The previous chapters demonstrated the lengths to which Vaudémont and his assistants went to assemble a cosmopolitan corps of librettists, composers, dancers and musicians for opera productions. This mixed company made Milan the center of multiple exchanges with Paris, Hanover, Turin, Venice and various Lombardic states. The international connections of those who worked at the Milan opera and who had been trained in French style or performed extensively with French-trained musicians and dancers can be summarized thus:

This chapter focuses on the problems that needed to be resolved in – and the artistic fruits of – collaborations between musicians and dancers whose training and experience were varied and whose audience was a diverse Italian, French and Spanish mix. The study of these collaborations not only provides a window on the creative efforts at incorporating French elements into Italian operas of the period, but also represents the beginning of a more complete picture of the spread of French choreographic and musical techniques in northern Italy via the various connections maintained by Vaudémont’s company.

The testimonies of Nolhac and Westerloo make it clear that the Milanese operatic repertoire under Vaudémont was impressive for its unusual degree of spectacle, especially “choruses and good dancers from Paris” combined “with the excellence of Italian music,” as Westerloo put it. There is no question that Milanese operas staged under Vaudémont were relatively lavish by Italian standards, something noted not only by foreigners but also by the Gazzetta di Milano which reported on 31 December 1698 that the first opera under the new governor “would be performed by the most celebrated virtuosi and made more sumptuous by the diversity of the scenes and costumes.” Angelica nel Catai, seen by Westerloo and performed for the visit of Philip V, had a particularly large cast. The libretto presents a long list of characters (Figure 3.1) drawn from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso divided between the courts of Angelica and her lover, Osmiro. It included the principal characters and their courts (including two comic servants), a total of eleven singers, plus extras (comparse): nobles, pages, slaves and soldiers. This did not include the dancers who performed balli as “Sailors and fisherwomen,” “horticulturalists and gardeners” and “heroes and heroines,” nor the five deities who sang in the prologue and the dancers who represented “the idea of immortality and the caprices of fortune.”