This pathbreaking study links two traditionally separate genres as their stars crossed to explore the emergence of multiple selves in early modern Italian culture and society. Mauro Calcagno focuses ...on the works of Claudio Monteverdi, a master of both genres, to investigate how they reflect changing ideas about performance and role-playing by singers. Calcagno traces the roots of dialogic subjectivity to Petrarch's love poetry arguing that Petrarchism exerted a powerful influence not only on late Renaissance literature and art, but also on music. Covering more than a century of music and cultural history, the book demonstrates that the birth of opera relied on an important feature of the madrigalian tradition: the role of the composer as a narrative agent enabling performers to become characters and hold a specific point of view.
Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672) ALWES, CHESTER L.
The Choral journal,
10/2022, Letnik:
63, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
During his first months in Dresden, Schütz was called upon to supply music not only for a state visit by Emperor Matthias and Archduke Rudolf of Austria but also for a three-day celebration of the ...centenary of the Reformation.9 Four The following year marked the beginning of the seemingly endless Thirty Years War (1618-48), which brought devastation to most of Germany and imposed severe hardships, both financial and artistic, on Schütz's tenure.10 In 1619, Schütz finally published the lavish music Moritz anticipated from his study with Gabrieli, Die Psalmen Davids sampt etlichen Moteten und Concerten.1 Five In 1628, Schütz returned to Venice, where he met Claudio Monteverdi, Alessandro Grandi, and Ignazio Donati. Through them he discovered the small-voiced concerto, leading to his publication of Symphoniae sacrae I in 1629.12 Six In February 1633, Crown Prince Christian of Den- mark invited Schütz to Copenhagen to supervise the wedding music (October 5, 1634) for his daughter, Magdalena Sybilla.13 Soon after Schütz's arrival, King Christian IV appointed the musician as the court's Visiting Capellmeister (with a considerable stipend). "15 Seven Dismayed by the continued decline in the court's music and aware of his advancing age, Schütz wrote to the Elector (June 21, 1645) seeking to retire, which Johann Georg denied. During this interim the Peace of Westphalia was signed (October 24, 1648).16 Another petition for retirement accompanied the presentation to the Elector of the third book of the Symphoniae sacrae (1650).
This article explores the use of echoes in early modern theater, particularly in the context of opera. By examining the incorporation of echoes in plays, libretti, and scores, the article argues that ...the Ovidian trope of Echo occupies a fluid space spanning textuality and performance. The article begins by delving into how the sonic essence of Echo was conveyed in early modern dramatic texts and conceptualized in coeval theoretical writings, forming a continual negotiation between the specific features of the performance and the endeavor to record it on the page. Subsequently, it looks at the appearance of Echo in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, offering it as a case study for evaluation through the lens of modern performances and the interpretive questions they raise.
Giovanni e Paolo in Venice (1643) only a scenario was printed, and neither of the two surviving scores can be linked to that production. ...not only do we lack detailed information about its first ...performance, but we also face an intricate web of textual layers. ...some clues suggest caution in ascribing this volume to his collection, since Bartoletti lists among Doni's volumes a number of late manuscripts that most likely belonged to his heirs. ...the manuscript neither contains any details that might suggest its geographical origins nor a precise date of copying, though it probably was produced during the seventeenth century. ...Busenello's text (fos. 60-90) starts one folio after the pastorale finishes (fos. 1-58) in the middle of the fourth quire (out of six in all), and an analysis of the watermarks shows that all the quires of the volume are consistent. ...one of the manuscript's watermarks, in the shape of a pilgrim in a crowned circle (ď; Fig. 2, here on p. 28), is visible both in the first quire at fos. 5/8 and in the last one at fos. 84/91, thus Poppea and the pastorale could share the same context of copying.13 It has not been possible to trace the identity of the pastorale or its author.14 However, this dramatic text shows signs of a particularly interesting production process that helps us in identifying the context in which Busenello's libretto was copied.15 The text of this play is extremely confused and presents several cuts, additions, corrections, and replacements, all of which imply a thorough revision.
Cet article porte sur le contexte dramatique des plaintes dans les opéras de Jean- Baptiste Lully et analyse les différentes manifestations du sentiment amoureux qui engendrent des moments de ...lamentation. Témoignage de la souffrance, la plainte devient, au cours du XVIIe siècle, un type d’expression vocale qui a une place privilégiée dans la dramaturgie des opéras. Le goût du public pour le pathétisme et le drame justifie le grand nombre des plaintes que nous retrouvons dans les tragédies lyriques, ainsi que leur diversité du point de vue du statut des personnages. La plupart des plaintes ont comme point de départ une absence – soit l’absence de l’être aimé, résultat d’un abandon ou d’un enlèvement, soit l’absence du sentiment amoureux chez l’autre. La jalousie, l’infidélité et la vengeance accompagnent souvent ces absences et ce sont des éléments pleinement exploités dans les plaintes lullistes.
