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‘In Love's harmonious consort’? Penelope and the interpretation of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Tim Carter
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Extract

Recent Monteverdi scholarship has set great store by the composer's last work for the new ‘public’ opera houses of Venice, L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643). The problematic status of the sources for Poppea – at least some of its music is not by Monteverdi – and a rather prurient fascination with its supposed amoral excess have provided ample scope for scholars to play their textual and critical games, often with impressive results. But this has deflected attention from Monteverdi's first Venetian opera, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640), written to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. Once a cause of some debate – Wolfgang Osthoff carried the torch in the 1950s – Il ritorno d'Ulisse is now seen as a much less complicated work. We have only one manuscript of the score – A-Wn MS 18763 – the uncertain provenance of which has caused scant musicological anxiety; nor have the surviving copies of the libretto, with their divergent readings, excited much recent comment from scholars. Thus the text is seemingly secure. Moreover, the supposed ‘moral’ of Il ritorno d'Ulisse – ‘the rewards of patience, the power of love over time and fortune’ — seems unproblematic, nay predictable, perhaps tedious. Even Ellen Rosand's noble attempt to inject a fly in the ointment by focusing on the seemingly minor character of Iro, the social parasite, has scarcely troubled complacent critical comment on an essentially straightforward opera with an essentially straightforward message.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 A first version of this paper was presented at the 27th Annual Conference (‘Music and Eroticism’) of the Royal Musical Association, Oxford, 27–9 March 1992; it also develops ideas presented rather primitively in my ‘Monteverdi Returns to his Homeland’, in John, Nicholas, ed., The Operas of Monteverdi, English National Opera Guides, 45 (London, 1992), 71–81.Google Scholar I am grateful to Susan McClary, Ellen Rosand and Frederick W. Sternfeld for reading various drafts: their perceptive comments helped me realise still more the significance of the problems raised (if not always solved) here. I also owe an obvious debt to Tomlinson, Gary, Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; McClary, Susan, ‘Constructions of Gender in Monteverdi's Dramatic Music‘, this journal, 1 (1989), 203–23Google Scholar; Rosand, Ellen, ‘Iro and the Interpretation of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria’, Journal of Musicology, 7 (1989), 141–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1991)Google Scholar; and Fenlon, Iain and Miller, Peter, The Song of the Soul: Understanding ‘Poppea’, Royal Musical Association Monographs, 5 (London, 1992).Google ScholarIl ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is in Claudio Monteverdi: Tutte le opere, ed. Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 17 vols., 2nd edn (Vienna, 1954–68)Google Scholar, vol. 12, from which the present music examples are drawn (with minor amendments). Quotations from the libretto are taken (with some editorial punctuation) from The Operas of Monteverdi, 87–128Google Scholar; translations are my own.

2 The most recent, and best, example is Curtis, Alan, ‘La Poppea Impasticciata, or Who Wrote the Music to L'incoronazione (1643)?’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 42 (1989), 23–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Osthoff, Wolfgang, ‘Zu den Quellen von Monteverdis “Ritorno di Ulisse in patria”’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, 23 (1956), 67–78Google Scholar; ‘Zur Bologneser Aufführung von Monteverdis “Ritorno di Ulisse” im Jahre 1640’, österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften: Anzeiger der phil.-hist. Klasse, 95 (1958), 155–60Google Scholar; Das dramatische Spätwerk Claudio Monteverdis (Tutzing, 1960).Google Scholar

4 With the honourable exception of Rosand, ‘Iro’ (see n. 1). Of the nine extant manuscript librettos, Rosand allocates some priority on chronological grounds to the one in I-Vmc MS Cicogna 564 (hereafter L); see pp. 142n3, 148n18 (and I am grateful to Professor Rosand for providing me with a copy). As will become clear, the format of L – a first layer presenting the text, with a second layer of additions/corrections following the score – reveals intriguing divergences between the text here and that set by Monteverdi. However, attempts to play on their significance must be tempered by an acknowledgement that the lack of a thorough codicological study of the sources for Il ritorno d'Ulisse renders suspect any evidence drawn from them. For the most pan, I shall not build such evidence into the core of my argument, suggestive though it may be about individual points therein.

5 To quote Rosand, , ‘Iro’ (see n. 1), 142.Google Scholar

6 Peri discusses his formulation of the recitative in the preface to Le musiche sopra L'Euridice (Florence, 1600[=1601]), translated in Strunk, Oliver, Source Readings in Music History: From Classical Antiquity to the Romantic Era (London, 1952), 373–6.Google ScholarPirrotta, Nino, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi (Cambridge, 1982), 237–80Google Scholar (‘Early Opera and Aria’), remains a crucial introduction to the problems raised here.

7 See, for example, Tomlinson, , Monteverdi (n. 1), 231.Google Scholar This book is a powerful climax to a host of wide-ranging arguments first exposed in his ‘Ancora su Ottavio Rinuccini’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26 (1973), 240‐62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Madrigal, Monody, and Monteverdi's “via naturale alla immitatione”’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 60–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Music and the Claims of Text: Monteverdi, Rinuccini, and Marino’, Critical Inquiry, 7 (1982), 565–89.Google Scholar I made my broad views known – perhaps intemperately – in my review in Early Music History, 8 (1988), 245–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I shall be making the changing status of aria-styles in the secular vocal music of Monteverdi and his contemporaries the subject of a fonhcoming study.

