MONTEVERDI’S OPERA HEROES The Vocal Writing for Orpheus and Ulysses

Gustavo Steiner Neves, M.M.

Lecture Recital Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

Karl Dent Chair of Committee

Quinn Patrick Ankrum, D.M.A.

John S. Hollins, D.M.A.

Mark Sheridan, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School

May, 2017

© 2017 Gustavo Steiner Neves

Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES iv

LIST OF TABLES iv

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1 Thesis Statement 3 Methodology 3

CHAPTER II: THE SECOND PRACTICE AND MONTEVERDI’S OPERAS 5 Mantua and La Favola d’Orfeo 7 Venice and Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria 13 Connections Between Monteverdi’s Genres 17

CHAPTER III: THE VOICES OF ORPHEUS AND ULYSSES 21 The Singers of the Early Seventeenth Century 21 Pitch Considerations 27 Monteverdi in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries 30 Historical Recordings and Performances 32 Voice Casting Considerations 35

CHAPTER IV: THE VOCAL WRITING FOR ORPHEUS AND ULYSSES 37 The Mistress of the Harmony 39 Tempo 45 Recitatives 47 Arias 50 Ornaments and Agility 51 Range and Tessitura 56

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS 60

BIBLIOGRAPHY 63

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ABSTRACT

The operas of Monteverdi and his contemporaries helped shape music history. Of his three surviving operas, two of them have heroes assigned to the tenor voice in the title roles: L’Orfeo and Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria. The performance practice of the last century, however, has seen both tenors and baritones singing those roles. It is important for singers wishing to explore this repertoire to know what vocal qualities are required to sing the roles, and whether the roles are appropriate for their voices.

To provide explanations for the inconsistent casting choices and offer singers the basic information needed to prepare these two roles, I will explore the historical elements of the origins of both operas, study the vocal writing for the roles of Orpheus and

Ulysses, and discuss the characteristics and requirements of the singers who have performed the roles in the seventeenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

By examining the aesthetics of Monteverdi’s time and what the composer was likely expecting from his singers, I have concluded that both roles should be sung by singers who are able to deliver the text clearly throughout the entire range while maintaining the dramatic delivery of the words. These singers must also have the facility to sing fast passages and ornaments. A light baritone or a lyric tenor with a good low register would be more suited for Orpheus, and a light or lyric tenor would fit Ulysses more appropriately.

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LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES

Ex. 1. Excerpt from “Dormo ancora.” Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria. 42 Ex. 2. Excerpt from “O Fortunato Ulisse.” Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria. 43 Ex. 3. Excerpt from “Tu se morta.” L’Orfeo. 48 Ex. 4. Excerpt from Compendium Musices, by Adrian Petit Coclico. 53 Ex. 5. Excerpt from “Possente spirto.” L’Orfeo. 54 Ex. 6. Excerpt from “Possente spirto.” L’Orfeo. 57 Ex. 7. Excerpt from “O Fortunato Ulisse.” Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria. 58

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Singers and tuning for Orfeo audio and video recordings. 33 Table 2. Singers and tuning for Ulisse audio and video recordings. 34

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CHAPTER I:

INTRODUCTION

Learning and embodying an operatic role requires an understanding of not only contemporary styles and techniques, but also those in favor at the time the opera was written. Today’s singers have numerous helpful resources at their disposal, allowing them to easily find information on the history of opera from its origins through the present.

Studying the background of each role gives us insight into past performers; the social, political, and cultural influences of each opera; and the style in which each opera was performed. We also have access to professional audio and video recordings of the best musicians of the past century, which can give us insight into how the performance practice has changed over approximately the last 120 years.

When choosing roles to learn, singers must make educated decisions based on the vocal requirements of the roles. Vocal characteristics usually taken into consideration are range, tessitura, timbre, weight, agility, flexibility, and registration.1 A number of other factors also ultimately influence casting decisions, including tradition, overlapping voice categories, and the sizes of opera houses. Singers must be aware of these factors when choosing the appropriate repertoire for their voices.

Early operas usually require lighter voices due to the highly ornamented passages and melismatic lines, but as we will discuss in this document, a considerable range of voice types can meet these requirements. The earliest operas from the Baroque period offer another challenge. From its beginnings, the “early music movement” has tried to

1 Boldrey, Richard. 1994. Guide to Operatic Roles & Arias. Dallas: Pst...Inc, 7-10.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 recreate those early works as faithfully to the music and the performance practices as possible. Although we have learned much about Baroque music, it is impossible to know exactly how Baroque singers sounded and how they applied the vocal technique of the time, as we understand it from theoretical writings, journals and diaries, personnel records, iconographical sources (such as architectural plans for opera theatres and set designs and machines), and surviving instruments. The voice, however, was “perhaps the instrument most neglected by theorists.”2

For those with an interest in the early Baroque operas, especially those by

Monteverdi, another interesting problem arises. The casting for some of the roles has not been consistent over the last century, and is still variable. This is particularly true for the roles of Orpheus and Ulysses, which Monteverdi identified as tenor roles, but which have been sung by both tenors and baritones since the revival of the two operas in the early

20th century. This discrepancy has not been adequately addressed. Singers who wish to explore Monteverdi’s music need more information to determine whether their voices are suitable for these roles.

