Sigismondo D'India

Today’s concert takes its point of departure from Tasso’s epic La Gerusalemme liberata: from its tales of Erminia amongst the shepherds, and her tears over what she believes to be the body of Tancredi; the pagan warrior Clorinda, who saves the Christians Sofronia and Olindo, about to be burnt at the stake; the maga Armida, who came upon the sleeping knight Rinaldo in her enchanted garden, and becomes enamoured of him, but is abandoned soon after their idyll. Composers have drawn on Tassos’ epic for their inspiration from even before the work was published in its authorized form. Since the late 16th century the epic has been an inexhaustible source of texts and themes for madrigals, monodies, chamber cantatas and operas - for works composed until even as late as our own time. But in today's concert we will focus on the music which was composed in Italy within the first five decades subsequent to its publication, from the first composer known to have set its ottave - the Flemish Giaches de Wert, employed at the court of Mantua, who had personal contact with Tasso - to the great masters of the Italian Baroque, Monteverdi, Marini and Mazzocchi, who have left us works of outstanding beauty and interest. One need only think of Monteverdi’s innovative Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, or Marini’s enchanting La Bella Erminia, with its echo lament, to perceive the importance of this repertoire. That there is a particular focus on the Roman composers of the early Baroque period in today’s concert is by no means a coincidence, for it is intended as a personal, affectionate and grateful homage to the director of Villa I Tatti, Joseph Connors, whose passion for music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods has led him to establish the series of biennial concerts that present early music in the limonaia, to the great joy of our Florentine and international public. Music has never flowered at I Tatti so rigorously as in these last eight years.

The Plot

Vincenzo Gonzaga II, reigning Duke of Mantua from 1587-1612, desires that his musical establishment be one of the finest in Italy. Hearing of an extraordinary singer in Naples who accompanies herself on the harp (on which instrument she is known to be an acclaimed virtuoso), he begs her to enter his service. To achieve his aim, since she does not seem to immediately disposed to comply, he brings diplomatic pressure to bear upon the Prince of Stigliano - who employs her doctor husband Muzio Baroni - and then, on the Vice-Regals of Naples. To negotiate this matter, Vincenzo sends an emissionary to Naples, a certain Ottavio Gentile. Since Vincenzo still finds no sign of acquiescence from Adriana, even with the help of Gentile, he requests his wife - the long-suffering Eleonora de Medici - to send her own supplication to Adriana, She at last agrees to come, and departs for Mantua, accompanied by the whole Basilieria: her complacent husband Muzio Baroni, two brothers (at least one a musician), her sister Vittoria, and her children. Halting in Rome on her way north, Adriana performs before Vincenzo’s second son, Cardinal Ferdinando, resident in that city. Ferdinando, who is an acclaimed poet and composer, falls prey to her insidious musical charms, and sends glowing reports back to Mantua. Adriana herself is by no means insensible to the ‘cardinal virtues’ of Ferdinando: their subsequent correspondence is decidedly flirtatious (and, we are inclined to think, perhaps not entirely ‘virtuous’). On reaching Florence, she is heard by a group of formidable musicians in that city: Bardi, Fontanelli etc .. who report to to Mantua that she can ‘read from the book’ most excellently, and that her skills are applauded.
        Reaching Mantua with her extended family in the heat of the summer of 1610, Adriana enters Vincenzo’s musical harem (Cardinal Ferdinando makes an admirably discreet diplomatic retreat, although he continues to send her his compositions for her judgement and performance). Duke Vincenzo showers Adriana with jewels, fine dresses, vast sums of money, and - eventually - the baronetcy of Piancerreto in Monferrato. After Vincenzo’s death in 1612 and the succession of his son Francesco, Cardinal Ferdinando tries to bring Adriana to Rome, for his own service. But Duke Francesco dies after less than a year, and Ferdinando unexpectedly succeeds to the Duchy of Mantua. Under his reign, Adriana and her sisters (a second sister Margherita has joined them in Mantua) enjoy highly successful musical careers. - In XXXX she moves to Rome, with her two daughters.  "La bella Adriana" will be immortalised, together with her sisters and daughters, by the publication of an infinite number of tributes from both poets and musicians alike.
          The music that we offer in this concert celebrating this extraordinary musician traces her passage from Naples to Mantua by offering a selection of works from the city of departure, the cities where she stayed on her way north, and her eventual destination. But it also offers - perhaps for the first time in posterity - a performance of some musical settings of poetic tributes in honour of la bella Adriana - the Sirena di Posilipo - composed and left for posterity by some notable musicians of her time.

In his 1961 song "Nuvole barocche" (Baroque Clouds), Italian songwriter Fabrizio De Andr e commented on the fascination exerted by colorful clouds at sunset and their artistic representation as canonized by the visual culture of the baroque, fittingly emblematized by the transience of clouds themselves. The domain of the visual is turned into that of the acoustic, triggering the synesthetic interaction of forms of sense perception, which are usually conceived as separate from one another. The song thus reminds us that the polysemous nature of clouds makes them particularly suitable for forms of artistic representation that, moving across mediums, blur the boundaries of sense perception. This essay looks at how such interplay of sensory layers actually works and to what extent it fits the rhetoric and poetics of the Baroque. In order to do so, I chase the sound of baroque clouds through arias and songs that play with the ambiguous semantics of meteorology and make the singing voice convey anxieties about topics as diverse as the course of time, the volatility of love, devotional and spiritual concerns. After framing the discussion in rhetorical terms, with a focus on metaphors and similes, the essay examines works by John Dowland, Francesca Caccini, Sigimsondo D'India, and George Frideric Handel in order to assess some of the ways in which the unstable nature of clouds lends itself to a kind of metaphoric code that is best described in synesthetic terms.