8 Anon., Il corago o vero alcune osservazioni per metter bene in scena le composizioni drammatiche [MS in I-MOe γ.F.6.11], ed. Fabbri, Paolo and Pompilio, Angelo (Florence, 1983), 63Google Scholar; this is among the passages given in Rosand, , Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (see n. 1), 428Google Scholar (for the first extract, I have used the translation on p. 39).

9 This was Giovanni Battista Doni's tack in the Trattato della musica scenica (1633–5) in his De'trattati di musica … tomo secondo, ed. Gori, Anton Francesco (Florence, 1763)Google Scholar; see the comments in Rosand, , Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (n. 1), 246n2.Google Scholar

10 See Fenlon, and Miller, , The Song of the Soul (n. 1), 32–44Google Scholar, although some may feel the point not entirely proven there. In general, the arguments presented by members of the Incogniti are slippery, not least because of their penchant for intellectual role- (and game-) playing that makes nothing quite what it seems. The situation is not helped by the tendency of some scholars to rely on texts and translations of doubtful status and accuracy; a study of the academy and its contribution to Venetian ideas and cultural endeavour remains to be written.

Il ritorno d'Ulisse, however, is placed clearly in the context of the Incogniti in Badoaro's dedication to Monteverdi in L, which makes prominent mention of Pietro Loredano and Gasparo Malipiero. Federico Malipiero also refers to the opera in his La peripezia d'Ulisse overo la casta Penelope (Venice, 1640)Google Scholar; this Malipiero later produced a translation of the Iliad, L'lliada d'Omero trapportata dalla Greca nella Toscana lingua (Venice, 1642)Google Scholar, dedicated to the leader of the Incogniti, Giovanni Francesco Loredano, and promised one of the Odyssey, which seems never to have appeared.

11 This paragraph owes a great deal to Rosand, , Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (see n. 1), 245–80.Google Scholar Most recently, see her ‘Operatic Ambiguities and the Power of Music’, this journal, 4 (1992), 75–80Google Scholar, which frames the issues in the context of a debate to which my study may well offer a further contribution.

12 As we shall see, claim, Tomlinson's that ‘Monteverdi rarely evaded the formalism of Badoaro's and Busenello's texts’Google Scholar ( Monteverdi [see n. 1], 231)Google Scholar does not ring quite true. Similarly, as the present argument implies, I am not convinced that for Il ritorno d'Ulisse and L'incoronazione di Poppea ‘the rhetoric of Petrarchism … remains their expressive essence’ (232).

13 In his dedication (to Monteverdi) in L, given in Rosand, , Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (see n. 1), 408–9Google Scholar (my translation).

14 See Rosand, , Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 120–1.Google Scholar It is significant that Ulisse's first extended aria, ‘O fortunato Ulisse’, occurs after he has assumed the disguise of an old man at Minerva's prompting (I.9), for all this aria's basis in a refrain established earlier in Act I scene 8.

15 The prologue in L is different, involving a debate between Fato (Fate), Fortezza (Bravery) and Prudenza (Prudence) emphasising the power of Fate over the dealings of mankind. It is not known when, why and by whom this prologue was removed – it gives a different slant to the story of the opera proper. However, secular ‘fate’ was a tricky concept to get past the church censors in Venice (and indeed anywhere else in Counter-Reformation Italy). See, for example, the dedication of Federico Malipiero's L'lliada d'Omero trapportata dalla Greca nella Toscana lingua (1642), where Malipiero adds the standard caveat that words such as Fate and Destiny have been changed for being contrary to the Catholic faith.

16 The score emphasises the point still more: ‘Torna it tranquillo al mare’ comes much earlier in the longer version of this scene in L.

17 ‘Cieco saettator, alato, ignudo, / contro it mio stral non val difesa o scudo.’

18 For the second appearance of Melanto's ‘refrain’, L provides a second stanza, ‘Fuggi pur d[e]l tempo i danni / tosto vien nemica età’ (Yet flee the losses of time, the enemy age comes soon). This may also relate to the expunging of references to Penelope's beauty, see p. 11–12.

19 The second statement is omitted in L.

20 Or in Anne Ridler's memorable translation for the English National Opera, ‘In Love's harmonious consort, sweetest singing is deep sighing’. In L, the suitors' speech begins ‘Sono canti i sospiri’, with ‘Amor è un'armonia’ a later insertion, which is, of course, all grist to my mill.