This document is an effort to clarify the characteristics of the vocal writings for the two previously mentioned roles and, consequently, to assist with similar casting problems. It is my hope that my findings will help us better understand the demands of both roles, and which voices are better suited for each.

2 Selfridge-Field, Eleanor. "Introduction." In: Brown, Howard Mayer, and Stanley Sadie. 1990. Performance Practice: Music After 1600. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 12.

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Thesis Statement

At the time that Monteverdi wrote L’Orfeo and Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, there was no differentiation between tenor and baritone voice types. As such, the roles of

Orpheus and Ulysses were both characterized as tenor roles. However, this is not an indication that both are best suited for contemporary tenors. Instead, it is evidence of the limitations of the vocal classifications available to Monteverdi as he composed the roles.

In the past several decades, both baritones and tenors have performed both roles.

A close examination of the two operas, however, reveals that Orpheus is more suited for a light baritone or a tenor with an extremely flexible voice and a comfortable low range, while the role of Ulysses is more suitable for a light or lyric tenor voice. Given the characteristics of each role, it is likely not only that that voices of the singers for whom he wrote the roles would be aligned with these two distinct voice types in our contemporary framework, but also that Monteverdi would have categorized the roles this way had the vocal classifications of the time been different.

Methodology

To reach any conclusions about the casting choices for Monteverdi’s operas, we must have adequate knowledge of the numerous elements that led to the creation of the works, such as the political, cultural and social aspects of northern Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The occasions, venues, and intended audiences affected the vocal writing, the choice of singers, and various performance aspects. The expectations that composers, audiences, and political figures had for these performances is addressed

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 in writings from the time. Chapter II will give an overview of the circumstances in which

Monteverdi’s works, specifically Orfeo and Ulisse, came to be.

In Chapter III, I will study the singers themselves, beginning with the singers from the seventeenth century who created the roles or were setting the standards, followed by the those who have been reviving the roles in the last century. Here, I will discuss aspects of technique and vocal production, as well as the appropriate style in which to perform Monteverdi’s operas. A comparison of available recordings by both tenors and baritones will also help us understand the trends and preferences of performance practices during the twentieth century, which help inform our understanding of what types of voices should sing these roles today.

Finally, Chapter IV will focus on the characteristics of the vocal parts in

Monteverdi’s operas, explaining how they served the dramatic purposes of his stage works. I will examine the importance given to the texts, the peculiarities of his recitatives and arias, the uses of ornaments and embellishments, and other elements of the vocal writing for these two roles, using musical examples such as Orpheus’ aria “Possente spirto.” This chapter’s purpose is to clarify the vocal demands for singers performing

Monteverdi’s operas, providing information on what is usually required from them and providing information for today’s singers who wish to better themselves in Monteverdi’s style.

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CHAPTER II:

THE SECOND PRACTICE AND MONTEVERDI’S OPERAS

The power to control and direct other people’s emotions through music is a concept that dates back to the ancient Greek and Latin doctrines of rhetoric and oratory.

Along with several other treatises and philosophies born from the study of the artistic ideals of these civilizations, this “doctrine of the affects”3 was one of the many ideals that was praised and sought-after in late sixteenth-century Italy. Scholars and thinkers of the time gathered in a group called the Florentine Camerata to discuss these ancient ideals.

The union of rhetoric and music in an attempt to imitate what the Greeks had done centuries before brought drastic changes in the musical style of the time. Monody— the declamation of clear, expressive text by one single voice, supported by a simple instrumental accompaniment—was born. This new style, called the stile rappresentativo, was meant to be something between speech and song. Here, the singers had the “freedom to depart from the notated rhythms in order to follow the natural accents of the text, and to determine the speed of declamation according to the meaning and desired expression.”4

The experiments with monody quickly led to the creation of a new genre at the end of the century: the opera. The first one was composed by members of the Camerata.

Dafne, performed in the Carnival of 1598 in Florence, had music composed by Jacopo

3 The term “doctrine of the affects,” or “doctrine of the affections,” was formulated in the early twentieth century by German musicologists (Hermann Kretzschmar, Arnold Schering) to describe the early Baroque aesthetics of using ancient Greek and Latin rhetoric practices to influence people’s emotions, or affections. Nagley, Judith and Bojan Bujić . "affections, doctrine of." The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford Music Online. 4 Cyr, Mary, and Reinhard G. Pauly. 1992. Performing Baroque Music. Amadeus Press, 111.

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Peri and Jacopo Corsi, and a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. Soon after, the Camerata focused on what was then a popular subject to set to music: the story of Orpheus and

Eurydice.

