«AH, CHE BARBARO APPETITO!», OR THE ART OF THE TABLE IN IL CONVITATO DI PIETRA BY GIOVANNI BATTISTA LORENZI FOR GIACOMO TRITTO AND SURROUNDINGS

Abstract

In considering Il convitato di pietra by Giovanni Bassista Lorenzi and Giacomo Tritto (Naples, Teatro dei Fiorentini, 1783), this essay aims to first present the characters and the plot, to then study the orchestral score, and, closely linked to the intonation, the metrical choices of the librettist. Finally, it focuses on the topos of the banquet in its various facets, contextualising the 1783 draft with respect to the spoken versions of the pseudo-Cicognini, dating back to around the middle of the seventeenth century, and of Don Giovanni Tenorio (1736) by Carlo Goldoni, and other contemporary adaptations: the other Convitato di pietra (1776) by Nunziato Porta and Vincenzo Righini, Don Giovanni (1787) by Giovanni Bertati and Giuseppe Gazzaniga, Il nuovo convitato di pietra (1787) by Giuseppe Foppa and Francesco Gardi, Il dissoluto punito (1787) by Lorenzo Da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.