The Neapolitans in Venice

Abstract The supremacy of Neapolitan composers in eighteenth-century Italian opera is an established myth in the history of music. Already discussed by contemporary critics (see below), the concept of ‘Neapolitan opera’ later influenced music historiography for two centuries. Compounding the issue, Francesco Florimo in 1880 propagated the more specific concept of a ‘scuola musicale di Napoli’ which linked the notion of Neapolitan supremacy to the conservatoire training received by Neapolitan (and immigrant) composers.1 The idea of a ‘Neapolitan school’ in the stylistic sense became the working basis for historical interpretation and source studies in the era of Hermann Kretzschmar, Hugo Riemann, Hermann Abert, and Rudolf Gerber, whose work was paralleled in Britain by Edward J. Dent and Frank Walker. Most of these writers actually questioned the label ‘Neapolitan’. In 1961 the history and problems of the concept were surveyed, under the slightly more cautious formula of a ‘Neapolitan Tradition in Opera’, by Edward 0. D. Downes and Helmut Hucke in a widely noted IMS round-table.