L’Europa di Jommelli. Alchimie settecentesche di un «gran maestro» e «potentissimo mago»

The volume gathers the Proceedings of the International Conference L’Europa di Jommelli. Alchimie settecentesche di un «gran maestro» e «potentissimo mago», held in 2024 to mark the 250th anniversary of Niccolò Jommelli’s death and articulated across multiple venues — Rome, Naples, and Venice — within a deliberately polycentric and transnational perspective. This articulation is not merely an organisational arrangement, but reflects a precise historiographical choice: to restore to the composer an authentically European dimension, consistent with the trajectory of his artistic biography and with the nature of the cultural processes in which he was engaged.

Taken as a whole, the contributions collected here outline a complex and dynamic picture, in which Jommelli’s figure emerges as a point of intersection between artistic practices, production systems, and theoretical reflections, contributing to a redefinition of the profile of eighteenth-century European musical culture. The composer from Aversa thus appears not only as a protagonist of a season of extraordinary creative vitality, but also as an active agent in the transformation of languages and forms, capable of exerting a profound influence on operatic models and their reception.

This volume therefore aims to offer not only an updated overview of Jommellian studies, but also a critical platform for further developments in research, reaffirming the centrality of the eighteenth-century musical heritage in the construction of a European historiographical perspective and in the definition of new lines of inquiry.

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