Cristoforo Ivanovich

Cristoforo Ivanovich (Budva, Dalmatia, 1628 – Venice, before 6 January 1689) was a librettist and chronicler of musical theatre born on the Dalmatian coast and trained in the cultural life of seventeenth-century Italy. His importance lies above all in his work as a memorialist of Venetian opera, a field in which his writings remain a basic reference for historians.

Around the mid-1650s he left Dalmatia for Italy, fleeing the Cretan War. He first settled in Verona, where he became a member of the Accademia Filarmonica and the Accademia dei Temperati, institutions that organised opera and theatrical performances. From 1657 he lived in Venice, where he joined the influential Accademia Delfica. Shortly after his arrival he became secretary to Leonardo Pesaro, one of the procurators of St Mark's, and at the basilica he first obtained the post of sottocanonico in 1676, and then that of canon in 1681.

As a librettist he wrote texts for Venice, Vienna and Piacenza. He also adapted the Florentine spectacle Ipermestra by Moniglia to Venetian taste, under the title La costanza trionfante. In his correspondence with Pagliardi, published in 1675, he left an unusual description of that theatrical taste, in which he called for the heroic to be serious yet lively, and for the comic to have vigour without losing naturalness.

His principal contribution is Le memorie teatrali di Venezia, a catalogue of operatic performances in Venice between 1637 and 1681, published as an appendix to his Minerva al tavolino and reprinted until 1687. Although it contains numerous errors, as later scholars have noted, it is a valuable source on seventeenth-century repertoire and served as the basis for almost all subsequent catalogues. It also includes a broad analysis of the theatrical practice of his time.