“Une partie essentielle du spectacle”: The Role of Dance in Turin’s feste teatrali of the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

From La vittoria d’Imeneo, staged at the Teatro Regio in June 1750, by Giuseppe Bartoli and Baldassare Galuppi, to the moment when the striking French events of the end of the century upset the international chessboard, the festa teatrale was the genre most often used in Turin for commemorative events. Feste teatrali were used to solemnize the visits of foreign princes and sovereigns as well as celebrate the dynastic ties that the Savoy monarchy managed to forge with the main European courts through music. A representation of sovereignty and an instrument of consensus par excellence, this type of opera is a fertile ground for those who intend to study curial politics and its ritual practices; from a theatrical and musical point of view, it also offers many ideas for investigation, one of which concerns the constitutive and structural role of dance.