21 Fenlon, and Miller, , The Song of the Soul (see n. 1), 39 (my translation). For this debate – which took place within the Accademia degli Unisoni – see alsoGoogle ScholarRosand, Ellen, ‘Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice: The Composer's Voice’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 31 (1978), 241–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPace Fenlon and Miller, the argument in favour of tears was presented not by Giovanni Francesco Loredano but rather by Matteo Dandolo. And compare the dedication to Strozzi's, BarbaraDiporti di Euterpe overo cantate & ariette a voce sola (Venice, 1659)Google Scholar, in Rosand, , ‘Barbara Strozzi’, 280n118Google Scholar: ‘Queste harmoniche note … son lingue dell'Anima, ed istromenti del Core’ (These harmonic notes … are tongues of the Soul, and instruments of the Heart).

22 Compare Penelope's brief shift to triple time at ‘questo di tua bugia’ in Act III scene 10. Other brief triple-time passages for Penelope occur only in Act I scene 10, conventionally enough at ‘cangia il piacer in duolo’ (changes pleasure into grief); Act II scene 12, ‘Concedisi al mendico la prova’ (Grant the beggar the test); and Act III scene 5, for ’gioco‘ (plaything).

23 See the comments in Gianturco, Carolyn, ‘Nuove considerazioni su il tedio del recitativo delle prime opere romane’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 17 (1982), 212–39Google Scholar; Carter, Tim, ‘Non occorre nominare tanti musici: Private Patronage and Public Ceremony in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence’, I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance, 4 (1991), 89–104.Google Scholar

24 Compare Melanto on Penelope in Act I scene 2: ‘ritoccherò quel core / ch'indiamante l'honore’ (I will revive that heart which honour has made [as hard] as diamonds). Similarly, in Act II scene 4, Melanto says that Penelope has a ‘cor di sasso’ (heart of stone). The question of nature and the natural becomes most prominent in Act II scene 4, where the suitors invoke horticultural images to represent love – the vine (Pisandro), the cedar (Anfinomo) and ivy (Antinoo). In L, Penelope responds: ‘L’edra, il cedro, e la vite / altre leggi non han, che di natura; / ogni suo pregio oscura / bella donna e regina, 'à natura s'inchina’ (The ivy, the cedar and the vine have no laws other than nature's; [but] a beautiful woman and a queen blots out all her worth if she inclines to nature). She is deprived of this defence in the score.

25 Compare Eurimaco's ‘E pur udii sovente / la poetica schiera / cantar donna volubile e leggiera’ (And yet I have often heard the poets' band call woman loquacious and flighty) in Act II scene 4. The Incogniti could argue in much the same way. One wonders whether the doubts sown in Ariosto's Orlando furioso (XXXV.27) were not also a factor. In a curious passage, St John the Evangelist invokes the power of poets who, given the right patronage, will readily spread lies. See Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando furioso, trans. Reynolds, Barbara (Harmondswonh, 1975), 342Google Scholar: ‘Homer makes Agamemnon win the war; / The Trojans cowardly and weak he shows. / Although the suitors so persistent are, / Penelope is faithful to her spouse. / But if for truth you are particular, / Like this, quite in reverse, the story goes: / The Greeks defeated, Troy victorious, / And chaste Penelope notorious.’

26 Fenlon, and Miller, , The Song of the Soul (see n. 1), 35n 14.Google Scholar

27 The suitors' final strategy to win Penelope is to woo (buy?) her with gold: ‘Amor è un'armonia, / sono canti i sospiri, / ma non si canta ben se l'or non suona; / non ama chi non dona’ (Love is a harmony, the sighs are songs, but one does not sing well if gold does not ring forth; he who does not give does not love). This echoes another Incognito debate, ‘Perche si paghino le Donne de' congressi amorosi‘ (Why Women are Paid for Amorous Congresses), in Loredano, Giovanni Francesco, Bizzarrie academiche (Bologna, 1676), part II, 49–55Google Scholar, esp. 52 (my translation): ‘A woman does not love without self-interest. She does not give herself as booty to one who does not give. Therefore the purchase of feminine hearts is gained by the profusion of gold.’

28 The text of the omitted scene is given and discussed in Rosand, , ‘Iro’ (see n. 1), 160–2.Google Scholar

29 So he is called in the rubric to Act III scene 1. For Rosand's view, see ‘Iro’ (n. 1), and idem., ‘Operatic Madness: A Challenge to Convention’, in Music and Text: Critical Inquiries, ed. Scher, Steven Paul (Cambridge, 1992), 241–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Act III scene 10: ‘Creder ciò ch'è desio m'insegna [L has the more plausible ‘m'invita’] Amore; / serbar costante il sen comanda honore’ (Love invites me to believe what is [my] desire, but honour commands my breast to stay constant).

31 L follows the love duet with a short speech for Ulisse – he will go to Minerva's altar – a brief duet for Ulisse and Penelope urging the bystanders to sing of the renewed marriage of their king and queen, and a final chorus of Ithacans saying that the wise and brave man armed with virtue can indeed conquer fortune and fate. This invokes the original prologue: it also, of course, shifts the focus back to Ulisse.

32 Translated in Rosand, , Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venic (see n. 1), 45.Google Scholar For the original see p. 421, and note also a further passage here: ‘If the recitative style were not mingled with such scherzi, it would give more annoyance than pleasure’ (my translation).