Scipione impasticciato: Performing, Researching and Reviving London operas from 1730–1731

The study discusses practical and aesthetic aspects of the pasticcio principle, which characterised London's Italian operas of 1730–31 and still concern revivals, source research, and editions today. Twentieth-century revivals of Handel's opera Scipione pose the question of how to evaluate the original version of 1726 vs its pasticcio-like revival of 1730. Details of the 1730–31 season under Handel, concerning for example the status of the vocal soloists, reveal a multiplicity of agencies (singers, composer, impresario, librettist, patrons/audiences) which influenced the artistic outcomes. Handel's decision-making role for the entire season as the company's music director is re-asserted, although the proposal of John H. Roberts (2016) that another musician composed the recitatives for the pasticcios Ormisda and Venceslao will be accepted. This musician, however, may have been the tenor Annibale Pio Fabri rather than the concert-master Pietro Castrucci, suggested by Roberts. The aesthetic question that concerns us today is the dichotomy between a unified author-work-concept and a discursive pasticcio principle, of which the former is observed in critical editions, the latter in (post-) modern stage productions. It is suggested that a similar contrast already characterised eighteenth-century theatrical practice and aesthetics, although fluctuations between the two principles and, generally, multi-agency in creating theatrical works were negotiated with considerable freedom.