Netzwerke und Organisationssystem der Italienische Oper im östlichen Adriaraum (1861-1918)

Preparing and overseeing an opera season was a very difficult task in Dalmatia at the end of the nineteenth century. Securing necessary funds was not always easy and resulted in the employment of inadequate artists, delays concerning the sets and costumes, which sometimes arrived late by sea or were loaded onto the wrong steamboat in the first place, the protests of shareholders, denouncement from other impresarios, and an ethnically mixed audience which demanded to be satisfied. The impresarios had to work with a system that was becoming less and less able to guarantee opera performances and their wider circulation. The need to create a dialogue between theatrical directions in the organization of the sea- sons was growing stronger; the network between theatres was seen as one of the possible turning points to cope with the many problems that the territory presented.