Stage directions

Cortile nella reggia di Babilonia - Romolo Liverani (1838-1843). Faenza, Biblioteca Comunale Manfrediana.

The stage directions found in opera librettos had a strongly prescriptive value in the creation of stage sets until the early 20th century and are therefore a valuable source for investigating the visual aspect of opera performances.

The editions of libretti catalogued in Corago currently number just under 60,000, and with the resources available, it has not been possible to systematically transcribe the stage directions of all the libretti. In order to obtain a broad and meaningful information base on the visual aspect of opera performances, the time frame was therefore limited to the years 1600-1850, and only the stage directions of the first editions of each opera, available in digital reproduction, were transcribed. Of the libretti of the operas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only a few were chosen, those of the most frequently performed operas.

 The body of the text of the play contains all the scene changes planned for the performance. In some cases, the change may repeat a scene already used previously, and the stage direction may be the same or present a slightly modified or simplified text, sometimes with an explicit reference to the previous scene. In this project, all the scene changes in the play have been transcribed, respecting the wording of the stage directions for each change, but the repeated scenes have also been identified. Scenes used for multiple changes are explicitly indicated in the scene webpage and in the list of the stage directions in the libretto webpage.

The text of the changes has been transcribed respecting the spelling of the source, except for minimal interventions to correct errors or modernise spelling, which are not reported. For each stage direction, the page, act and scene are indicated with Arabic numerals separated by a full stop, in the form: “1.03”, act one, scene three. For practical reasons of presentation in prospectuses, the stage directions have been given a title that reproduces the first significant words of the stage directions or other words from the text that allow the iconographic content to be identified. Sometimes the stage directions are also included in the preliminary pages of the libretto and often differ significantly from the text in the drama. These differences have been taken into account and are reported in the notes.

 The description of the stage directions also takes into account the relationship between identical or similar stage directions found in libretti that reproduce the same drama or related dramas, set to music by other composers. The stage directions in the original libretto and those not found in earlier sources are defined as “new” in the “type” field, while those in other libretti that reproduce the same stage direction or a stage direction with modified text but with similar iconographic content are defined as “related” and marked with a “-” in the “type” field. In the description sheet of a stage caption, related scenes are listed by title and date at the bottom of the sheet.

 Approximately 8,400 libretti from approximately 8,300 operas were consulted, 54,521 changes were described and 48,111 scenes were identified; there are 30,622 “new” scenes, just under 64%.

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