Lettere dal passato: testimoni poco attendibili e tuttavia insostituibili

Epistolary exchanges are certainly a treasure trove for performing art scholars: a huge resource which can be helpful in several ways but requires at the meantime the adoption of specific methodological cautions, sharpness, perspicacity and critical sight. Correspondence communicates important factual data from an historical point of view. At the meantime, however, it could not be considered as an objective report. On the contrary, the epistolary channel, forwarding a reserved, personal communication (whether strictly private or as a vehicle of official, diplomatic or at any rate publicly relevant messages) boasts the subjective element, working as a mouthpiece for wishes and expectations on the part of the sender and/or of the addressor. Epistolary exchanges are often employed as a medium in order to change things through an account which purposely alters the actual features of reality in the desired direction. In doing this, the writer tells in any case much about himself/herself and what is around him/her. Moreover, epistolaries offer a specific and especially valuable contribution which could not be obtained through any other documentary source, something which makes them an unavoidable source. They bring the only proof of never-achieved works or projects, only-drafted opera seasons, career evolutions which never occurred. The study of such documentation offers a considerable gain in the comprehension of mechanisms and strategies of the performing arts and their actors. Scholars are required to consider and discriminate carefully the specific kind of epistolary exchanges they wish to examine, given the huge diversity of types which can be found even in the same correspondence. A necessary requirement for such a study is of course the existence of reliable critical editions: a need that is fortunately prompting scholars to take charge of the problem, as it is happening in the case of Metastasio’s letters. The theoretical problems just mentioned are going to be discussed through a good number of European study cases. A specific role will be played by the correspondence concerning five of the major operatic centres and courts of the continent (Dresden, London, Naples, Venice and Vienna) in the first half of the 18th century, whose different functions the study of epistolary exchanges contributes to enhance.