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Despite the rather pejorative implications that the musical pasticcio has today, it may have been an appreciated art form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The term pasticcio is clearly derived from the culinary pasticcio, which was a highlight at aristocratic banquets in this time. The mixture of tastes and the spectacular presentation which characterises the culinary pasticcio, as well as the contemporary concept that culinary as well as painted ‘pasticcios’ are distinguished by ‘unity amidst variety’, can equally be found in the musical pasticcio. Several layers can be perceived, exemplified by the pasticcio Arione (Milan 1694) and those which George Frideric Handel and the Mingotti opera troupe staged in London and other places. The ‘noble’ pasticcio may be defined as characterised by a musical idea which, like a pastry, covers the entire piece and relates the individual elements to the whole. If it is lacking, the pasticcio becomes a conglomerate of music, like a dish whose ingredients are all thrown together.

The study deals with four Italian operas created in the Baroque period on the theme of the legend of Libuše and Přemysl. The first of these was La Libussa (libretto by Flaminio Parisetti, music by Clemente Monari, Wolfenbüttel 1692), reprised in Prague c. 1702 in the musical setting of Bartolomeo Bernardi. The next was Primislao primo re di Boemia (libretto by Giulio Cesare Corradi, music by Tomaso Albinoni, Venice 1697). Last was the pasticcio Praga nascente da Libussa, e Primislao (libretto by Antonio Denzio), performed in Prague 1734. The study discusses the historical circumstances of the creation of these operas, selected issues of libretto analysis, and a hypothetical identification of their music. The appendices contain selected excerpts from both Prague librettos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dramma per musica Andromeda liberata, the favola pastorale Euridice, and the azione teatrale Armida placata, all performed for the first time in Vienna at the Theater nächst der Burg in 1750, are, as pasticci, quite exceptional for the Viennese opera repertory of the Theresian Age. Their singularity resides not only in the high number of composers involved, but also in that they are mentioned explicitly at the top of individual vocal numbers in the manuscript scores. In this article we shed new light on the making of these operas by identifying twenty of the borrowed arias, showing how they were not the products of a simultaneous collaboration among all those composers, as early researchers often implied. Their creation was in all probability coordinated by Wagenseil, involved local librettists as well as other composers of the Viennese court, and required a substantial amount of pre-existing music, partly brought to Vienna by some of the singers, probably due to a lack of opera composers in Vienna in 1750 capable of setting entire libretti on their own.

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The study focuses on the reception of the opera Antigona by Giuseppe Maria Orlandini from its premiere in Venice in 1718 to the productions in Breslau 1728 and Brno 1736. On the basis of newly discovered unique sources (a libretto from 1728 in the Moravian Museum Brno, the score in the Czech Museum of Music Prague, the score of the premiere version in the library of San Francisco State University, reviews in the contemporary press) changes which the work underwent on its way across Europe are presented, and the problem of the aesthetic categories of the pasticcio, in the context of Transalpine production of Italian opera seria, is restored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that the play "The Beggar's Opera," by John Gay serves as a central example of the "borrowing and pastiche" used by eighteenth-century artists to respond to a "new cultural world," with reference to John Brewer's book "The Pleasures of the Imagination." Gay has cobbled his play together out of genres ranging from Grub Street's criminal biographies to the operas that entranced the English elite. At the heart of Gay's work are the popular songs he uses instead of high operatic arias.