The subject seems fitting for a society concerned with creating an emotionally evocative musical form; Orpheus’ chance to bring his beloved wife back from the underworld comes from the power of his music. Another collaboration between Peri and

Rinuccini, Euridice, premiered in 1600. Two years later, a different Euridice was presented, this time with music by Giulio Caccini. However, despite this activity in

Florence, the story of Orpheus would solidify its significance in the history of opera in a different city.

Claudio Monteverdi’s La Favola d’Orfeo premiered on February 24, 1607 in the palace of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, in the city of Mantua. Arguably the first operatic masterpiece, Monteverdi’s work was undeniably inspired by the music of his Florentine predecessors, but exhibited a more sophisticated level of operatic writing. While Peri’s

Euridice was pure monody in its entirety, Monteverdi gave the story a greater dimension by including several other layers of music and spectacle, alternating between solo singing, duets, choruses, and instrumental passages played by a larger ensemble. Orfeo is

“hardly homogeneous: there is a good deal of variety in the monodic sections and waywardness in the recitative . . .”5 These factors may contribute to the fact that Orfeo is the earliest opera to remain in the popular repertoire in the twenty-first century.6

Born in the northern Italian city of Cremona in 1567, Monteverdi was a precocious musician who published his first collection of compositions at the age of 15.

5 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 6 Heller, Wendy. 2014. Music in the Baroque. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 41.

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Monteverdi probably also had vocal lessons, and he later taught singing.7 Throughout his career, he demonstrated the ability to write not only in the old, polyphonic style of the

Renaissance, but also in the new style—the monody, or stile rappresentativo, that he called the seconda prattica, or “Second Practice.”

One of Monteverdi’s main interests as a composer was linked with the Florentine

Camerata’s ideals of the “doctrine of the affects.” Monteverdi tried to find different ways to convey the various human passions and emotions in music. He developed three different “styles” of music that represented the three principal forms of passions or affections: anger, moderation, and humility or supplication. He called the styles

“agitated” (concitato), “soft,” and “moderate,” and fit the words to music in one of these styles.8 It is clear from letters of the time that Monteverdi chose texts that would offer opportunities to experiment with these different styles.

With Orfeo, his first operatic endeavor, Monteverdi was already extremely successful in conveying the different emotions in the drama, from extreme joy to great sorrow. His ability to “move the passions” to an extent not previously achieved is one of the factors that makes Orfeo a work of “historically significant innovation.”9

Mantua and La Favola d’Orfeo

Around 1590 or 1591, Monteverdi moved to nearby Mantua. He was employed as a lower-ranked musician at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, and was probably among the musicians who accompanied the Duke to Florence in 1600, when they joined

7 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 the festivities for the wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henri IV—an occasion on which

Peri’s Euridice was performed. By 1607, Monteverdi led several ensembles at the

Mantuan Ducal Palace, and his reputation as a madrigal composer had grown considerably throughout Europe.

In its first few decades, opera was performed as a private form of entertainment for the nobility and aristocrats in festivities and celebrations, such as weddings. Orfeo, for example, was composed and performed for the entertainment of the members of the

Accademia degli Invaghiti. In Renaissance Italy, aristocrats commonly created associations “dedicated to the arts, poetry, rhetoric, and the courtly virtues. . . . Such academies . . . played a large part in the intellectual life of the time.”10 Several of these academies existed throughout the country, each having a special mission that its members believed would set it apart from the others. Their meetings focused on discussing and being exposed to the arts, many times in elaborate ceremonies. The Accademia degli

Invaghiti, founded by Cesare Gonzaga in 1562, focused more specifically on music.11

One of the members of this academy was the poet, Alessandro Striggio, who wrote the libretto for Orfeo. The piece, sponsored by the members of the academy, premiered in one of the rooms of the Ducal Palace for an all-male audience of the society’s members.12 The novelty of the new style was expressed in a letter by the court official, Carlo Magno, who wrote on the night before the performance: “Tomorrow

10 Kelly, Thomas Forrest. First Nights: Five Musical Premieres. Yale University Press, 2000. 11 Alessandrini, Rinaldo. "Preface." In: Monteverdi, Claudio, Alessandro Striggio, and Rinaldo Alessandrini. 2012. L'Orfeo: favola in musica in un prologo e cinque atti. Piano Reduction by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2nd printing, 2016. 12 Although we know that musical events were held every Friday evening in the “Hall of Mirrors,” the notion that that was the performance place for Orfeo is erroneous. The only letter that described the location of Orfeo mentions it as the “apartment used by the Most Serene Lady of Ferrara.” Besutti, Paola. "Spaces for music in late Renaissance Mantua," In: Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 84-85.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 evening the Most Serene Lord the Prince is to sponsor a [play] . . . It should be most unusual, as all the interlocutors are to sing their parts.”13 For that first performance, the members of the academy were able to follow the story through printed librettos,14 which suggests that the audience paid close attention to the performance instead of treating it as background entertainment, as opera would be for over two centuries following this performance.

