What archival documents tell us about Eastern Adriatic Theatres and operatic production system at the dawn of the XX Century

This paper aims to focus on some problems related with the study of the production system of opera in theaters that overlook the coast of Istria and Dalmatia at the beginning of the XX Century. From Rijeka to Dubrovnik, through Zadar, Šibenik and Split, the archival material collected so far allows us to reconstruct the circuits of the major opera companies, the relationships between impresari and directions of theatres, identifying contacts that publishers and their representatives from Milan, Rome and Venice had with the area of the coast. Nevertheless, points like the relationships composer-impresario or some choices in the selection of the casts still remain unclear. Although each of these theatres had its own history, different subsidies and different opera seasons, there was a common effort in facing the difficulties caused by a period of crisis. The progressive Germanization and Slavicization of the area, pursued with no hesitation by emperor Franz Joseph, did not stop impresari in hiring Italian opera companies for one or more seasons. Can we speak of "cultural resistance" of Italian opera in the territories taken into consideration? Moreover: what was the real identity of these theatres? Representations, more and more often in Italian and Croatian - as in the emblematic case of the Theatre Mazzoleni in Šibenik - were a reflection of a process of mix between different cultures, at the crossroads of the Slavic, Germanic and Latin world.