Musica transalpina : Text- und Musiktransfer am Beispiel des römischen Kantaten- und Serenatenrepertoires von Antonio Caldara

On November 16th, 1726, a Pastoral Opera by Antonio Caldara was performed in Dublin, which, according to the libretto, was written in Rome. At the time of the performance, Caldara has already served as vice-chapel master in the service of the imperial court in Vienna and during his Roman period (1709–1716), he never had composed a work with this title. Nevertheless, a glance at the libretto leads to the Eternal City: Musgrave Heighington, himself a composer, pretends to be the translator of the work, but in fact, he has to be regarded as its editor. As the analysis shows, Heighington combined several compositions to a pasticcio, of which the main part can be attributed to the cantata Grato bosco, composed by Caldara in 1714 for his Roman patron, Francesco Maria Ruspoli. This example is particularly noteworthy, as Caldara's Roman cantata repertoire, unlike that of Alessandro Scarlatti, had hardly any distribution outside Rome. The aim of the present study is to investigate the text and music transfer using the example of the cantata and serenata oeuvre by Caldara, exposing strategies of takeover and transformation practices.