There are not many contemporary documents about how that first performance was received. However, a letter from Francesco to Ferdinando Gonzaga (first and second sons of Duke Vincenzo, respectively), written one week after the performance, reveals that it had greatly impressed the Duke, who ordered a second performance to be given on

March 1st before the ladies of the city.15 It appears that the Duke ordered subsequent performances as well.

Not much is known about the singers who performed in the premiere of Orfeo.

From the Ducal archives, we know that the famous tenor Francesco Rasi likely sang the title role. Rasi, born from a noble lineage in Arezzo and living in Mantua since 1598, was a student of Caccini, and therefore very familiar with the new style. A priest, Girolamo

Bacchini, probably played Euridice.16 The singer with the most references in the letters of

Francesco and Ferdinando Gonzaga, however, was the castrato Giovan Gualberto Magli, who sang at least two parts (Musica and Proserpina), and possibly a third. Francesco

13 Wikshåland, Ståle. "Monteverdi's Voices: The Construction of Subjectivity." The Opera Quarterly 24, no. 3-4 (2008), 223. 14 Fenlon, Iain. "The Mantuan ‘Orfeo.’" In: Whenham, John. 1986. Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 4. 15 Whenham, John. 1986. Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17. 16 Alessandrini, Rinaldo. "Preface." In: Monteverdi, Claudio, Alessandro Striggio, and Rinaldo Alessandrini. 2012. L'Orfeo: favola in musica in un prologo e cinque atti. Piano Reduction by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2nd printing, 2016.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 wrote to his brother asking for his help in finding and sending a singer to Mantua, since they had few sopranos, and not very good ones.17 Magli was chosen and sent to join the performers, arriving only nine days before the performance. Further letters reveal

Francesco’s concern with the singer; because Magli had only learned the prologue by the time he got there, Francesco was worried that the performance would not be ready in time. But Magli must have worked hard and fast, because the performance was given on schedule. Francesco praised Magli’s work after that, perhaps with a mixture of relief and honest admiration for the singer’s artistry.

The score was published two years later in Venice, dedicated to Francesco

Gonzaga, and reissued in 1615. At some point, the score was altered; it does not match

Striggio’s libretto from 1607.18 The ending of the story was changed from Orpheus’ death to a happier conclusion in which he joins his father, the god Apollo, and they are raised together to the heavens. We can’t know for sure when these changes took place. Perhaps they were made during the last stages of rehearsal, or the version first performed for the

Accademia degli Invaghiti was changed for the next performances.

Because the opera was performed in a room in the Ducal Palace, which was a very different space than the big opera houses that we are used to today, the number of musicians involved was likely small. Tim Carter suggests that the chorus was very small and formed by the soloists, as opposed to consisting of extra singers exclusively for that purpose.19

17 John, Nicholas. 1992. The Operas of Monteverdi. Calder in association with the English National Opera, 22. 18 Carter, Tim. "Some Notes on the First Edition of Monteverdi's 'Orfeo' (1609)." Music and Letters 91, no. 4 (2010), 501. 19 Carter, Tim. "Singing Orfeo: On the Performers of Monteverdi's First Opera." Recercare 11 (1999), 99.

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It is interesting to notice that, even though women were not allowed to publicly perform church music at that time, there were no such restrictions for private performances in Mantua. Even so, Orfeo was performed by an exclusively male cast, with castrati singing the female roles.20 This was not the case, however, when

Monteverdi’s next opera L’Arianna (Ariadne) premiered the next year; the soprano

Virginia Ramponi-Andreini sang the title role.

Opera, like most music of the time, was an ephemeral form of art, rarely repeated after the initial performances. Orfeo, however, survived longer, with several more performances in 1614 and 1619 in Salzburg. The opera was probably brought there and made possible by the tenor Francesco Rasi, who repeated the title role.2122

Following the successful performances of Orfeo in Mantua, another opera was commissioned for the next year. 1608 saw the wedding of Prince Francesco Gonzaga and

Margherita of Savoy during the carnival season. Monteverdi composed L’Arianna for the celebrations, with a libretto by Rinuccini (the same poet who provided the words for

Peri’s and Caccini’s Euridice operas). “This was a major political event that drew many prominent guests and also merited a presentation before a large audience, consisting, perhaps, of more than four thousand spectators.”23

The emotional power of Ariadne’s lament may have had its roots on Monteverdi’s own personal tragedy. In the period between the two operas in 1607, his wife Claudia fell ill and passed away in Cremona. Monteverdi barely had time to stay there, for he was

20 Carter, Tim. "Singing Orfeo: On the Performers of Monteverdi's First Opera." Recercare 11 (1999), 89. 21 Lindenberger, Herbert. Situating Opera: Period, Genre, Reception, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 2-3. 22 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 23 Wikshåland, Ståle. "Monteverdi's Voices: The Construction of Subjectivity." The Opera Quarterly 24, no. 3-4 (2008), 232.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 summoned back to Mantua “to acquire the greatest fame which a man may have on earth”: the composition of Arianna for Francesco Gonzaga’s wedding.24 For the title role,

