Un omaggio per „Gerusalemme distrutta“

Abstract

A Tribute to „La Gerusalemme distrutta“. A Private Theatre and a Pisan 19th-Century Edition Printed by „Firmino Didot“. This article reconsiders the private Roman performance of Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli’s dramma sacro „Gerusalemme distrutta“, staged in Casa Lante in 1807 to a libretto by Antonio Simeone Sografi, and the rare celebratory pamphlet printed in Pisa in the same year „coi tipi di Firmino Didot“ and signed „L. C.“. Starting from the chronology of the work, from the Florentine première of 1794 to the public success in Rome at the Teatro Valle in 1810, the essay clarifies the available witnesses: printed libretti, the retrospective account in the „Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung“, later evidence on the cast, and the still open archival trail in the Lante della Rovere papers. It adds a concise account of the plot and the constellation of characters, with special attention to the addition to the plot of the 1807 libretto and to the musical consequences of Marianne’s enhanced role. The second part combines the reception of music and theatre with book history. It does not treat the attribution to Leopoldo Cicognara as a cumulative certainty, but orders the evidence by weight: Didot’s imprint of Cicognara’s „Lettera“ on the Pantheon of the same year, the Canova-Lante-Borghese networks, the rhetoric of occasional verse, and Cicognara’s bibliological culture as documented by his „Catalogo ragionato“. The aim is to preserve the bibliographical specificity of the case while distinguishing among documented fact, contextual plausibility and attributive hypothesis.