''Amor d'un'ombra e gelosia d'un'aura'' ("The Love of a

Shade Shade, Shades or Shading may refer to: * Shade (color), a mixture of a color with black (often generalized as any variety of a color) * Shade (shadow), the blocking of sunlight * Shades or sunglasses * Shading, a process used in art and graphic ...

and the Jealousy of an Aura"), also known as ''Narciso'' ("Narcissus"), is an opera in three acts composed by

Domenico Scarlatti Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer. He is classified primarily as a Baroque music, Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical peri ...

to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece. It premiered in Rome in January 1714 at the private theatre of Maria Casimira of Poland who had commissioned the work. The libretto is based on two fables from Ovid's ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' (, , ) is a Latin Narrative poetry, narrative poem from 8 Common Era, CE by the Ancient Rome, Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its Cre ...

'':

Echo In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the lis ...

and Narcissus (Book III) and

Cephalus Cephalus or Kephalos (; ) is the son of Hermes, husband of Eos and a hero-figure in Greek mythology. Cephalus carried as a theophoric name by historical persons. The root of this name is , meaning "head". Mythological * Cephalus, son of Hermes ...

and

Procris In Greek mythology, Procris (, ''gen''.: Πρόκριδος) was an Athenian princess, the third daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens and his wife, Praxithea. Homer mentions her in the ''Odyssey'' as one of the many dead spirits Odysseus sa ...

(Book VII).Kirkpatrick p. 53

Background and performance history

Queen Maria Casimira had taken up residence in Rome in 1699 following the death of her husband Jan III Sobieski and her subsequent exile from Poland. Once in Rome she set up a court and became an active figure the city's musical life. In 1709, Domenico Scarlatti succeeded his father Alessandro as her court composer. His librettist, Carlo Capece, was her private secretary and court poet. ''Amor d'un'ombra e gelosia d'un'aura'' premiered at Maria Casimira's private theatre in the Palazzo Zuccari in January 1714 and proved to be the last of the several operas which Scarlatti had composed for her. Five months after the premiere, she departed for France, leaving a string of debts behind her. In addition to Scarlatti's opera, the 1714 Carnival opera season in Rome saw the premieres of Caldara's '' Tito e Berenice'' (also with a libretto by Capece) and Gasparini's ''Lucio Papirio'' (with a libretto by Antonio Salvi). These two were the result of a competition set by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, a prominent patron of the arts in Rome. Two rival

academies An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

, the

Accademia degli Arcadi The Accademia degli Arcadi or Accademia dell'Arcadia, "Academy of Arcadia" or "Academy of the Arcadians", is an Italian literary academy founded in Rome in 1690. The full Italian official name was Pontificia Accademia degli Arcadi. History Found ...

and the Accademia dei Quirini, were each to sponsor an opera to be performed in the newly renovated Teatro Capranica. Ottoboni would give a generous gift to the academy which had produced the best one. According to a French correspondent at the time, ''Tito e Berenice'' had considerably less success with the audiences than ''Lucio Papirio'', but the best opera presented that season was actually ''Amor d'un'ombra e gelosia d'un'aura''. A revised version of the opera with the addition of two arias and two duets composed by Thomas Roseingrave opened at the

Haymarket Theatre The Theatre Royal Haymarket (also known as Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre) is a West End theatre in Haymarket, London, Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in ...

in London on 30 May 1720 under the title ''Narciso''. Roseingrave also published the overture and arias of the opera, the only vocal music of Scarlatti that was printed in his lifetime. Capece's original libretto was adapted for the London performance by Paolo Antonio Rolli who eliminated the role of Nicandro. While the cast for the Rome premiere is unknown, the principal roles in the London performance were taken by Margherita Durastanti (Narciso), Anastasia Robinson (Eco), Benedetto Baldassari (Cefalo), and Ann Turner Robinson (Procri). The Haymarket Theatre ''Narciso'' proved to be the last time one of Scarlatti's operas was performed in his lifetime. The discovery of a copy of the manuscript score in the library of

Friedrich Chrysander Karl Franz Friedrich Chrysander (8 July 1826 – 3 September 1901) was a German music historian, critic and publisher, whose edition of the works of George Frideric Handel and authoritative writings on many other composers established him as a p ...

led to several late 20th and early 21st century revivals. A version using the voices of opera singers but with the characters portrayed on stage by

marionettes A marionette ( ; ) is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by ...

was produced in 2002 at the Besançon International Music Festival.

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

, Département des Arts du Spectacle
34. Narciso (2002; Houdart): marionnettes
Retrieved 23 February 2014

References

Notes Sources *Boyd, Malcolm (October 1985)
"Nova Scarlattiana"
''

The Musical Times ''The Musical Times'' was an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom. It was originally created by Joseph Mainzer in 1842 as ''Mainzer's Musical Times and Singing Circular'', but in 1844 he sold it to Alfr ...

'', Vol. 126, No. 1712, pp. 589–593. Retrieved 23 February 2014 . *Capece, Carlo Sigismondo (1714)
''Amor d'un'ombra e Gelosia d'un'aura''
Antonio de' Rossi *Franchi, Saverio and Sartori, Orietta (1997)
''Drammaturgia romana''
Vol. 2. Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. *Kirkpatrick, Ralph (1983)
''Domenico Scarlatti''
Princeton University Press. {{Echo and Narcissus 1714 operas Italian-language operas Operas by Domenico Scarlatti Operas