Mora Wade the RECEPTION of OPITZ's Ludith DURING the BAROQUE by Virtue of Its Status As the Second German Opera Libretto, Martin

Home , Andrea Salvadori, Dafne, Dafne (Opitz-Schütz)

Mora Wade

THE RECEPTION OF OPITZ'S lUDITH DURING THE BAROQUE

By virtue of its status as the second German opera libretto, Martin Opitz's ludith (1635), has received little critical attention in its own right. l ludith stands in the shadow of its predecessor, Da/ne (1627),2 also by Opitz, as weH as in that of a successor, Harsdörffer and Staden's See/ewig (1644), the first German-Ianguage opera to which the music is extant today.3 Both libretti by Opitz, Dafne and ludith, are the earliest examples of the reception of Italian opera into German-speaking lands.4 Da/ne was based on the opera ofthe

1. Martin Opitz: ludith. Breslau 1635. See also Kar! Goedeke: Grund risz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung. Vol. III. Dresden 1886. p. 48. Aversion of this paper was given at the International Conference on the German Renaissance, Reformation, and Baroque held from 4-6 April 1986 at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Support from the Newberry Library in Chicago and from the National Endowment for the Humani ties to use the Faber du Faur Collection at the Beinecke Library of Yale University enabled me to undertake and complete this project. A special thanks to Christa Sammons, curator of the German collection at the Beinecke, for providing me with a copy of ludith. 2. Martin Opitz: Dafne. Breslau 1627. 3. Georg Philipp Harsdörffer: Frauenzimmer Gesprächspiele. Vol. IV. Nürnberg 1644. Opitz's 'ludith' has only three acts and has no extant music. Löwenstern's music to Tscherning's expanded version of Opitz's 'ludith' was not published until 1646, a full two years after 'Seelewig'. Vgl. Gerhard Dünnhaupt: Bibliographisches Handbuch der Barock Literatur. Vol. 11. Stuttgart 1981. p. 1370, item 157. 4. Otto Taubert: Daphne, das erste deutsche Operntextbuch. Pro grammheft des Gymnasiums zu Torgau. Torgau 1879. Hans Heinrich Borcherdt: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Oper und des Schauspiels in Schlesien bis zum Jahre 1740. In: Zeitschrift des Vereins für Geschichte Schlesiens 34 (1909) p. 217-43. Anton Mayer: Zu Opitz's Dafne. In: 148 same name by Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini (1600);5 Judith on Giuditta by Andrea Salvadori and Marco Gagliano (1626).6 Heinrich Schütz composed the music to Da/ne which was performed on 13 (23) April 1627 at Schloss Hartenfels in Torgau for the wedding of the Markgrave Georg of Hessen to the Saxon Duchess, Sophie Eleanore. 7 Although Opitz's second libretto stemmed from the collaboration with the composer Schütz on

Euphorion 18 (1911) p. 754-60 and Quelle und Entstehung von Opitzens Judith. In: Euphorion 20 (1930) p. 39-53. These articles discuss the relationship of Opitz's work to the Italian original. Bernhard Ulmer: Martin Opitz. New York 1971. (= Twayne. TWAS 140.) p. 114-23, does not mention the Italian predecessor of either drama. Arthur Scherle: Das deutsche Opernlibretto von Opitz bis HofmannsthaI. Diss. Munich 1954. p. 4-9 discusses both German works. Klaus Garber: Martin Opitz. In: Deutsche Dichter des 17 . Jahrhunderts. Berlin 1985. p. 163-167 does not mention 'Judith' together with Opitz's other translations. 5. 'Dafne' was first performed at the Palazzo Corsi in Florence during the carnival season of 1597. Rinuccini wrote the text to which Jacopo Peri composed the music. The libretto was first published in 1600, again in 1604. In January of 1608 Marco Gagliano set Rinuccini's text to music again for a performance at the Teatro della Corte in Mantua. This score was published in 1608. See Alfred Lowenberg: Annals of Opera 1597- 1940. Cambridge 1943. p. 1-4. See also Nino Pirotta: Peri. In: Enciclo pedia dello Spettacolo. Vol. VIII. Rome 1961. cols. 1-3. 6. Mayer: Judith. p. 39 states that the play was performed 22 September 1626 for the return ofthe papal envoy to Spain and nephew to Pope Urban VIII, Cardinal Barberini, to Florence. A copy ofthe text for this performance is unknown; the work appeared in a posthumous edition in Rome in 1668. Mayer quoted a performance noted by Angelo Solerti: Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte Medicea dal 1600 al 1637. Florence 1905, p. 186. Neither Nino Pirotta: Gagliano. In: Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo. Vol. V. Rome 1958. cols. 817-18. nor Biancha Becherini: Salvadori. In: Enciclopedia dello Spetacolo. Vol. VIII. Rome 1958. cols. 1438-9. mentions a 'Giuditta' among the plays on which Salvadori and Gagliano collaborated. Carolyn Raney: Salvadori, Andrea. In: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 16. London 1980. p. 434. states: "Martin Opitz published a German translation of the Istoria di ludit that Salvadori wrote in 1626 for Gagliano (Judith, Breslau, 1635)." 7. Wilhelm Karl Prinz von Isenberg: Stammtafeln zur Geschichte der Europäischen Staaten. Vol. I. Marburg 1953. Tafel 107 gives the date of