L'Arianna
Encyclopedia
L'Arianna (SV
291) was the second opera
written by Claudio Monteverdi
, and one of the most influential and famous specimens of early Baroque
opera. It was first performed in Mantua
on 28 May 1608. The libretto
is by Ottavio Rinuccini
, who took the Classical story of Ariadne
and Theseus
from Ovid
's Heroides
. All of the music to the opera has been lost with the exception of Il lamento d'Arianna ("Ariadne's Lament").
. In October 1607 Monteverdi asked Francesco Gonzaga to let him compose the music for a dramatic piece for the wedding celebrations. Monteverdi was wary of his rival composer, Marco da Gagliano
, who had already been commissioned to write an opera, Dafne
, for the occasion. In the event, the wedding was postponed until May 1608 for political reasons and Gagliano's opera was performed as part of the carnival festivities in February instead. The stage works now planned for the marriage were Giovanni Battista Guarini
's comedy L'idropica with intermedi by Gabriello Chiabrera
, and Monteverdi and Rinuccini's L'Arianna. Another work, the dramatic ballet Il ballo delle ingrate
was later added to Monteverdi's commission. Monteverdi probably finished the music for L'Arianna in the last two months of 1607 because, in a letter of 9 January 1620, he refers to the "five months of strenuous rehearsal" the opera took. In other letters from long after 1608, Monteverdi mentions the "great suffering I underwent with Arianna" and claims "lack of time was the great reason I almost killed myself when writing [the opera]."
The title role was due to be sung by Caterina Martinelli (nicknamed "La Romanina"), who had played Dafne in Gagliano's opera in February, but by the end of the same month she was suffering from smallpox
and she died on 7 March. Fortunately for the production, Giovan Battista Andreini and his acting company had come to Mantua to rehearse L'idropica and Andreini's wife, Virginia Ramponi (nicknamed "La Florinda"), proved an ideal substitute for the role of Arianna.
The bride, Margaret of Savoy, finally arrived in Mantua on 24 May 1608 and the celebrations began immediately. L'Arianna was staged on Wednesday 28 May. Federico Follino, a Mantuan courtier, published an account of the wedding celebrations (Compendio delle suntuose faste..., 1608). He described the performance taking place in a specially built theatre in front of a large, aristocratic audience and commended the work as "very beautiful in itself", writing that Monteverdi had "excelled himself".
The festivities continued with a naval battle on the lagoon on 31 May, a performance of L'idropica (with the music for the prologue by Monteverdi) on 2 June, and Monteverdi's Il ballo delle ingrate on 4 June.
The heavy work load of writing the music for the three pieces for the wedding took its toll on Monteverdi's health. As soon as the festivities were over, Monteverdi went back to his native Cremona
for his annual summer holiday but he continued to compose for the Gonzagas. In November 1608, Monteverdi's father Baldassare wrote to the Duchess of Mantua: "[M]y son came to Cremona seriously ill, with debts, poorly clothed and without the salary of Signora Claudia [the composer's late wife], with two poor little sons thus left on his shoulders after her death, having nothing but the usual 20 scudi
per month, all of which I consider as being caused by the Mantuan air, which by its nature is harmful, and by the great tasks he has carried out and will continue carrying out if he stays in service, and by the bad fortune which has persecuted him for the nineteen years in which he has found himself in the service of the Most Serene Lord Duke of Mantua." Baldassare, who was a doctor by profession, thought the state of his son's health was so bad that he begged the duchess to persuade her husband to release the composer from his service. The duke refused and on 30 November ordered Monteverdi to return to Mantua to resume his duties.
, the so-called seconda pratica
. It was discussed as such by the contemporary music theorist Giovanni Battista Doni
in 1640. Other composers soon began to imitate Il lamento d'Arianna and write their own music to Rinuccini's text (there were versions by Severo Bonini
in 1613 and Francesco Costa in 1626) or compose monodic laments for other characters (Olimpia, Erminia
, Dido and the Virgin Mary, for example). The lament became a popular feature in Italian opera for almost the next 50 years. More than a simple aria
, it usually comprised a whole dramatic scene. Monteverdi himself returned to the form when he wrote a lament for Ottava in L'incoronazione di Poppea
and his disciple Francesco Cavalli
included three laments in his first opera Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo
(1639).
The Lamento d'Arianna was preserved because Monteverdi later published it as a stand-alone piece in 1623. He also wrote two re-arrangements: one as a five-voice madrigal
, published as part of his Sixth Book of Madrigals in 1614, and one with a new religious text in Latin, "Pianto della Madonna", published in his collection Selva morale e spirituale in 1640.
Stattkus-Verzeichnis
The Stattkus-Verzeichnis is a catalogue of the musical compositions of the Italian Baroque composer Claudio Monteverdi. The catalogue was published in 1985 by Manfred H. Stattkus ; a second, new, revised and enlarged edition is due to appear in 2007. A free online version is already accessible....
