‘The Operetta Seasons Considerably Decreased Our Losses’: Art and Business From Italian Ledgers of the Early 1900s

The theatrical trade across the Atlantic has long been a subject of musicological inquiry, and in recent years there has been increasing interest in the economic implications of these exchanges. Research activity focusing on South America started with John Rosselli's works on the musical scene of Buenos Aires (Rosselli 1990; 1993) and extends to the recent investigations of Anibal E. Cetrangolo (2015). More comprehensive research is being carried out by a group led by Professor Fernando J. Devoto, with funding from the Argentinian government, in a project entitled Historia y patrimonio de la Argentina moderna: Inmigración, transferencia y readaptación de saberes en las dimensiones simbólicas y materiales de los teatros del litoral rioplatense y su conservación. From 1907 onwards one of the largest theatre companies in Italy and South America - the Società Teatrale Italo-Argentina (STIA), closely followed by its Italian branch (STIn) - embraced the business of operetta. The purpose was to defeat the financial crisis of opera and straight theatre by producing the most successful genre, and the audience rewarded this decision. However, critics could not cope with the idea: how could a company that had among its members the main figures of the operatic market (e.g. Renzo Sonzogno and the owner of Teatro alla Scala, Uberto Visconti di Modrone) produce new operas by Mascagni and Alfano and the much more successful and popular operettas of Luigi dall'Argine at the same time? The answer can be easily read in the company's accounting books: “The operetta season considerably decreased our losses”. Until the 1910s STIA and STIn managed the main theatres in Italy, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, where they staged - among others - the world premiere of Mascagni's Isabeau and the leading operetta productions by the "Città di Milano" company, with Caramba's costumes and set designs. Moreover, the principal impresarios of the limited company, Faustino da Rosa and Walter Mocchi, engaged Luigi dall'Argine as conductor for their main seasons in the Solís Theatre in Montevideo and in the Coliseo Theatre in Buenos Aires, thus demonstrating the leading role operetta had reached in the South American theatre market. By studying archive sources of STIA and STIn conserved in Buenos Aires, Rome and Milan, the aim of this chapter is to show the difficulties that two of the major theatre companies in Italy and South America faced in balancing art and business.