From Page to Stage

Jennifer Williams Brown will be on leave 2013–14 to complete her edition of Francesco Cavalli’s opera Scipione Affricano and to work on her book, From Page to Stage: Francesco Cavalli and the Production of 17th-Century Venetian Opera. The book focuses the first 50 years of Venetian commercial opera production (1637–1686), using Francesco Cavalli as a case study. 

“It explores the tensions that arose as the control of authors disintegrated and works were revised for commercial success,” Brown says. “Studying this process addresses the relationship between artistic integrity and commerce; the nature of authorship in the fluid, collaborative genre of opera; and the significance of written materials in a largely performance-based tradition.”

The book begins in Cavalli’s workshop, exploring his professional partnership with his wife Maria and examining 30 surviving manuscript opera scores. These provide fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpses of daily life: from creating new ideas, to training a student, to generating the materials necessary to begin musical rehearsals. The book then moves to the theatre, focusing on the many metamorphoses each opera typically underwent to adjust to the needs of the singers, the tastes of the audience, and the numerous disasters that befall every opera production. The final portion of the book examines Cavalli’s operas on the road, as they were revised by local composers to suit new casts and theatres and to appeal to the tastes of different audiences.

Brown’s leave is supported in part by the Frank and Roberta Furbush Faculty Scholarship, established by the late Roberta Stanbery Furbush ’33 in 2000 to express her appreciation for the influence of Grinnell College on her life and on that of her husband Frank Furbush ’32 and their son Dennis Furbush ’59.