291) was the second opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
written by Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
, and one of the most influential and famous specimens of early Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
opera. It was first performed in Mantua
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...
on 28 May 1608. The libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
is by Ottavio Rinuccini
Ottavio Rinuccini
Ottavio Rinuccini was an Italian poet, courtier, and opera librettist at the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras...
, who took the Classical story of Ariadne
Ariadne
Ariadne , in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and his queen Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and was the bride of the god Dionysus.-Minos and Theseus:...
and Theseus
Theseus
For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...
from Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's Heroides
Heroides
The Heroides , or Epistulae Heroidum , are a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets, and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology, in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated,...
. All of the music to the opera has been lost with the exception of Il lamento d'Arianna ("Ariadne's Lament").
Mantua: 1608
Monteverdi wrote L'Arianna for the festivities to mark the wedding of Francesco Gonzaga (the son of the composer's patron Duke Vincenzo of Mantua) and Margaret of SavoyMargarida of Savoy, Vicereine of Portugal
Margaret of Savoy, Duchess Consort of Mantua and Montferrat was best known as the last Spanish Vicereine of Portugal...
. In October 1607 Monteverdi asked Francesco Gonzaga to let him compose the music for a dramatic piece for the wedding celebrations. Monteverdi was wary of his rival composer, Marco da Gagliano
Marco da Gagliano
Marco da Gagliano was an Italian composer of the early Baroque era. He was important in the early history of opera and the development of the solo and concerted madrigal.-Life:...
, who had already been commissioned to write an opera, Dafne
Dafne (Gagliano)
Dafne is an opera by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano. It is described as a favola in musica in one act and a prologue. The libretto, by Ottavio Rinuccini, is based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo as related by Ovid in the first book of the Metamorphoses. It is a reworking and expansion of...
, for the occasion. In the event, the wedding was postponed until May 1608 for political reasons and Gagliano's opera was performed as part of the carnival festivities in February instead. The stage works now planned for the marriage were Giovanni Battista Guarini
Giovanni Battista Guarini
Giovanni Battista Guarini was an Italian poet, dramatist, and diplomat.- Life :He was born in Ferrara, and spent his early life both in Padua and Ferrara, entering the service of Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, in 1567...
's comedy L'idropica with intermedi by Gabriello Chiabrera
Gabriello Chiabrera
Gabriello Chiabrera was an Italian poet, sometimes called the Italian Pindar.-Biography:He was of patrician descent, and was born at Savona, a little town in the domain of the Genoese republic, twenty-eight years after the...
, and Monteverdi and Rinuccini's L'Arianna. Another work, the dramatic ballet Il ballo delle ingrate
Il ballo delle ingrate
Il ballo delle ingrate is a semi-dramatic ballet by the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi with words by Ottavio Rinuccini. It was first performed in Mantua on Wednesday 4 June, 1608 as part of the wedding celebrations for Francesco Gonzaga and Margaret of Savoy...
was later added to Monteverdi's commission. Monteverdi probably finished the music for L'Arianna in the last two months of 1607 because, in a letter of 9 January 1620, he refers to the "five months of strenuous rehearsal" the opera took. In other letters from long after 1608, Monteverdi mentions the "great suffering I underwent with Arianna" and claims "lack of time was the great reason I almost killed myself when writing [the opera]."
The title role was due to be sung by Caterina Martinelli (nicknamed "La Romanina"), who had played Dafne in Gagliano's opera in February, but by the end of the same month she was suffering from smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
and she died on 7 March. Fortunately for the production, Giovan Battista Andreini and his acting company had come to Mantua to rehearse L'idropica and Andreini's wife, Virginia Ramponi (nicknamed "La Florinda"), proved an ideal substitute for the role of Arianna.
The bride, Margaret of Savoy, finally arrived in Mantua on 24 May 1608 and the celebrations began immediately. L'Arianna was staged on Wednesday 28 May. Federico Follino, a Mantuan courtier, published an account of the wedding celebrations (Compendio delle suntuose faste..., 1608). He described the performance taking place in a specially built theatre in front of a large, aristocratic audience and commended the work as "very beautiful in itself", writing that Monteverdi had "excelled himself".
The festivities continued with a naval battle on the lagoon on 31 May, a performance of L'idropica (with the music for the prologue by Monteverdi) on 2 June, and Monteverdi's Il ballo delle ingrate on 4 June.
The heavy work load of writing the music for the three pieces for the wedding took its toll on Monteverdi's health. As soon as the festivities were over, Monteverdi went back to his native Cremona
Cremona
Cremona is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments...
for his annual summer holiday but he continued to compose for the Gonzagas. In November 1608, Monteverdi's father Baldassare wrote to the Duchess of Mantua: "[M]y son came to Cremona seriously ill, with debts, poorly clothed and without the salary of Signora Claudia [the composer's late wife], with two poor little sons thus left on his shoulders after her death, having nothing but the usual 20 scudi
Italian scudo
The scudo was the name for a number of coins used in Italy until the 19th century. The name, like that of the French écu and the Spanish and Portuguese escudo, was derived from the Latin scutum . From the 16th century, the name was used in Italy for large silver coins...
per month, all of which I consider as being caused by the Mantuan air, which by its nature is harmful, and by the great tasks he has carried out and will continue carrying out if he stays in service, and by the bad fortune which has persecuted him for the nineteen years in which he has found himself in the service of the Most Serene Lord Duke of Mantua." Baldassare, who was a doctor by profession, thought the state of his son's health was so bad that he begged the duchess to persuade her husband to release the composer from his service. The duke refused and on 30 November ordered Monteverdi to return to Mantua to resume his duties.