Monteverdi chose his protegé, the soprano Caterina Martinelli, who had lived and trained in his household for several years. Tragedy struck again, however, when the talented soprano died of smallpox in March of 1608 at the age of 19.25

The only fragment of music that survives from the score of Arianna is the title character's famous lament, “Lasciatemi morire.” The new opera seems to have outshone

Orfeo in the eyes of its contemporaries, with at least one confirmed revival. Although the styles were similar between the two works, some differences prove how quickly

Monteverdi was developing his techniques. Differing from the monody in Orfeo, the lament in Arianna “may have been a solo song accompanied polyphonically by viols – not monody but ‘pseudo-monody’; . . .”26

Ariadne’s lament would follow Monteverdi for the rest of his career. The composer suggested in a letter to Striggio in 1616 that the “giusta preghiera” [righteous prayer], along with Orpheus’ “giusto lamento” [righteous lament]—the virtuosic aria

“Possente spirto”—were “paragons of his ideal music for the theatre.”27

Although the rest of the music for Arianna is lost, the libretto survived, along with numerous written documents that reveal its success. This led Monteverdi to receive regular operatic commissions for private patrons from Mantua, Parma, and Piacenza in

24 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 25 Ringer, Mark. 2006. Opera's First Master: The Musical Dramas of Claudio Monteverdi. Pompton Plains, N.J.: Amadeus Press, 92-93. 26 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 27 Carter, Tim. "Possente Spirto: On Taming the Power of Music." Early Music 21, no. 4 (1993), 518.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 the following years.28 The opera phenomenon continued to grow quickly across Italy, and by the mid-1610s “the musical world was fast changing . . . as monodists sought more structured musical styles to reclaim the ground for music as music rather than as some spurious form of speech.”29

In 1612, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga died and Francesco, his oldest son, became the new duke. Monteverdi was dismissed from his position at the court and returned to his hometown, composing new pieces to apply for new positions in several cities across

Italy. In July of 1613, the maestro di cappella of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice died, and

Monteverdi was hired to assume the position. He arrived in Venice in early October, after an “eventful journey . . . including highway robbery.”30

Venice and Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria

As the music director of St. Mark’s Basilica, Monteverdi gained one of the most prestigious musical positions in Italy. He reorganized the cappella and produced numerous musical works over the next several decades. He composed not only sacred works for the church, but also secular pieces for the patrons around the country who sought his now-prestigious services.

He maintained a good relationship with the court in Mantua, where Duke

Francesco died only ten months after inheriting the position. His brother Ferdinando

Gonzaga, upon becoming the new duke, tried to bring Monteverdi back to Mantua, but the composer’s position at St. Mark’s Basilica was far more distinguished. However,

28 Rosand, Ellen. "The Bow of Ulysses." The Journal of Musicology 12, no. 3 (1994), 376. 29 Carter, Tim. "Possente Spirto: On Taming the Power of Music." Early Music 21, no. 4 (1993), 518. 30 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press.

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Monteverdi accepted and composed many commissioned works for Ferdinando from his position in Venice. Even though several of his works in the following decades had plenty of dramatic characteristics, Monteverdi produced very few subsequent operas, and most of them have been lost.

By 1637, opera had become important enough that the Teatro San Cassiano, the first opera house for public performances, was built. In the first few decades of public opera houses, many theatres were built by rivaling noble families, each owning its own theatre. Venice had four theatres by 1641, and sixteen by the end of the century.31

These significant changes in the art form, from private to public performances and for a greater audience formed by several different layers of society, caused inevitable changes in the music. Opera was now a spectacle, with machinery, sets, and elaborate costumes aimed to visually impress the audience. The costs of such productions prohibited large choruses and orchestras.32 This meant operas had either no choruses or small ensembles formed by the soloist singers, and led to a reduction in musical possibilities for the composers.

Inspired by Monteverdi’s legacy and the surviving fame of his Mantuan operas, many tried to persuade him to return to the stage with new dramatic works. Giacomo

Badoaro, Venetian nobleman and amateur poet, wrote in 1640 or 1641: “Venetian audiences have been deceived by appearances; the emotions they have seen portrayed on stage have necessarily left them cold and unmoved, because they were warmed by a

31 Schrade, Leo. "Monteverdi's "Il Ritorno D'Ulisse"" The Musical Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1950), 423. 32 John, Nicholas. 1992. The Operas of Monteverdi. Calder in association with the English National Opera, 76.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 painted sun; only the great master Monteverdi, the real sun, radiates sufficient heat truly to ignite the passions.”33

Badoaro wrote a libretto tailored to suit the composer’s needs, aiming to provide

Monteverdi with plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his different styles and affections.