This article discusses Fulvio Testi’s libretto “L’isola di Alcina” (1626), based on Ariosto’s “Orlando furioso.” After considering its significance to the cultural politics of the Este and the ...author’s preoccupations with poetical and political lineage, the essay focuses on the sorceress Alcina’s lament in act 4 and its afterlife in the Baroque cantata repertoire. Echoes from Claudio Monteverdi and Ottavio Rinuccini’s “Arianna” as well as the memory of the sorceress Armida from Torquato Tasso’s “Gerusalemme liberata” are crucial to the gradual reshaping that, across poetry and music, transforms the evil character into a woman worthy of the audience’s sympathy.
UN’ERESIA DISSIMULATA Cataldi, Luigi
Il saggiatore musicale,
07/2018, Letnik:
25, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The aim of this article is to interpret Monteverdi and Striggio’s Orfeo as a work inspired by Reformed rather than Catholic, post-Tridentine religious thinking. To this end, the libretto is read in ...the light of the teaching of one of the most prominent leaders of the Italian reformed church, Juan de Valdés. In this way, Orpheus’s voyage to the netherworld becomes a metaphor for man’s journey in the dark, moral desolation caused by original sin. It is the journey of a blind traveler guided by earthly affections and misplaced faith in his own strength: the more powerful human capabilities may appear, the more bankrupt they reveal themselves to be. This is what happens to Orpheus: his prodigious invocation to Charon, «Possente spirto e formidabil nume» (Act III), leads him to disastrous defeat. In Valdesian terms, only the acceptance of failure, total renunciation of earthly affections and surrender to God can bring one to salvation; Orpheus reaches this goal by repudiating earthly cares, along with love for womankind, and entrusting himself to the god Apollo.
According to this interpretation, the contents of the opera were dissembled because openly professing evangelical faith in the context of the Counter-Reformation was impossible. This was carried out, on the one hand, by choosing the recipients: the first performance took place not in the court theater but in a room of the Ducal Palace and the audience was exclusively composed of members of the Accademici Invaghiti. On the other hand, a different finale was planned for the printed libretto compared to the Apollinean one which was in fact staged (and printed in the score). The Bacchic finale of the libretto, which clearly follows the model of Poliziano’s Orfeo (Mantua 1480), brings the drama back within the framework of the myth and makes it less connected to Valdesian teaching. In this form, the libretto passed the scrutiny of the censors; but even the cuts evident in the score published in Venice in 1609 could be explained in the same way.
Both the libretto and the score are incomplete because of the need to dissemble. Only by putting them together do we have the complete text that the Accademici Invaghiti saw performed on February 24th 1607.
The elevated status of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers over the last century provides the starting point for an enquiry into which factors render it so durable. In going against the grain of recent ...attempts to discern the possible liturgical context for its original performance, this study claims that the collection as a whole (components of which undoubtedly had liturgical origins) can only be exemplary. Moreover, Monteverdi, in his intense engagement with the impersonation of liturgical chanting, has effectively rendered it the analogue of an actual service. Several features suggest that he is capturing something of the listening experience of a liturgy, complete with its distortions and memories. As a collection that is 'about' Vespers and which doubles the experience one might be having, this has something in common with the 'musical work' as defined by later classical practice, and its very religiosity resonates with the secularized ideology of musical autonomy.
Dunn cites that as part of a series of events marking the 450th anniversary of the birth of Claudio Monteverdi, the Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali of the Universita degli Studi di Pavia ...sponsored a conference with the decidedly old-fashioned title 'The making of a genius: Claudio Monteverdi from Cremona to Mantua'. The conferees followed that geographical path as well, spending two days in the city of the composer's birth and apprenticeship, and then journeying on to Mantua. Interspersed among the 27 papers were three lecture-recitals and three concerts.
This colloquy grew out of an especially lively panel discussion at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, entitled "Sexual Violence on Stage." Inspired in part by rising ...public concern over the frequency and institutional mishandling of sexual assaults on college and university campuses and by the reemergence into public awareness of the term "rape culture," the participants also found themselves responding to well-publicized remarks by political figures that seemed to celebrate acts that met the legal definition of sexual assault; to the controversial proliferation of opera productions that strike some as gratuitously explicit; and to the sparse but powerful critical literature on sexual assault in opera. The six papers are: Don Giovanni and the Resilience of Rape Culture, by Richard Will; Staging Opera Ballet, by Micaela Baranello; Seduction or Rape? The Sexual Politics of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, by Monica A. Hershberger; On Teaching Monteverdi's L'Arianna, by Bonnie Gordon; A Feminist Staging of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, by Ellie M. Hisama; "Women in Impossible Situations": Missy Mazzoli and Kamala Sankaram on Sexual Violence in Opera, an interview by Suzanne G. Cusick.
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