Early Opera

Journal ed. 2018. Published: 2019.

Abstract:
The construction of character on the early operatic stage by means of musical gestures is an arresting achievement of Italian master Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), a practice first evident in his signature opera L’Orfeo, 'Favola in Musica.' In Monteverdi’s depiction of character, notably that of Orfeo and Apollo, his decisions to express emotion through voice type and musical/rhetorical devices appear at the surface to be connected primarily to contemporary aesthetic concepts and singing style conventions, representing the ideas of morality/character (ethos), reason (logos), and emotion (pathos) in much subtler ways than in his late opera 'L’incoronazione di Poppea.' Monteverdi’s operatic style in Orfeo is indebted to several factors, namely cultural, personal, and social conditions (e.g., his exposure to musical activities in other Italian city-states, his involvement with cultural academies, and the constraints resulting from his Mantuan patronage). Lacking the freedom to write for the public theater as in his later operas, Orfeo can be seen as a result of three determining factors: cultural environment and the patronage system; aesthetics of singing/performance practice; and the influence of cultural academies, in particular the Accademia degli Invaghiti. By re-examining primary sources and re-evaluating several contemporary scholarly studies, this paper aims to further an understanding of Monteverdi’s aesthetic position as it affected his construction of operatic characters and their musical depiction, informed by the three factors above. Such an impact will be discerned using Orfeo’s 'Possente spirto' and the duet between Apollo and Orfeo 'Saliam, cantando al Cielo' (without excluding other excerpts of great importance in this opera) in which similar musical settings represent different dramatic situations.

Peu d'instruments nous sont parvenus de Joseph Anton Moser (1731-1792), facteur d'orgues et d'instruments à clavier originaire de Bischofszell, établi à Fribourg et fondateur d'une dynastie de facteurs suisses de l'importance des Scherrer, Speisegger et Bossart. De ce fait, la découverte d'un orgue positif de c. 1767 attribuable à Moser est une révélation. Cet instrument, seul orgue positif connu de ce facteur, a été décoré par le sculpteur ornemaniste fribourgeois Domenico Martinetti, auteur également du décor de l'orgue Potier à Yverdon (1767), dont Moser a réalisé la menuiserie du buffet. Avec l'orgue de l'église de St. Stephan BE (1778), il s'agit du seul instrument de Moser conservé presque intégralement. Par son esthétique visuelle et sa disposition sonore, il constitue une synthèse originale, unique parmi les positifs, des influences non seulement suisses orientales et allemandes méridionales, de Manderscheidt et de Bihler, mais aussi françaises (alsaciennes), des Silbermann et de Potier. C'est donc une oeuvre-clé pour la facture d'orgues en Suisse au 18ème siècle.

How did Shakespeare’s verses sound, as he and other actors of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men recited them on the stage of the Globe Theatre? New research into the performance practice of seventeenth-century music suggests that this question can now be answered in considerable detail.

On November 13th 1664, Samuel Pepys spent the afternoon reciting ‘To be or not to be’, and in the 1680s, guitarist Cesare Morelli set the soliloquy to music for him, as an
Italian-style Recitative.

Now opera director Andrew Lawrence-King applies to Morelli’s setting new insights into the performance of 17th-century Italian Recitative, in order to reveal for modern actors, directors and scholars hidden secrets of period declamation in Shakespearian speech.

Musical notation may be the closest we can ever approach to a recording of Shakespeare himself speaking.

abstract The article brings to light Sforza Oddi's little-known commedie gravi or 'serious' comedies which, I suggest, are representative of the dramatic innovations that took place in Italy during the second half of the Cinquecento and prior to the 'birth' of opera in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Drawing on similarities of style, form, content, and gender-related issues, I argue here that a number of theatrical devices already present in scripted comedy such as the soliloquy and lament forms, together with rather pronounced melodramatic patterns of speech, served to pave the way for sung drama, specifically, through their use by the prime donne of early opera.

The construction of character on the early operatic stage by means of musical gestures is an indisputable achievement of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). Such an accomplishment was the result of a continuing development of musical ideas over many decades that encompassed additional modes of inquiry from philosophy to rhetoric. The merging of these fields is evidenced in the Preface to Book VIII, in which Monteverdi laid out a concatenation of threefold divisions: three genera--concitato, temperato, and molle--in association with a high, medium, and low voice and with three emotions / virtues: anger, temperance, and humility / supplication. A detailed inquiry into the Preface terminology reveals its roots in a series of theoretical, rhetorical, and philosophical sources. An indepth musical analysis of Monteverdi’s Venetian operas Ulisse and Poppea and their main roles--Penelope and Ulisse in the former, and Nerone, Poppea, Seneca, and the betrayed spouses in the latter--demonstrates that the application of the three genera went beyond Book VIII. The primary emphasis of this research is devoted to how Monteverdi extended this system, along with all his musico-rhetorical devices, to the construction of character and depiction of emotion in his operas. Such an analysis illustrates the development of the composer’s musical aesthetic and his search for verisimilitude conveyed in his human operatic characters, a quest that he pursued for many years.

