Document Type
Article
Abstract
Haydn’s “Berenice, che fai?” Hob.XXIVa:10, also known as the Scena di Berenice, raises some important questions about genre in operatic works intended for performance outside the theater, whether in a public concert or a private venue such as an accademia or a salon. While sometimes referred to as a concert aria or scene, Berenice has also been called a cantata, including in its earliest reception in London after its 1795 première. While the two genres are closely related in their origins in the salon, the concert aria/scene later ventured out of the salon into the concert hall, coinciding with the rise of the public concert as a major performance opportunity.
In particular it is the structure of the work that presents issues, as it alternates between recitative and arioso or cavatina before culminating in a more formal aria. It shares this kind of structure with similarly genre-ambiguous works including Haydn’s Arianna a Naxos and Mozart’s concert scene “Ah, lo previdi!–Ah, t’invola–Deh, non varcar,” K. 272. While Arianna is typically termed a cantata, K. 272 has been called scena ed aria, including by Mozart himself. While these works are considered here in relation to Berenice, the main point of comparison is Marianna Martines’s cantata La Tempesta. Both works draw on texts by the eminent opera librettist Metastasio, yet treat his poetry very differently.
In this article, I argue that while the cantata and concert aria/scene are historically related and difficult to parse out, it is the concert aria’s freer and more unusual formal structures as well as a focus on vocality and virtuosity over dramaturgy that distinguish the genres. Using Martines’s La Tempesta to compare, I argue that Berenice is thus more properly termed a concert scene, despite the slippery nomenclature of its contemporary reception. Yet, interrogating this ambiguity illuminates the growing independence of the concert aria as a separate genre from either cantata or opera in the latter half of the eighteenth century.
Recommended Citation
Goetjen, Michael
(2026)
"Cantata or Concert Aria: a Question of Genre in Haydn’s Scena di Berenice,"
HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America: Vol. 16:
Iss.
1, Article 6.
Available at:
https://remix.berklee.edu/haydn-journal/vol16/iss1/6
Included in
© Haydn Society of North America ; Boston: Berklee Library, 2026. Duplication without the express permission of the author and/or the Haydn Society of North America is prohibited.
