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Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and the power of ‘music’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Ellen Rosand
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Extract

What is music in opera? In Monteverdi's Orfeo, his first opera, music is arguably the protagonist, whether La Musica in the prologue, whose ritornello guides Orfeo to and from the Underworld, or embodied in the legendary singer himself, who uses his musical prowess to charm the guardians of Hell. In Il ritorno d'Ulisse, however, there is no such protagonist, no single embodiment of musical power. In the largest sense, of course, and in contrast to straight drama – the plays of Euripides, Shakespeare or Calderon may have some music in them but are essentially spoken – all of Il ritorno d'Ulisse, all of most operas, is music. But in Monteverdi's sense (and in the librettist Badoaro's), that music is divided into ‘speech’ and ‘song’ – or, speech-like and musical utterances.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , November 1995 , pp. 179 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 An earlier version of this essay, ‘Le pouvoir de la “musique”’, was published in Le Retour d'Ulysse, L'Avant Scène Opéra, 159 (Paris, 1994), 107–10.Google ScholarIt represents a kind of sequel or pendant to my ‘Operatic Ambiguities and the Power of Music’, this journal, 4 (1992), 75–80,Google Scholar which was itself inspired byCone's, Edward ‘The World of Opera and its Inhabitants’, in Music: A View from Delft, ed. Morgan, Robert P. (Chicago, 1989), 125–38, andGoogle ScholarKivy's, Peter response to Cone's essay, ‘Opera Talk: A Philosophical “Phantasie”’, this journal, 3 (1991), 63–7.Google Scholar My desire to return to the question of the meaning of singing in opera, particularly in connection with Il ritomo d'Ulisse, was inspired by yet another article in this journal, Carter's, Tim ‘In Love's Harmonious Consort’? Penelope and the Interpretation of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria’, 5 (1993), 1–16.Google Scholar

2 Only three of Badoaro's invitations to music are unambiguous, comprising textual passages that are both metrically and formally closed: these are the strophic texts for Melanto at the beginning of I ii (‘Duri e penosi’), for Minerva in I vii (‘Cara e lieta gioventù’) and for Iro in II ii (‘Pastor d’). Other, more ambiguous invitations that depend solely on comparative regularity of metric structure – various-sized groups of regularly rhymed lines, often other than seven or eleven syllables long – are more frequent. Carter, 5–6, includes several such examples – two quinari followed by two settenari with the rhyme scheme abba, a tercet of quinari rhyming aba, a quatrain of ottonari rhyming abba.Google Scholar

3 I discuss some of Monteverdi's most notable transformations in Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991), 250–3, andGoogle Scholar‘The Bow of Ulysses’, Journal of Musicology, 12 (1994), 384–92.Google Scholar

4 This important observation is Carter's and the kernel of his elegant interpretation of Penelope's character (see n. 1), 8–15.Google Scholar For an illuminating discussion of the nature of female eloquence in seventeenth-century Venetian opera, see Heller, Wendy, ‘Chastity, Heroism, and Allure: Women in the Opera of Seventeenth-Century Venice’ (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1995).Google Scholar

5 The encapsulation is musical as well as textual. An extended analysis of this lament forms the centrepiece of my essay, ‘The Author of Monteverdi's Late Operas’, part of my book Monteverdi's Venetian Trilogy (in progress).Google Scholar

6 The lovers' other scene together, II iv, is also suffused with lyricism but less so.Google Scholar

7 On the giustiniana, see Einstein, Alfred, ‘The Greghesca and the Giustiniana of the Sixteenth Century’, Journal of Renaissance and Baroque Music, 1 (1946–1947), 19;Google Scholaralso Arnold, Denis, ‘Giustiniana’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, Stanley (London, 1980), VII, 418.Google Scholar

8 On the natural affinity of pastoral characters for music, see especiallyPirrotta, Nino, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi (Cambridge, 1982), chap. 6: ‘Early Opera and Aria’, esp. pp. 257–68.Google Scholar

9 I analyse this monologue at length in ‘Iro and the Interpretation of Il ritortio d'Ulissi, Journal of Mitsicology, 7 (1989), 141–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Rosand, Ellen, ‘Operatic Madness: A Challenge to Convention’, in Music and Text: Critical Inquiries, ed. Scher, Steven Paul (Cambridge, 1992), 241–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Anon., Argomento et scenario delle nozze d'Enea in Lavinia (Venice, 1640),Google Scholar‘Lettera dell'auttore ad alcuni suoi amici’, p. 25: ‘Monteverdi [fu] nato al mondo per la patronia sopra gli altrui affetti, non essendo si duro animo ch'egli non volga, & commova à talento suo, adattando in tal modo le note musicali alle parole, & alle passioni, che chi canta convien che rida, pianga, s'adiri, e s'impietisca, & faccia tutto il resto, ch'esse commandano, essendo non meno l'uditore dal medesimo impeto portato nella varietà, & forza delle stesse perturbationi.’Google Scholar