Less familiar to contemporary musicologists than Benjamin Button, Heteroclito Giancarli might be poised to do more for music than Benjamin Button did for the science of ageing. A Venetian patrician, amateur singer and author of a collection of Compositione musicali published in 1602,  Heteroclito Giancarli might be just the man to unsettle one of the pivotal foundation stones of Western musical culture concerning the genesis of opera. He is the tip of an iceberg that offers an alternate history to the modern myth starring Florentine nobleman Giovanni Bardi and his Camerata of monody co-conspirators, Girolamo Mei, Vincenzo Galilei and Jacopo Peri. Instead, the Giancarli story tells of a hundred years of singing to the lute, of a much more realistic and subtle development and reshaping of existing practices, and of Baroque styles that grew from renaissance traditions rather than as reaction against them. It therefore questions whether it was really the Bardi Laboratories that killed off polyphony in order to reinvent monody, and that acted to enable the Ancient World to triumph over Modernity. My research suggests a less theatrical scenario that recognises the presence of singer-songwriters throughout the sixteenth century, musicians usually omitted from general histories of sixteenth-century music, and suggests a series of continuities that link Giulio Caccini and other early baroque monodists to the lutenist songsters who flourished throughout the sixteenth century. 

How can academic research, continuing professional development, artistic training and international-level Early Opera performance be better integrated?

17th-century priorities guided Andrew Lawrence-King's 5-year investigation at the Australian Research Council's Centre for the History of Emotions and with IL CORAGO, the production company for historical staging. With a unique combination of academic rigour, unified focus, practitioner expertise and international scope, this program applied historical research to the development of new training methods for modern performers in some 2 dozen award-winning productions of Early Modern music-dramas and Historical Action worldwide.

The posted paper includes open access links to documentary films, videos and further articles.

Frescobaldi’s Preface to his 1615 collection of 'Toccate & Partite' is often cited in discussions of rhythm and tempo in early 17th-century music. Since Frescobaldi compares his style to concerted vocal/instrumental music, his Rules are relevant to ensemble situations well beyond solo keyboard-playing. Nevertheless, we should be cautious: precisely where and when can we apply the Frescobaldi Rules? Just how do they work in practice? These article offers a brief survey of the context in which Frescobaldi wrote, with an English translation and commentrary on the 1615 Rules and other Prefaces.

Employing current theories of ideology, propaganda and musical reception, Transatlantic Arias examines the development and impact of early opera in Spain and the Americas through close examination of the New World’s first three extant operas. What emerges is an amazing history of extraordinarily complex lyrical and musical works for their time and place, which are also critical for illuminating inimitable perspectives on the cohabitation and collaboration of indigenous groups and Europeans.

El Trismegistus Theologicus que Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz publicó en 1679 es una obra densa y, a la vez, profundamente lúdica. Su tres secciones sobre la teoría de la restrictio sensible o POLYMNEIA (Multiloquens nominatur), sobre la restrictio no sensible o SIGALION (Harpocrates dicitur), y sobre la expresión sincera HAPLOTES (Sinceritas, certissimis et clarissimis analogismis demonstratur) son el discurso de quien pretende haber comprendido las emociones y su expresión retórica hasta el punto de poder prescindir de ambas o hasta el de refinarlas extremadamente para dotarlas de sentido en el pseudodrama de las relaciones humanas en contextos jerárquicos.

Ai primi di febbraio dell’anno santo 1600, in un «oratorio piccolo» attiguo al transetto della Chiesa Nuova, fu eseguita una rappresentazione in musica intitolata Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo. Preceduta da un proemio (recitato) e suddivisa in tre atti (interamente suonati e cantati), aveva una trama allegorico-spirituale, sviluppata in un’alternanza di brani individuali, duetti, cori. I personaggi, per l’appunto allegorici, erano l’Anima, il Corpo, il Tempo, il Mondo, e così via. Il libretto (apparso anonimo, come d’abitudine, nelle edizioni a stampa coeve) era del padre oratoriano Agostino Manni, la musica del compositore Emilio de’ Cavalieri, romano ma celebre soprattutto per le sue attività alla corte fiorentina dei Medici.
Negli studi musicologici si è guardato alla Rappresentatione principalmente in un’ottica particolare, quella delle origini dell’opera in musica: se cioè si possa definire la Rappresentatione un oratorio ante litteram o appunto un’«opera», e in tal caso se sia la prima della storia, e quali rapporti vi siano fra le soluzioni stilistiche che la caratterizzano e gli altri esperimenti dell’epoca in questo campo. Una querelle ovviamente molto importante, anche a livello interdisciplinare, ma che, nel suo orientamento teleologico, falsa per certi versi la nostra comprensione della Rappresentatione, della sua origine e del suo significato. Lo scopo che mi ripropongo qui è passare da questa lettura teleologica a una lettura teologica, o meglio, a parte il calembour, spostare il focus da Cavalieri, e dal problema della nascita dell’opera, a Manni e ai rapporti fra la Rappresentatione e la tradizione poetica, musicale e pastorale filippina – e più in generale, alla tradizione spirituale che ne costituisce il retroterra.

