Opera Pasticcio in Eighteenth-Century Opera: Work Concept, Performance Practice, Digital Humanities Warsaw, 13–14 May 2021

Abstract

[...]numbers could be moved from one opera to another with no detriment to the latter work's dramatic structure, so long as they still reflected the emotions expressed by the original. Initially planned as an in situ event, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that it took place online, which – despite the lack of human contact – helped boost the number of observers and the reception of the event among opera and theatre scholars. Berthold Over (Universität Greifswald), in his paper ‘The Art of Cooking a Pasticcio: Musical Recipes and Ingredients for Pasticcio Operas’, employed culinary analogies to explain the concept of ‘unity in diversity’ that was typical of this genre. Barbara Wiermann (Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Dresden), in ‘Source Studies – Authority Data – Digital Musicology’, highlighted the fluid concept of the work in the pasticcio genre and also the diversity of the relevant sources, which today results in numerous problems with standardizing data.