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List of operas for Cherubini shows an Olimpiade, apparently staged in Venice 1783. But given with a ? alongside. No exact date and no theatre.
There is no published edition.
The Bellasis catalogue of Cherubini makes no reference to this work.
New Grove Dict of Opera implies there is an MS in Florence, Conservatorio Cherubini, Biblioteca.
This does not show up on the RISM-OPAC.
Can find no other references.
I begin to wonder whether this setting exists. Would be happy to be proved wrong.
Omnivore (talk) 16:12, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
New Grove Opera just says 1783 and gives no location. Perhaps "Venice?" was added here because the previous opera in the list was premiered in Venice? But that previous opera was premiered there in November 1783 and the one before was premiered in Rome in January 1783. So it could have been written and/or premiered anywhere in Italy any time in 1783. "Venice?" seems highly dubious and IMO ought to be omitted.
On the manuscript, New Grove does indicate a MS in Florence. The RISM website doesn't (as far as I can make out) claim to have already catalogued everything in every repository - for instance, I can't find in RISM-OPAC a MS of Cherubini's Armida abbandonata, which is also listed in the New Grove list, in the Florence Conservatorio library. Further, New Grove says that there's also an incomplete MS of Olympiade in the Brussels Conservatoire, and it seems unlikely that both of those MSS have been invented by Stephen Willis specially for Grove.
Furthermore, this .pdf file shows that a semi-staged pastiche opera is being prepared to coincide with the London Olympics of 2012. It consists of settings of arias from Metastasio's Olimpiade libretto by 16 composers. One of these is Se cerca, se dice: "L'amico dov'è?" from Cherubini's Olympiade (with a date of "1783?"). They must have found the music somewhere! --GuillaumeTell17:40, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can contribute to this. The University of Western Ontario has a microfilm of the supposed "Cherubini" Olimpiade manuscript from Florence, which I have viewed. However, as far as I can tell, this is actually Anfossi's Olimpiade for Rome in 1778. I looked at two things to verify this. First, I compared the overture and the opening of the first scene of Act 1 to the Anfossi Olimpiade manuscript held at D-Hs (RISM ID no. 450014542), which is identical. Second, I compared the complete setting of "Se cerca, se dice" (along with its preceding scena) to Anfossi's 1778 setting of the aria, which can be viewed here, and which was discussed at length in a 1778 issue of Georg Joseph Vogler's Betrachtung der Mannheimer Tonschule. Again, the supposed "Cherubini" manuscript is actually attesting to Anfossi's "Se cerca," though this manuscript uniquely attests to four additional measures (which have a box drawn around them in the manuscript) inserted just before the first "fast" section not present in any other source of Anfossi's aria that I can find. These measures are present in the L'Olimpiade pastiche recording (sung by Romina Basso) that was mentioned earlier, which says to me that they were using this Florence manuscript to prepare the production. But I can say with some confidence that this Florence manuscript is misattributed, and that what it actually attests is Anfossi's setting of the opera. Since there is no further manuscript or libretto evidence of the production (I cannot find the Brussels manuscript that was mentioned elsewhere), I am pretty sure that Cherubini in fact never wrote a complete Olimpiade. However, he may have composed separately a setting of "Se cerca, se dice," which is attested in this manuscript sold by Sotheby's (you can see the first page of this aria on the preview images) that was sold in November 2017, and which matches no other setting of the aria that I know of. --nmitchell07613:02, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
