Il Trionfo Dell’onore by Alessandro Scarlatti —Sui Generis on the stage of the Teatro Malibran in Venice

Abstract

The relevance of the study. Alessandro Scarlatti was a multifaceted and ambivalent figure; above all, he was a composer of rigorous professional discipline and a musician-scholar who aspired not only to innovation but also to order and systematic organisation. His operas prepared the classification of Italian opera into seria and buffa. It is indisputable that the principle of “the primacy of the aria as the main compositional indicator” was introduced by this author and that bel canto is inseparable from the specificity of opera seria. The relevance of studying the operatic works of A. Scarlatti, who worked in the leading operatic centres of Italy — Naples, Venice, Florence and Rome — and bridged the Baroque and early Classicism, is evident. His ability to discover new impulses for the development of the operatic genre has proved especially significant for contemporary directors. In Ukrainian musicology, the comic opera Il trionfo dell’onore is examined for the first time in the sui generis dimension, in particular in its contemporary staging at the Venetian Teatro Malibran.

The main objective of the study is to characterise the genre features and stage realisation of Il trionfo dell’onore — the master’s only comic opera — as a unique sui generis work.

The methodology. The study is based on a cultural interpretation of the emergence of the composer’s only comic opera, a comparative analysis of different versions of the libretto, and the identification of Scarlatti’s genre innovation. The method of theoretical generalisation allowed the author to interpret this genre experiment as an impulse for the formation of opera buffa and the new “Neapolitan school”.

The main results and conclusions. The comic opera Il trionfo dell’onore is analysed in the sui generis dimension. Scarlatti’s oeuvre includes more than sixty opera seria, while this work represents his only comic opera and belongs to his late period. The reasons for the long neglect of Scarlatti’s heritage are examined. The article outlines the historical impulses behind the return of Il trionfo dell’onore to the stage and analyses the libretto’s literary features and dramaturgical logic, which combine elements of commedia dell’arte with the high style of eighteenth-century literary trends. Parallels are drawn with Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte by Mozart and Falstaff by Verdi.

The contemporary Venetian production of Il trionfo dell’onore (Teatro Malibran, 2025) serves as the main analytical source, presented in Aaron Carpenè’s critical edition, staged by Stefano Vizioli and conducted by Enrico Onofri. The scenography by Ugo Nespolo reveals Scarlatti’s stylistic multidimensionality through the interaction of Baroque aesthetics with elements of Fauvism, Pop Art, Surrealism and comics featuring ornithological motifs. The 2025 production confirmed the composer’s significance for the history of musical theatre and demonstrated the revival of public interest in this tradition. It also reconstructed Scarlatti’s major achievement — the renewal of the tradition of the first Italian drama per musica — while emphasising social and psychological contrasts. The study formulates a task for contemporary opera theatres: to continue staging unique sui generis works of the epoch.