Scarlatti riscoperto

This essay explains Alessandro Scarlatti’s embeddedness in the musical life of Rome and Naples to 1687 through a compact tour of his operas, including his earliest works for the Roman stage and the operas composed for Naples during the tenure of Spanish viceroy Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán, marquis del Carpio (d. 1687). Scarlatti rose to prominence in Rome despite his youth and status as an outsider (he was a Sicilian immigrant), thanks to the fluent originality of his music and enthusiastic support from influential patrons in an epoch in which opera in Rome was a multiply contingent enterprise and the pope’s permission could be withheld or rescinded at any moment. Scarlatti’s music was particularly useful to Carpio as Spanish ambassador to the Holy See. Once he became viceroy of Naples, Carpio engineered Scarlatti’s transfer to Naples and subsequently appointed him maestro of the Neapolitan royal chapel. The composer was absolutely essential to Carpio’s larger project ‒ raising the quality and production standards of opera in Naples. This survey of Scarlatti’s operas to 1687 describes the typology of the operas, the nature of the arias, operatic casting, the circumstances of production (where known), the extant musical sources, and the chronology and organization of opera seasons. A focus on Scarlatti’s relationship with the marquis del Carpio sheds new light on the composer’s career and politics, as well as his contributions to a powerfully collaborative production team in Naples.