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Il divino Claudio: Monteverdi and lyric nostalgia in fascist Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Andrew Dell'Antonio
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Extract

In the early part of this century Italian musical critics were bemoaning the decadence of the national lyric stage. No inspired figure had come forth to claim the mande of Verdi; new Italian opera was becoming artistically irrelevant. In an effort to reclaim a ‘lyric spirit’ from Wagnerian Germany, Gabriele D'Annunzio ‘rediscovered’ the early seventeenth century as the birthplace of opera. Specifically, he fashioned Monteverdi – ‘il divino Claudio’ – as visionary proto-lyricist, a nostalgic move seconded by many other Italian authors through the 1920s and 30s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , November 1996 , pp. 271 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

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12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 127.

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