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Place of creation/publication
France.
Item Details
Call number
FAST ACC 272532
Folger-specific note
Ordered from Bernard Quaritch Ltd., D9526, 2021-09-15, Cat. "New York, 2021", item #7. From dealer's description: "CAMPRA, [André]. Le carnaval de Venise, ballet. Mis en musique, par M. Campra le Cadet. Paris, Christophe Ballard, 1699. Oblong 4to, pp. lii, 286, [2]; large pictorial woodcut head-piece at beginning of Prologue, decorative woodcut head-pieces at beginning of each Act; early ownership inscription on title scored through, small wormhole to inner margins of first few leaves, not affecting printed surface, one or two headlines shaved, a little light browning and staining, but a very good copy in contemporary calf, spine gilt; extremities rubbed, a few scratches, upper joint cracked at head and foot. First edition, rare: an opéra-ballet in three acts and a prologue, to a French libretto by Jean-François Regnard. It was published under the name of ‘Campra le Cadet’ to suggest Campra’s younger brother Joseph, in an apparently unsuccessful attempt to hide André Campra’s authorship of works for the stage during his tenure (1694–1700) as maître de musique at Notre Dame. One of the first opéra-ballets (Campra introduced the genre with L’Europe galante in 1697), Le carnaval de Venise is a very early example of Campra’s innovative use of real human characters in familiar contemporary settings. It is ‘a romantic comedy concerning a double rivalry: that of Léonore (soprano) and Isabelle (soprano) for Léandre (bass), and that of Léandre and Rodolphe (bass) for Isabelle. It may be viewed in part as a study for Campra’s and Danchet’s Les Fêtes vénitiennes (1710). “La place St- Marc” is the location for Act 1 of Le carnaval de Venise and for the first and second entrées of Les fêtes vénitiennes. Both operas use the device of a play within a play. Part of the concluding divertissement of Act 3 of Le carnaval is an autonomous one-act Italian opera, Orfeo nell’inferni, introduced by its own sinfonia. Other innovations are the strikingly realistic divertissement of Act 3 scene iv, which celebrates the victory of the “Castellani” over their rival street gang, the “Nicolotti”; the realistic stage directions, rare in a seventeenth-century mythological prologue, that describe workers’ preparation of a theatrical event in a room “filled with pieces of wood and unfinished stage sets”; and the use of a trio of basses (“Joignons nos voix”) in the prologue to the first version of the opera. Campra anticipated his Tancrède by three years in scoring the main roles of Léandre and Rodolphe for bass voice’ (Grove online). Some copies have an additional twelve-page ‘Suplément du Carnaval de Venise, ballet’ (‘L’ordonnateur chante tout de suite ce recit, à la place du trio du prologue, page xxiij’), perhaps indicating a later printing. Provenance: ‘Ce livre de Carnaval de Venize opera fait par M. Campra appartient a Nicolas Adam dem[eurant?] chez M. Busard . . . rue St. Denis Paris 1707’ (inscription on verso of front fly-leaf); ‘Victor Galhau’ (later eighteenth-century inscription on verso of front fly-leaf)."
