(It., from sereno: ‘clear night sky’).
A dramatic cantata, normally celebratory or eulogistic, for two or more singers with orchestra. The name alludes to the fact that performance often took place by artificial light outdoors at night. ‘Serenata’ has become associated incorrectly with ‘sera’ (evening); this etymology has long influenced the interpretation of the word, which has been used also to denote a lover’s serenade or an instrumental composition (e.g. Mozart’s Serenata notturna k239).
The first serenatas appear to have been written in Italy and in Vienna, shortly after the emergence of the solo cantata. Two early examples are Antonio Bertali’s Gli amori d’Apollo con Clizia (1661, Vienna) and Antonio (or possibly Remigio) Cesti’s Io son la primavera (1662, Florence). In the 17th and 18th centuries the serenata was viewed as a dramatic genre in the Aristotelian sense (the singers representing characters who communicate directly, without external narration) rather than in the senses of being acted on stage or having an identifiable plot. Its apparently contradictory nature has led to its being seen variously as a species of overblown cantata and a miniature opera. In reality, the serenata is a distinct genre, although its literary texts go by a multiplicity of descriptions that suggest greater diversity than actually exists.
‘Serenata’ is best understood as a catch-all term like ‘opera’ or ‘oratorio’. It is often applied to their work by both poet and composer and is the term most frequently encountered in contemporary references. ‘Cantata’ was used in the same sense from early times and in the late 18th century was generally preferred: after the decline of the chamber cantata the risk of confusion had receded, while the rise of the instrumental serenade made the continued use of ‘serenata’ potentially misleading. Poets often substituted terms that conveyed the special essence of their work; an ‘applauso per musica’, for example, is explicitly a congratulatory piece, an ‘epitalamio musicale’ a work written for a wedding; a ‘festa teatrale’ is a celebratory piece for performance in an actual or improvised theatre, an ‘azione teatrale’ a work for theatrical performance containing some form of action. Certain poets used a particular description – ‘composizione per musica’, ‘festa di camera’, ‘poemetto musicale’, ‘intreccio scenico-musicale’ – as a kind of trademark.
The serenata shares important features with the chamber cantata, oratorio and opera. Like the cantata, it was usually a courtly entertainment given privately before an invited audience; however, learned societies and colleges also promoted serenatas, and in Venice the custom arose of performing a serenata instead of a full-length opera in public theatres on the last night of Carnival in order to leave more time for banqueting and visiting the gaming-house. Since serenatas were often given in open spaces, they could attract an outer circle of uninvited listeners and so become de facto public events. Serenatas usually formed an integral part of a larger celebration, or festa. During some large-scale celebrations whole cycles of serenatas came into being, such as the five performed at Piazzola sul Brenta on 7 and 8 August 1685 (see fig.1). The singers normally read from their parts, remaining more or less stationary. Thus relieved of the burden of memorizing they could tackle more complex music, and the poet could introduce greater literary artifice, than would be feasible in an opera. The singers were, however, frequently costumed in operatic style and profiled against scenic backgrounds for enhanced visual impact and sense of occasion; in 17th-century serenatas, elaborate stage machinery was also often used.
Dramaturgically, the serenata most closely resembles the Baroque oratorio. Many serenatas contain allegorical characters personifying such concepts as duty and honour, and their texts usually have a strong moralizing strain. The composition is often divided into two approximately equal parts. It is in its musical style and resources that a serenata comes closest to true opera. The rise of the genre coincided with that of the modern orchestra, and its accompaniment was orchestral almost from the beginning. Wealthy patrons sometimes recruited mammoth orchestras in a spirit of frank ostentation: in 1729, for instance, 130 players were needed for the celebration of the dauphin’s birth in La contesa de’ numi (text by Metastasio, music by Vinci). Although serenatas sometimes include choruses, movements described as ‘coro’ are often ensembles for the full cast of principals.
Serenatas varied greatly in length. Cassani’s Il nome glorioso in terra, santificato in cielo (1724, set by Albinoni) is close to the average, with five closed numbers in its first part, six in its second (equivalent to slightly more than one act of a three-act dramma per musica). Extreme brevity is represented by Metastasio’s La rispettosa tenerezza (1750, set by Reutter; one closed number), extreme length by Il nascimento de l’Aurora (c1710, set by Albinoni; 25 closed numbers, with no division into two parts). Roles in serenatas, unlike those in operas, are usually given equal importance, even when they number as many as six or seven. Arias are often grouped in ‘rounds’ (containing one aria for each singer), in many cases paralleling a structural division of the text.
Since serenatas were performed in varied settings, and rarely in purpose-built theatres, there was no standardized manner of production. Architects, carpenters and scene painters deployed enormous ingenuity in creating ‘theatres for a day’, a favourite motif being the opposition between land and water. Heinichen’s Diana sull’Elba (1719) had the performers on a boat moored in the Elbe and the Saxon court watching from the bank (see Dresden,fig.8); conversely, Le gare delle lodi di Sua Eccellenza conte di Melgara (1686, composer unknown) placed the audience on a boat and left the performers on land.
Because of the pressure of time under which they often had to work, and the need for liaison with the commissioning patron, the poets and musicians commissioned to write serenatas were nearly always local. Although most are also known from their operatic activity, some minor figures and dilettanti who received no operatic commissions contributed to the genre. The only author who operated at an international level was Metastasio, many of whose texts achieved classic status and, like his opera librettos, were set repeatedly.
