http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 18 Oct 2011 IP address: 128.103.149.52 Eighteenth-Century Music 4/2, 285–289 © 2007 Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S1478570607000954 Printed in the United Kingdom essays a movable feast: the aria in the italian libretto in london before 1800 michael burden and christopher chowrimootoo  The purpose of this short essay is to announce a new research project, ‘The Aria in the Italian Libretto in London before 1800’, the aim of which is to list the incipits of all the arias included in Italian-language opera and oratorio librettos printed in London before the turn of the nineteenth century. 1 The notion that an opera libretto may not be the stable text it appears on the page to be is no news to scholars working on opera and musical theatre, who understand perfectly well the possible nature and origins of the sources they use, especially the libretto. At least one hopes they do; but in the case of the last, do they? The seductive lure of the printed page is strong, a lure which has an almost irresistible pull for scholars when there is a score to ‘match’; it becomes even stronger when those working on canonic composers stray out of their chosen territory to look for ‘contemporaneous examples’ from the works of ‘minor composers’, or when there is no thematic catalogue to provide even a basic chart with which to navigate the treacherous waters of the output of even some major eighteenth-century ones. A libretto is, after all, not ‘music’, they say – ‘that’s all very well, but why aren’t you talking about the music?’ – so why worry? Just hurry on to the matching score to identify the ‘composer’s intentions’, and all will be well. All? In one of the most thought-provoking discussions on the aim and purpose of bibliographical studies of recent times, Robert D. Hume asks the question ‘What does a critic need in order to make a well-founded attempt at interpreting a text?’ 2 Hume’s ‘text’ here is the whole object – hereafter the ‘work’ – and his answer can be divided into two parts. The first is that there must be a reliable source for the work itself, a source, he adds in loud italics, ‘whose nature and origins the critic understands’. The second is that ‘unless the critic is practising a radically anti-historical (and now ludicrous) form of New Criticism’, a work’s genesis, produc- tion, dissemination and reception are essential to its sound interpretation; ‘wishing to pretend that a work we want to interpret comes down to us in an immediate text, free of all ordinary baggage, is worse than silly’. 3 Two obvious points, one might think, but the fact is that Hume proceeds to cite a number of recent examples where a failure to understand a source for a work, coupled with carelessly thought-out editorial principles in its presentation, have ultimately resulted in the development of a misleading historical picture. It should be said that in this discussion Hume’s aim, as a literary scholar and theatre historian, is not to take up the cudgels on behalf of any particular faction in a ‘textual studies vs criticism’ debate, but is rather ‘an attempt 1 The project is headed by Michael Burden, with Christopher Chowrimootoo as co-researcher. It was undertaken with research funding from the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford, with a generous donation from Eugene Ludwig, through the Ludwig Family Charitable Trust. 2 Robert D. Hume, ‘The Aims and Uses of ‘‘Textual Studies’’ ’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 89/2 (2005), 197–230. 3 Hume, ‘Aims and Uses’, 222. 285