Badoaro wrote about this process: “I avoided all far-fetched thoughts and conceptions and paid more attention to the affections as Monteverdi wished to have them . . .”34

That seems to have been enough to convince Monteverdi to agree to write a new opera, but not without imposing substantial changes in the text. “It is . . . quite apparent that the composer found the libretto lacking in formal invitations to song, for he seizes on every possibility offered by the text—every refrain, every metrical passage—to create a closed lyrical form. And always, the alteration serves a dramatic purpose.”35 Monteverdi was 73 when the opera Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria premiered in 1640.

Based on the second half of Homer’s Odyssey, Ulisse was the first Venetian opera to diverge from the mythological pastoral,36 and the first surviving opera based on a

Greek epic. Here, “Monteverdi laid down the parameters for all further serious operatic adaptations from Greek tragedy and epic.”37

Before premiering Ulisse, Monteverdi revived his Arianna in the Teatro S. Moisè in 1639, where it ran for a full year. Ulisse enjoyed ten performances at the Teatro di

33 Rosand, Ellen. "The Bow of Ulysses." The Journal of Musicology 12, no. 3 (1994), 378. 34 Schrade, Leo. "Monteverdi's "Il Ritorno D'Ulisse"" The Musical Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1950), 423. 35 Rosand, Ellen. "The Bow of Ulysses." The Journal of Musicology 12, no. 3 (1994), 384. 36 Rosand, Ellen. "Monteverdi’s late operas." In: Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 230. 37 Ewans, Michael. 2007. Opera from the Greek: Studies in the Poetics of Appropriation. Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 29.

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Santi Giovanni e Paolo for a packed crowd during the carnival season of 1640. Later that year, it was taken to Teatro Guastavillani in Bologna for more performances.38

From the original cast for the opera, only a few singers can be identified, such as:

Giulia Paolelli as Penelope; Maddalena Manelli as Miverva; her husband, Francesco

Manelli, as probably Nettuno; and their son, Costantino, as Amore.39 The singer who created the role of Ulysses, however, has not been identified.

The success of the opera can be gauged in several ways. First, the next year,

Monteverdi was commissioned to write Le nozze d’Enea in Lavinia following the same structures and format of Ulisse, probably in an attempt to recreate its success. In addition,

Ulisse itself was revived for the next season, breaking an unspoken Venetian rule against operatic revivals. Most importantly, Ulisse was the only Venetian opera to be revived in the seventeenth century.40 The music for Ulisse also set a few standards for Venetian opera that would later become the general operatic rule, such as the alternation between sad and happy scenes.41

In 1643, Monteverdi’s last opera premiered at the Teatro SS Giovanni e Paolo.

L'Incoronazione di Poppea, often considered his masterpiece, started the ascension of

38 Alessandrini, Rinaldo. "Introduction." In: Monteverdi, Claudio, Giacomo Badoaro, and Rinaldo Alessandrini. 2007. Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria: tragedia di lieto fine in un prologo e tre atti. Piano Reduction based on the Urtext edition by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 3rd printing, 2013. 39 Rosand, Ellen. "Monteverdi’s late operas." In: Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 228. 40 Rosand, Ellen. "The Bow of Ulysses." The Journal of Musicology 12, no. 3 (1994), 379. 41 Prunières, Henry; and Theodore Baker. "Monteverdi's Venetian Operas (Il Ritorno D'Ulisse, L'Incoronazione Di Poppea)." The Musical Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1924), 184-185.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 historical operas and the decline of mythological operas.42 Monteverdi died in Venice on

29 November 1643, leaving several incomplete works.43

Connections Between Monteverdi’s Genres

Monteverdi was prolific in both sacred and secular music. It is logical that his musical styles would have much in common with each other, with a free exchange between their elements. Being trained in the “old ways,” or prima prattica, he produced as many works in that style as in the new style, seconda prattica. He knew how to write according to the targeted venue and occasion.

His Vespro della Beata Vergine, or simply, Vespers of 1610, assimilates both old and new styles, and has a lot in common with Orfeo. They were essentially written for the same forces. A direct comparison between them reveals that “the initial ‘Domine ad adiuvandum’ sv206/1 is a reworking of the instrumental toccata with which Orfeo begins

. . . and the splendid setting of the ‘Duo Seraphim’ sv206/7, for three tenors, has much directly in common with ‘Possente spirto’, [with] Monteverdi representing the singing of the angels with his most ornate style.”44

Other musical devices of Monteverdi’s, and especially the structure of his works, are carefully laid out. This is very apparent in his late Venetian works, but subtly present in his early compositions. In his Grove Music Online article, Chew states that “the avoidance of the disguised consecutive perfect triads in the later style, with a marked

42 Prunières, Henry; and Theodore Baker. "Monteverdi's Venetian Operas (Il Ritorno D'Ulisse, L'Incoronazione Di Poppea)." The Musical Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1924), 191. 43 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 44 Ibid.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 increase in the use of 6-3 sonorities, represents a substantial change of [Monteverdi’s] style and of musical language.”45

