Travelling Opera Troupes in Russia: the Locatelli’s Company

Abstract

The appearance of the Locatelli troupe in St. Petersburg in the late 1750s became one of the most significant events in the Russian musical culture of this period and has long attracted the attention of scientists. The new data, revealed in the archives recently, required the systematization and interpretation in a global European context.

The article summarizes the scattered information about the distribution of the opera buffa in Europe at the turn of the 1750s, the staging of popular works in leading European centers, the activities of the Locatelli troupe in Prague and Dresden before moving to Russia (all data are systematized in a general table).

The list of Locatelli's performances has been updated and supplemented on the base of information from foreign sources and indexes. Some operas from the troupe’s «Dresden” repertory, most likely repeated in Russia, but not yet documented, are named. The arguments are declared in favor of the fact that an important reason for Locatelli to go to Saint-Petersburg was the Seven Years' War, that the interest of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna to the comic opera was engendered by the debates about the Querelle des Bouffons in the Paris press, and that the acquaintance of Russian public with a new genre of comic opera in the late 1750s turned to be more profound and versatile than in other European countries outside of Italy.

Keywords: Russian music culture in the 18th century, the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna’s age, opera buffa, travelling opera troupes, GiovanniBattista Locatelli