Scenografie del sacro: Convent Theatre and Music in Palermo, 1650-1750

From the second half of the seventeenth century, Palermo’s convents contributed to the musical framework of the city through the performance of musical plays, oratorios, feste teatrali and other similar works. It is known that since the Cinquecento, as well as contributing music to sacred services, female communities employed music to enrich and ornament their entertainments. With the emergence of the typically Baroque taste for astonishment, music began to play a more prominent role, becoming one of the most important elements in convent theatre. The nuns often took part in public performances, during which they sang and played musical instruments, thereby confirming that convent life was not characterized by strict enclosure. On the contrary, there were frequent musical exchanges between the nuns and the lay community, particularly during the feast-day celebrations and on other special occasions. This musical lavishness is demonstrated by the oldest and richest female institutions of the city, such as the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina. Through seventeenth- and eighteenth-century libretti, we learn that the nuns actively contributed to the creation of triumphal chariots and the composition of poems, and, especially, that they used to perform in public. In this respect, documentary sources have proved to be helpful in deepening the contribution of the female religious communities to the diffusion of the genre of the oratorio in Palermo. The analysis of the surviving libretti will serve as a starting point for understanding the musical customs of several convents of the territory, which boasted collaborations with important local musicians of the contemporary musical scene.