There are numerous common elements between Monteverdi’s madrigals and his stage works, and his pursuit of the ultimate expression of emotions gives his religious music and madrigals a dramatic mood. One could argue that his operas were always anticipated by his madrigals,46 and that he treated monodic writing the same way in his operas as in his madrigals.47

Looking into Monteverdi’s different musical genres can provide us with common characteristics of his music, and elements that he used on several occasions. Ariadne’s lament is an example of Monteverdi revisiting his successful pieces. He considered this piece to be one of his greatest accomplishments in setting emotions to music. This is reflected in his constant revisiting of the lament, which “resounds like a sustained echo throughout Monteverdi’s later works and, moreover, as one of the composer’s lasting contributions to the musical Baroque.”48 Monteverdi reworked the lament into a five-part madrigal in his sixth book of madrigals in 1614, and also published in 1623 as an individual monody piece. He revisited this lament again in 1641, this time as a sacred music piece in his collection Selva morale e spirituale. Titled “Pianto della Madonna sopra il Lamento d’Arianna,” Ariadne’s secular lament became the Virgin’s lament.

These are just a few examples of the occasions upon which the same piece was reused and morphed into different musical settings. Ulisse also opens with a lament, which by

45 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 46 Schrade, Leo. "Monteverdi's "Il Ritorno D'Ulisse"" The Musical Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1950), 422. 47 Tomlinson, Gary. "Madrigal, Monody, and Monteverdi's "Via Naturale Alla Immitatione"" Journal of the American Musicological Society 34, no. 1 (1981), 66. 48 Wikshåland, Ståle. "Monteverdi's Voices: The Construction of Subjectivity." The Opera Quarterly 24, no. 3-4 (2008), 235.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 then had become one of Monteverdi’s favorite outlets for depicting longing and sadness.

This time the lament is Penelope’s, yearning for the return of her husband, Ulysses.

Other examples of interchangeable music between genres is found in some passages of Ulisse. Ulysses’ strophic aria, “O fortunato Ulisse,” is a quote from

Monteverdi’s madrigalesque works, and Melantho’s passage “Un bel viso fa guerra” is a literal quotation from the eighth book of madrigals.49 The final duet of the opera,

“Sospirato mio sole,” is modeled on the duets of the seventh book.50

Monteverdi also worked different styles for the affections—agitated, soft, and moderated—into his pieces throughout his career. The composer felt that the soft and moderated styles came to him more easily, and that he needed to further develop his agitated style (genere concitato). He did so in Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, a

“scene” in his eighth book of madrigals. The solution he found to represent the agitated mood through music was the “division of long notes into rapid repeated semiquavers, in some of the orchestral interpolations”51 that depicted battles or horseback riding.

An extremely eclectic composer, Monteverdi used all the forces and novelties he had at his disposal to explore various genres. Monteverdi himself may have been uninterested in securing a reputation as either a revolutionary or a conservative, since he tried to demonstrate his mastery of both the old and the new styles. Even so, he had to defend himself from critics of the time, especially when the conservative theorist

Giovanni Maria Artusi attacked the “crudities” and “license” of his music. Monteverdi coined the terms prima and seconda prattica when he diplomatically answered that both

49 Schrade, Leo. "Monteverdi's "Il Ritorno D'Ulisse"" The Musical Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1950), 430. 50 Ibid, 434. 51 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 the old and the new styles had a place in the musical world of the time. His works, nonetheless, were generally highly respected by his contemporaries, who considered him to be “above all else a Modern, [and] a breaker of rules.”52

52 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press.

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CHAPTER III:

THE VOICES OF ORPHEUS AND ULYSSES

Historically informed performances imply that singers use the best of their knowledge to achieve the aesthetics of the period in which the piece was written. This affects not only the choices of venue, instruments, orchestra size, and musical decisions, but also the casting of the roles. In general, the further back in history we go, the more difficult it is to find adequate information on these aesthetics.

The fact that some of Monteverdi’s operatic characters are given to singers of different voice types demonstrates that we are still searching for the sounds that

Monteverdi conceived over four centuries ago. Characters like Nero, in Poppea, have been sung by mezzo-sopranos, countertenors and tenors. Both Orpheus and Ulysses were—and still are—given to both tenors and baritones. Despite the differing aesthetics of the 17th and 21st centuries, to make informed decisions about casting choices, we must understand who the singers performing the roles in Monteverdi’s time were, and what was expected of them.

The Singers of the Early Seventeenth Century

For a brief period in history, coinciding with the creation of the first operas, the tenor voice enjoyed a “Golden Age”53 in which it was given the main male roles in those works.54 Composers such as Peri and Caccini were singers—and tenors—themselves.

