Pasticcio.
Ways of arranging attractive operas

Within the current field of studies on the mobilities of Early Modern musicians, the operatic pasticcio (i.e. a most popular genre consisting of the arrangement of pre-existing musical material for opera performances) has emerged as a paradigmatic musical genre of European musical life during the 18th century.

Its structure and aesthetics were not only based on the European-wide distribution and knowledge of musical material, but also on developing concepts of artistic talent, compositional models, and musical ownership. All those concepts were shaped not only by travelling musicians and by the transregional reception of operatic productions, but by political-symbolic intentions and economics.

The Project

The project analyses the material basis, the compositional and performative creation, as well as the musical reception of pasticcios within a European-wide network of metropolises and courts like Venice, London, Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Wrocław (Breslau) and Warsaw. On the one hand, tracing such modes of musical transfer and distribution elucidates the circumstances for the creation and production of pasticcios. On the other hand, an analysis of the musical and literary authorship and its political, social and cultural functions encompassed by the models of pasticcio fragments and by the pasticcios themselves gives insight into both the central aesthetic and cultural developments of the 18th century and the mobilities of its musicians.

The Team

The Polish-German project team undertakes this research through a series of individual projects tightly linked through the collaborative initiatives of a joint database, the creation of online musical editions of three pasticcios by George Frideric Handel, Johann Adolph Hasse and the Mingotti opera troupe, as well as through regular workshops. Within these individual projects, both Italy as a model culture and the musical activities of the Polish crown cover central points of common investigation. The main objective is the development of an innovative digital infrastructure that combinates musical editions and a cultural-historical database in order to reflect the cultural and aesthetic hybridities of 18th-century music.

The Funding

The project is financed for three years (2018–2020) by the German Research Council (DFG – Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and the Polish Science Centre (NCN – Narodowe Centrum Nauki). Due to Covid-19 both project sponsors have prolonged the duration until December 2021 on a cost-neutral basis. The project is based at the universities of Warsaw and Greifswald and headed by Dr. Aneta Markuszewska and Prof. Dr. Gesa zur Nieden.