Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I examine two Portuguese-sponsored works by Alessandro Scarlatti. I argue that the juxtaposed imagery of light and dark in both works served to articulate an allegory of Portuguese-Roman political relationships based on Portugal's João V's self-fashioning as a "Sun King."

Paper long abstract:

Alessandro Scarlatti's pastorale La virtù negli'amori was premiered on November 16, 1721, in a sumptuous performance at the Teatro Capranica in Rome. Under the careful oversight of the work's sponsor, Portuguese Ambassador André de Melo e Castro, the performance drew together the music of the well-known Arcadian composer with a libretto by Gaetano Lemer and extravagant stage sets by Francesco Galli-Bibiena to depict the dual marriages of Lauso and Lisa, mythological ancestors of the people of Lusitania, and Agave and Toante, the supposed progenitors of the Portuguese Bragança dynasty. Framing this central drama, the characters "Notte" and "Sole" guided the work to a grand climax: an apotheosis of Portuguese King João V of Bragança, and newly-elected pope Innocent XIII in Apollo's chariot of the sun.

In this paper, I analyze the implied political objectives of La virtu negli'amori, as well as Scarlatti's serenata La ninfa del Tago, which was performed in both Lisbon and Rome in the 1720s. Drawing on the work art historian Susan M. Dixon, I focus especially on examining the symbols of light/dark utilized in the allegorical representation of the Portuguese king and court, who actively fashioned himself a "Sun King" in the manner of France's Louis XIV in this period. In so doing, I posit that such imagery in Portuguese-sponsored musical spectacle worked simultaneously with the visual arts to articulate a Portuguese "self-mythology"—a growing myth of Portugal's cultural relevance, wealth, and power in early eighteenth-century Portuguese-Roman politics