Venice: 1640
Monteverdi revived the opera in Venice in 1640 to inaugurate the Teatro San Moisè. He revised the score, cutting the choruses and references to the Mantuan wedding, to adapt the music to the tastes of the audience, which had changed over the three decades since the premiere.Il lamento d'Arianna
Rinuccini's libretto was printed in 1608 but Monteverdi's music for the opera has been lost except for a single famous piece, Il lamento d'Arianna (Ariadne's Complaint), also known by its first words, "Lasciatemi morire" ("Let me die"). It is a recitative soliloquy, illustrating Ariadne's desperation after being forsaken by Theseus on the island of Naxos. It was already famous in its own time as a prime example of the then-revolutionary new musical style of operatic monodyMonody
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....
, the so-called seconda pratica
Seconda pratica
Seconda prattica, literally "second practice", is the counterpart to prima pratica and is more commonly referred to as Stile moderno. The term "Seconda prattica" was coined by Claudio Monteverdi to distance his music from that of e.g...
. It was discussed as such by the contemporary music theorist Giovanni Battista Doni
Giovanni Battista Doni
Giovanni Battista Doni was an Italian musicologist who made an extensive study of ancient music. Known, among other works, for having changed the name of note Ut renaming it Do after his own family name to ease solfege.- Life :...
in 1640. Other composers soon began to imitate Il lamento d'Arianna and write their own music to Rinuccini's text (there were versions by Severo Bonini
Severo Bonini
Severo Bonini was an Italian composer, organist and writer on music.He was born in Florence and became a Benedictine monk. He studied singing with Giulio Caccini. He served as organist in Forlì from 1613 and held a number of other posts before returning to Florence in 1640 where he was maestro di...
in 1613 and Francesco Costa in 1626) or compose monodic laments for other characters (Olimpia, Erminia
Erminia
Princess Erminia was a character in the epic poemLa Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso. In this tale she falls in love with the Christian knight Tancred, and betrays her people to aid him. Once she discovers that Tancred is in love with Clorinde, however, she returns to join the Muslims...
, Dido and the Virgin Mary, for example). The lament became a popular feature in Italian opera for almost the next 50 years. More than a simple aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
, it usually comprised a whole dramatic scene. Monteverdi himself returned to the form when he wrote a lament for Ottava in L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello...
and his disciple Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known by that of Cavalli, the name of his patron Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.-Life:Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy...
included three laments in his first opera Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo
Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo
Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo is an opera by Francesco Cavalli - specifically, an opera scenica or festa teatrale. The work, set to a libretto by Orazio Persiani, was Cavalli's first opera, and was first performed at the Venetian opera house Teatro San Cassiano on 24 January 1639...
(1639).
The Lamento d'Arianna was preserved because Monteverdi later published it as a stand-alone piece in 1623. He also wrote two re-arrangements: one as a five-voice madrigal
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
, published as part of his Sixth Book of Madrigals in 1614, and one with a new religious text in Latin, "Pianto della Madonna", published in his collection Selva morale e spirituale in 1640.
Roles
| Cast | Voice type | Premiere, 28 May 1608 |
|---|---|---|
| Arianna/Amore | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
Virginia Ramponi-Andreini ("La Florinda") |
| Venere/Apollo | soprano | Settimia Caccini Settimia Caccini Settimia Caccini was an Italian composer and singer. She was the youngest daughter of composer Giulio Caccini and singer Lucia Gagnolanti. Her mother died when she was very young. She was the sister of Francesca Caccini, also a composer and singer, and Pompeo Caccini, a singer... |
| Dorilla | soprano | Sabina Rossi |
| Teseo | tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2... |
Antonio Brandi ("Il Brandino") |
| Bacco | tenor | Francesco Rasi Francesco Rasi Francesco Rasi was an Italian composer, singer , chitarrone player, and poet.Rasi was born in Arezzo. He studied at the University of Pisa and in 1594 he was studying with Giulio Caccini. He may have been in Carlo Gesualdo's retinue when he went to Ferrara for his wedding in 1594... |
| Giove | tenor | Bassano Casola |
| Tirsi | tenor | Sante Orlandi |
| Consigliere/Messaggero | tenor | Francesco Campagnolo |
Media
External links
- Free scores of Lamento d'Arianna in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)Choral Public Domain LibraryThe Choral Public Domain Library is a sheet music archive which focuses on choral and vocal music in the public domain or otherwise freely available for printing and performing .-Description:...