The occasions that called forth serenatas can be divided into those that could be prepared for well in advance (e.g. namedays, weddings, annual ceremonies and official visits) and those which were less predictable and were celebrated as soon as possible after the event (births, military victories, peace treaties). Most serenatas contain a clear allusion to the event celebrated. Re-use or adaptation of a text was rare, perhaps because this was thought disrespectful to both original and new recipients of homage; however, the borrowing of short portions of text or music from earlier works was not precluded, though done less blatantly than in opera. Again, the great exception is Metastasio, whose most important texts contain a minimum of topical references, seemingly in order to render them re-usable; L’isola disabitata, for example, was set by 11 composers in the 30 years following its première in Bonno’s setting (1753, Aranjuez).
Most serenatas lack a plot in the ordinary sense, although a few (e.g. Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo) include a little dramatic action. The characters, when not allegorical figures, can be deities, semi-deities or denizens of Arcadia; only rarely do historical figures appear, as in Metastasio’s Il sogno di Scipione (1743). The absence of plot meant that the poet had to work towards the climax (often the revelation of the person or event celebrated) at a leisurely pace. Two favourite structural models were employed. In the ‘debate’ or ‘contest’, frequently indicated by the words gara or contesa (or their opposites, unione and concordia) in the title, the characters express different points of view which finally become reconciled; in the ‘quest’ the object of celebration is discovered in stages. Topical references (some, where expedient, oblique in the extreme) are customarily veiled in Arcadian language: an Austrian emperor may be alluded to by the adjective ‘augusto’, while Venice often appears as ‘L’Adria’ (the Adriatic). Flights of fancy that would have been considered risky deviations in opera find an occasional place in the serenata: a fifth of Il nascimento de l’Aurora is taken up by a dramatically irrelevant word-game that gives rise to astonishingly lively banter.
The serenata quickly spread beyond the Alps to centres of Italian culture in northern Europe. In Lutheran states vernacular versions appeared. The works by J.S. Bach known today as ‘secular cantatas’ could accurately be described as German serenatas (indeed, bwv66a and 173a are titled ‘serenata’). In England the court ode normally took the form of a serenata by the start of the 18th century; typical examples are the birthday odes for the sovereign composed by Kusser in Dublin between 1709 and 1727 and Boyce’s birthday and New Year odes (1751–79). Only France – strangely, in view of its successful naturalization of opera and the cantata – resisted the serenata. The genre petered out in the early 19th century, its social and aesthetic basis having been lost through the embourgeoisement of aristocratic culture and the universal reaction against Classicism and Arcadianism. The choral cantata is partly its linear descendant, partly its replacement.
The significance of the serenata in its time is not yet fully appreciated. From a modern point of view it sits uncomfortably between stage and concert hall and has suffered as a result. However, the growth of music theatre as distinct from traditional opera has encouraged the development of an aesthetic more tolerant of forms of presentation intermediate between full staging and concert performance, opening the door to imaginative and stylistically fitting revival of the best works in the serenata tradition.
AllacciD
Catalogo delle compositioni musicali continente oratori sacri, componimenti da camera, serenate et opere composte e rappresentate sotto il gloriosissimo governo … di Carlo VI (MS, A-Wn)
J. Mattheson: Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739/R)
B. Valmarana: Drammaturgia compilata in seguito a quella pubblicata dell’Allacci (MS, 1842, I-Vnm)
P. Camerini: Piazzola (Milan, 1925)
I. Becker-Glauch: Die Bedeutung der Musik für die Dresdener Hoffeste bis in die Zeit Augusts des Starken (Kassel, 1951)
F. Hadamowsky: ‘Barocktheater am Wiener Kaiserhof, mit einem Spielplan (1625–1740)’, Jb der Gesellschaft für Wiener Theaterforschung 1951–52, 7–117; pubd separately (Vienna, 1955)
T.J. Walsh: Opera in Dublin 1705–1797: the Social Scene (Dublin, 1973)
U. Hofmann: Die Serenata am Hofe Kaiser Leopold I. 1658–1705 (diss., U. of Vienna, 1975)
J. Joly: Les fêtes théâtrales de Metastase à la cour de Vienne (1731–1767) (Clermont-Ferrand, 1978)
M. Gemin: ‘L’Adria Festosa per Federico Cristiano: la lunga visita’, L’invenzione del gusto: Corelli e Vivaldi: Venice 1982, 191–212
M. Talbot: ‘The Serenata in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, RMARC, no.18 (1982), 1–50
T. Griffin: The Late Baroque Serenata in Rome and Naples: a Documentary Study with Emphasis on Alessandro Scarlatti (diss., UCLA, 1983)
L. Zoppelli: ‘Il pensiero conservato dagli affetti: psicologia retorica e linguaggi interni della rappresentazione festiva leopoldina (Venice, 1690)’,Il tranquillo seren del secol d’oro: musica e spettacolo musicale a Venezia e a Vienna fra Seicento e Settecento (Milan, 1984), 9–39
A. Cetrangolo and G.De Padova: La serenata vocale tra viceregno e metropoli: Giacomo Facco dalla Sicilia a Madrid (Padua, 1990)
N. Dubowy: ‘Ernst August, Giannettini und die Serenata in Venedig (1685/86)’, AnMc, no.30 (1998), 167–235
MICHAEL TALBOT