Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

With pasted-in alterations 

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[SERTOR, Gaetano]. LA MORTE DI CESARE Dramma serio per musica da rappresentarsi nel Teatro dell illustriss. pubblico di Reggio il carnovale dell’ anno 1791. Reggio: per Giuseppe Davolio, e Figlio, [1791]. £495

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8vo, pp. pp. [ii], vi, 54; woodcut cherub with cornucopia as vignette on title-page, woodcut arms of the house of Este on first page of prelims; some light browning and occasional foxing; in contemporary floral brocade wrapper; somewhat rubbed, especially to lower cover, but still an appealing copy.

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Attractively-bound copy of this opera on the death of Caesar, first performed in Venice, 1788. The libretto was by Gaetano Sertor (1741-1805), who in addition to writing libretti was also a poet, historian, and satirist, and the music by Francesco Bianchi (1752-1810). This Reggio performance had the part of Calpurnia played by Lucia Alberoni, and Portia played by Antonia Paccini. In the present copy, a revision to an aria in act I scene 3 is pasted to the final leaf, with Brutus no longer to sing ‘Vedrai, che in petto ancora Conservo un cor Romano’, but rather twelve lines ending ‘Vedrai ch’io sono Romano, E che si spera in vano Di farmi vacillar’.

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The death of Caesar was, understandably, a popular subject for opera; the University of Bologna’s Corago survey lists five different libretti premiered between 1788 and 1790 in Venice, Livorno, Milan, Brescia, and Rome, but not Sertor’s. 

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For a study of the programme of performances that include this staging of this play, see Karl Böhmer,“Opera Seria in Reggio as a Foretaste of Revolution: The Impresario Franceschetti, Bedini and the Carnival Season of 1791, ” n.d. (published to academia.edu); SBN: IT\ICCU\PAR\1241002; this edition not in OCLC.

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