Reception history is not simply a question of compiling a list of performances of a given work, rather it addresses the two-way conversation between two historical periods: the older work sometimes changes the world that has rediscovered it, and vice versa present-day practice integrates and modifies the work in order to be able to enjoy it and make it its own. A comparative reading of twentieth-century transcriptions of Monteverdi’s Orfeo provides a synthesis of such mechanisms, and offers us a point of departure for the history of the rediscovery of early music. The essay suggests seven paradigms of recuperation,which can be subsumed into three strands: (1) discovery: earlymusic has a strong exotic flavor (in a chronological rather than a geographical sense); it is thus a novelty that the public must be allowed to ‘‘taste’’ through careful selection, so that it can above all be enjoyed; (2) re-elaboration: earlymusic can be a sort of gym in which (re)compositional verve can be exercised, with the intention both of renewing aesthetic and emotional reception of works that are too distant from modern sensibility, and of appropriating works that providemany ‘‘open areas’’; (3) restoration: an effort ismade to reproduce themusical text in historically ‘‘correct’’ terms, both editorially and in performance.
The prevalent reception paradigm generally gives more importance to those who provided the ‘‘transcription’’, and the way it was carried out, rather than to the original work. Because of this, an examination of different approaches to some key aspects of Monteverdi’s score, and the interpretation of the clues that emerge from the different solutions, ultimately concerns the study of the poetics, techniques, and performance practices of twentieth-century music.

Margherita Costa (c.1600–c.1657) made her way in the courts of Rome, Florence and Turin as virtuosa, writer and courtesan, but often complained of lack of recognition. By contrast, her stay in Paris in 1647 was one of the most successful periods of her life: ‘Qui vi rinasce il secol d’oro’, she enthuses in a poem dedicated to Queen Anne of France. In 1647, the virtuosa not only sang in Luigi Rossi’s L’Orfeo, performed at the French court to great acclaim, but also published three works: a lavish ballet on horseback and two verse collections. These publications reveal the ambiance of the French court, illustrating Costa’s relationships to patrons and other performers, as well as affording glimpses of hardships in the life of a single woman, singer and author. This paper will give an insight into this multifaceted time in the life of a woman between stage and page.

An unprecedented shift in the portrayal of Cupid took place in the Spanish mythological zarzuela during the years surrounding the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). For the  first time ever, Cupid was depicted not as a god of chaste or erotic love, but as a god at war with other deities. And in every work, a female actor- singer, not a male performer, played the fiery but mournful character. In this article I first explore the cultural understanding of Cupid in early eighteenth-century Spain as articulated by Spanish mythographers of the era, and as seen in the earliest representations of Cupid in Spanish theatre. I then investigate the intersection of myth, allegory, war and music theatre in a case study – the zarzuela Las nuevas armas de amor (Love’s New Weapons, 1711) – suggesting that in this work Cupid functioned as an allegorical representation of the Spanish king, and that the deity’s struggles for power mirrored the monarch’s plight during a time of great political instability. Moreover, I argue that the pre-existing local theatrical practice of cross-dressing allowed for the portrayal of a defeated and sobbing Cupid in the zarzuela.

This music research drama thesis explores and presents a singer's artistic research process from the first meeting with a musical score until the first steps of the performance on stage. The aim has been to define and formulate an understanding in sound as well as in words ...

È o non è la prima opera lirica della storia? O non si tratta piuttosto di un oratorio ante litteram? Queste sono le domande che i musicologi si sono posti, più e più volte, di fronte alla Rappresentatione di Anima & di Corpo, musicata da Emilio de’ Cavalieri su testo del padre Agostino Manni ed eseguita alla Vallicella durante il Giubileo del 1600. In realtà tali domande sono fuorvianti. Se studiamo la Rappresentatione non solo e non tanto sullo sfondo dei più avanzati esperimenti drammaturgici coevi, quanto su quello della tradizione poetica, musicale e pastorale sviluppata dall’Oratorio filippino nei primi decenni, ne cogliamo la vera essenza: quella di un itinerario di meditazione in musica, o, meglio ancora, di un esercizio spirituale multimediale all’insegna del miscere utile dulci.

This music research drama thesis explores and presents a singer's artistic research process from the first meeting with a musical score until the first steps of the performance on stage. The aim has been to define and formulate an understanding in sound as well as in words around the concept of pure voice in relation to the performance of 17th century vocal music from a 21st century singer's practice-based perspective with reference to theories of nothingness, the role of the 17th century female singer, ornamentation (over-vocalization) and the singing of the nightingale.

As a result of this study, textual reflections parallel to vocal experimentation have led to a deeper understanding of the importance of considering the concept of nothingness in relation to Italian 17th century vocal music practice, as suggested in musicology. The concept of je-ne-sais-quoi in relation to the interpretation of French 17th century vocal music, approached from the same performance methodology and perspective as has been done with the Italian vocal music, may provide a novel approach for exploring the complexity involved in the creative process of a performing artist.

This is thesis no 25 in the ArtMonitor dissertation series.

ISBN: 978-91-978-477-4-2
Language

This dissertation is published in English with a Swedish summary. The dissertation is e-published in GUPEA (Göteborgs universitets publikationer - Elektroniskt Arkiv).Links:
https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/25514