The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
Jacques II Dalibert: the final decades
Dalibert's project of the late 1670s, to create an opera house at the
Court of Savoy in Turin, had failed. Then, in 1689, Queen Christina of
Sweden died. Her death was quickly followed by the demise of Cardinal
Azzolino, her confident. Gone was the world in which Jacques II Dalibert
had circulated for some thirty years. He had received the modest legacy
stipulated by the Queen's will, but now he was without protectors. And
his theater, the Tor di Nona, remained closed.
With the approach of
the new year, 1690, everything changed. Pope Innocent XI died, and his
successor, Alexander VIII, not only authorized the customary Mardi Gras
parade, he also permitted theatrical performances. Operas could once
again be performed at the Tor di Nona. December 1689 therefore found
Dalibert struggling with the necessary formalities and making repairs to
the long abandoned theater.
Clementi asserts that the Tor di Nona reopened with a performance of Lully's Armide in Italian, but that this daring venture received "no applause" and was "biasimata di tutti," that is, it was criticized by everyone. Cametti disagrees, and asserts that the only work performed that year was the greatly applauded La Statira, with music by Scarlatti.(1)
Alexander VIII did not live long. His death in February 1691, in the midst of the pre-Lenten fetes, silenced opera once again. It never really recovered, because the new pope, Innocent XII, was a zealous reformer. The number of performances was restricted. In addition, the operas that Dalibert produced were not very well received. That did not keep this eternal optimist from undertaking major renovations at the Tor di Nona in 1694 — renovations that amounted to a total rebuilding of the auditorium according to plans drawn by Fontana.(2)
At the time, Dalibert was living just opposite the church of S. Spirito in Sassia, where he had been married thirty years earlier. As the Histoire put it, "Il s'exerce cependant à son ordinaire à entreprendre toujours des choses nouvelles, sans venir à bout d'aucunes. Sa grande occupation est le theatre de Torre di Nona, où il donne tous ses soins à l'embellir, & il subsiste le mieux qu'il peut de l'utilité qu'il en tire."(3)
The new theater was splendid. By 1696 a Frenchman in Rome commented that "L'on vient d'achever icy, en quatre mois, un théâtre magnifique pour l'opéra public, sous la conduite de M. D'Alibert, françois, introducteur des Ambassadeurs auprès la Reyne de Suède pendant qu'elle a vescu."(4) (Was Dalibert exaggerating to newcomers to Rome about his position in Christian's household? There is no evidence that he was ever the Queen's "introducer of ambassadors.") The first performance ― Perti's Penelope la casta, ornamented with lavish scenery, costumes and machines — was held on January 25, 1696.
On February 3, 1697, Dalibert lost his theater, and this time it was for good. Innocent XII's Motu proprio ordered the demolition of the Tor di Nona or, to use the papal words, "... fatto demolire il tetro fabbricato nouvamente à Tor di Nona per usi di recitarvi opere o commedie in musica."(5) By late summer, nothing but the walls remained. The resident for Savoy in Rome wrote home about "il povero conte D'Alibert, dux theatralium operum, finisce tutte les sue scene con questa perlui lacrimevole tragedia."(6)
The French had been closely following Dalibert's travails and the destruction of his splendid theater. In October 1697 ― a year and a half after a long description of the Tor di Nona had appeared in the Mercure galant ― one of Bossuet's correspondents concluded a letter with a comment about the Tor di Nona: "Votre Grandeur doit être avertie que les Romains ont été au désespoir du théâtre abattu, et que c'est faire bien sa cour que d'en louer le Pape, qui en est toujours plus satisfait."(7) It must have been a scant consolation when the Pope promised Dalibert that he could give operas at the Capranica Palace in 1698. Nor, certainly, was his sorrow mitigated by the fact that one of the Dalibert sons was made military governor for Umbria.
