oa Italian Opera ‘Under the Belgian Climate’: The 1727-30 Seasons at the Monnaie

The government of Archduchess Maria Elisabeth (1725-41) made a more vital contribution to musical life in Belgium than has been presumed. With greater vigour than any of her predecessors, Charles VI’s sister sought to erase the Bourbon heritage of the Southern Netherlands by transplanting Habsburg policies. A significant outcome of this ‘re-Habsburgization’ was the return, after decades of absence, of Italian opera to Belgium. Between April 1727 and February 1730, sixteen drammi per musica and five intermezzi comici musicali put a sudden, hitherto unexplained stop to the Lullian hegemony at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. With each work celebrating a Viennese court festivity, the operas were framed by Te Deums, balls, and cannonades, and their subjects were chosen so that local spectators were exposed to Austria’s cultural and ideological hallmarks. However, dark clouds gathered over Maria Elisabeth’s operatic campaign. Both impresarios coordinating the productions, Antonio Maria Peruzzi and Gioacchino Landi, went bankrupt and could only escape jail through the Archduchess’s personal intervention. Landi’s last offering, Attalo (1730), openly allegorised the injustice done to Italian poetry and music ‘under the Belgian climate.’ Deriving evidence from fresh sources, the present article aims to explain how Maria Elisabeth attempted to attune Brussels with Vienna and why her enterprise was destined to fail.