supported by any established legislative discipline, in the preunification period could count on constant subsidies from the governments and municipalities of the various Italian states, which considered the spectacle—in its highest forms—as an activity of education and instruction for the people and a source of “luster“ for the government. The Italian Decurionate, therefore, recognized the theater's function as a public service and endeavored to guarantee its survival and educational purposes through the granting of subsidies, as was the case for hospitals, fine arts and the university.