Dalibert was by then in his sixties. He still did not give up. He attempted to gain approval for a theater on the site of the old tennis courts; but the Pope was opposed to the idea, and the project was abandoned.(8)
Meanwhile, Fate was smiling on Dalibert from another direction. In 1689, shortly after Christina's death, the Duke of Chaulnes, Dalibert's old friend from the mid-1660s, succeeded Ambassador Lavardin. Chaulnes appointed Dalibert to be secretary for the French legation, where his duties consisted of doing "toutes sortes de commissions et de compliments. Dalibert was given a brevet from the French administration, giving him "2,000 livres de pension." Il a eu le même emploi auprès de la reine de Suède." He also handled some of the correspondence: for this reason "on lui avoit remis le formulaire observé de tout temps pour les ambassadeurs de Sa Majesté."(9) In 1698 Dalibert began to worry that a change in ambassadors might result in his dismissal. He therefore asked Abbé de Chanterac, a member of the embassy staff in Rome, to write Paris on his behalf. Dalibert had already asked for a letter from the Prince de Monaco, who had sent him "une réponse fort obligeante." In addition, continued Chanterac, "une recommendation de M. le duc de Chevreuse pourrait lui être d'une grande utilité, et je souhaiterais beaucoup que nous puissions lui rendre service." Indeed, Dalibert was an "homme de qualité, très compétent et très honoré en cette cour." It Chanterac who alluded to the close link between Chaulnes and Dalibert: "On n'ignore pas que feu M. le duc de Chaulnes avoit beaucoup d'affection pour M. D'Alibert. Je suis témoin qu'il lui écrivoit fort regulièrement."(10)
Indeed, Fate was smiling on Dalibert doubly during those years. Marie Casimira of Poland, the widow of Jean Sobieski, came to Rome in March 1699. Dalibert promptly made his way into her little court, became her secretary, and saw to her theatrical entertainments. There, in the fine private theater that Maria Casimira had built in her residence, Dalibert organized a succession of entertainments.(11)
Jacques II Dalibert described as being in "ill health," "adversa valetudine," died on August 23, 1713 in his house on the Vicolo del Carciofolo in the Babuina area of Rome. In other words, he died in one of the rooms above the tennis court that he had built back in the 1660s. Jacques II was said to have been "eight-seven years old" at the time of his death, although documents in the Archives Nationales of Paris strongly suggest that he was born circa 1638 and was therefore only seventy-five. He was buried in the nearby parish church, S. Lorenzo in Lucina.(12)
Jacques Dalibert and Maria Vittoria Cenci had raised two sons to adulthood. The elder, "Illustrious Signor Count Antonio d'Alibert," born in August 1670, was the godchild of Duke Charles-Emmanuel of Savoy. Queen Christina had seen to his education. The younger son was named after his father: Giacomo d'Alibert.(13) Three daughters had also been born to Jacques II Dalibert and his wife: Maria Cristina (Queen Christina's god-daughter, born in the 1660s(14)), Teresa Maria (born in 1676) and Paola Maria.
A few years after his father's death, Antonio embarked on a
theatrical venture of his own. He created the "teatro Alibert"
(inaugurated in 1717), and then the "Teatro delle Dame" (1726), where
Metastasio's melodramas would be performed. The theater burned down in
February 1863.(15)
On February 14, 1731, an
impoverished Antoine d'Alibert breathed his last in the apartment he
occupied in the house of his godson and universal heir, Count Antonio
Panimolli.(16) Antonio apparently had neither wife
nor children.
Footnotes
1. Clementi, I, p. 632; Cametti,
Tordinona, pp. 74, 342-43.
2. For these renovations, see
Cametti, Tordinona, pp. 79-92.
3. Franckenstein, p. 166.
4. La Teulière, directory of the French Academy in Rome, Feb. 7,
1696, quoted by Cametti, Tordinona, p. 86.
5. Rome, AdiS,
Camerale III, Teatri, busta 2126, doc. 4, fol. 29.
6. Quoted by
Cametti, Tordinona, p. 96; Ademollo, p. 198.
7. J.-B.
Bossuet, Correspondance, ed. Urbain and Levesque (Paris, 1925)
VIII, p. 414. The article in the Mercure appeared in Feb. 1696,
pp. 271-76.
8. Cametti, Tordinona, p. 19-20
9. Fénelon,
Correspondance, ed.J. Orcibal (Geneva, 1987),VI, p. 223; VII,
pp. 155-56.
10. Fénelon, VIII, pp. 203-04, Oct. 14, 1698, Chanterac
to Abbé de Maulévrier.
11. Cametti, Tordinona, p. 22, and
note 2, which cites his article on Carlo Sigismondo Capeci and the
Scarlattis in Musica d'oggi, Feb. 1931.
12. Cametti, "D'Alibert,"
p. 360.
13. Rome, AdiS, Camerale III, teatri, busta 2126, folder 46,
article xvii; Cametti, Tordinona,, pp. 18-19; Turin, AdiS,
Lettere ministri, 91, nos. 281, 283.
14. Turin, AdiS, Lettere
ministri, 91, no. 281.
15. Cametti, Tordinona, pp. 19, 101.
16. For the inventory of his possessions, see Rome, AdiS, Notario
del Tribunale dell'A.C., 1897, fols. 178ff.