They wrote the music for themselves, and very likely played the simple accompaniments

53 Potter, John. 2009. Tenor: History of a Voice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 10-11. 54 By the middle of the seventeenth century, though, the castrati had taken over the positions of heroes and other leading figures.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 for their songs as well. In a letter, composer Marco da Gagliano showed great appreciation for Peri’s singing and artistry: “I will say that no one can fully appreciate the sweetness and the power of his airs who has not heard them sung by Peri himself, because he gave them such a grace and style that he so impressed in others the emotion of the words that one was forced to weep or rejoice as the singer wished.”55

The tenor Francesco Rasi, who created not only the role of Monteverdi’s Orpheus, but also sang roles in Euridice (Peri, 1600), La Dafne (Gagliano, 1608),56 and Arianna

(Monteverdi, 1608), among many others, enjoyed considerable fame in his time. “Caccini mentions that the aria Qual trascorrendo in Le nuove musiche was sung by Rasi ‘partly with the passages as written and partly according to his own taste,’ which is some evidence that Rasi, like Peri and Caccini, had an individual style of singing.”57 Rasi’s experience as a singer might have directly affected Monteverdi’s writing for Orfeo. There are records dating from 1598 that mention Rasi’s “wondrous” performance, in which he sang and played the chitarrone accompanied by other voices responding as echoes. The same musical device can be found in “Possente spirto,” except Monteverdi translated the vocal echoes into instrumental ones.58

The singers mentioned above were all referred to as “tenors.” However, the vocal classification at the time was very different than it is now. In Monteverdi’s time, the tenor voice had not yet settled into the range and sound with which we associate it today.59

Virtuoso singers were expected to have extraordinary ranges. According to the sixteenth-

55 Wistreich, Richard. "'La Voce è Grata Assai, Ma . . .': Monteverdi on Singing." Early Music 22, no. 1 (1994), 16. 56 MacClintock, Carol. "The Monodies of Francesco Rasi." Journal of the American Musicological Society 14, no. 1 (1961), 31. 57 Ibid, 34. 58 Carter, Tim. "Singing Orfeo: On the Performers of Monteverdi's First Opera." Recercare 11 (1999), 84. 59 Potter, John. 2009. Tenor: History of a Voice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 17.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 century letters by Giovanni Camillo Maffei,60 a good singer should be able to “sing bass, tenor, and other voices with great ease.”61 It is, in fact, believed that “most famous tenors were also capable of singing in the bass register. This repertoire and its performers have been largely overlooked by historians, . . . partly because it is very hard for today’s tightly categorised singers to conceive of such a range.”62 Prized bass singers in Italy could sing very low and had large ranges overall, and some were required to have a range of twenty-two notes (three octaves).63

Although we cannot know for certain how singers negotiated their different vocal registers, we know they were expected to have smooth and blended head and chest voices. That could mean that tenors of the time had lower voices than the modern tenor, and were able to slide into a falsetto voice without an apparent break. The baritone voice was not yet a part of the vocal classifications. “In 17th-century Italy the term appears to refer to a rather ordinary type of choral singer who sang low parts.”64 Later in the

Baroque era, the German musician and lexicographer Johann Gottfried Walther compiled a lengthy dictionary of music and musicians, the Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732).

There he described the baritone as someone who “must have the high range of the tenor as well as some depth in the bass.”65 Because the baritone voice is the most common

60 Maffei was a doctor of medicine, philosopher and accomplished amateur musician and singer from the sixteenth century. 61 MacClintock, Carol. 1979. Readings in the History of Music in Performance. Bloomington; London: Indiana University Press, 37. 62 Potter, John. 2009. Tenor: History of a Voice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 17. 63 Wistreich, Richard. "Monteverdi in performance." In: Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 271. 64 Jander, Owen, et al. "Baritone." The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 65 Ibid.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 voice among men, many singers of Monteverdi’s time would surely have been classified as baritones had they been using our modern vocal classification system.

The descriptions of both tenor and baritone voices of the time greatly overlap.

This would explain why the casting choices for some of the roles at the time might be inconsistent with our modern definitions of vocal classification. If the tenors of the time had a good low range comparable to that of modern baritones, historically informed performances could justifiably feature baritones in those roles today, assuming these singers are able to produce the required ornaments and madrigalisms.

Another voice type that deserves to be mentioned is the alto. In Monteverdi’s time, the Modenese contraltos in church choirs were men who, unlike today’s countertenor, probably sang in “full chest voice most of the time.”66 Their parts would generally stay between G3 and G4 with occasional extensions (usually on the lower end), comparable to the range of the modern tenor. The fact that today’s tenors could have been considered altos in this period is yet another example of how different the vocal classifications in the Baroque period were from those we use now.

Independently from the vocal types of the time, Monteverdi and his contemporaries were looking for clarity and expressiveness of the text. They wrote for specific voices in a way that would allow the singers to achieve this ultimate goal. That is why the casting process would depend directly on the librettos or other texts they set to music, as we can infer from a letter from Monteverdi to Striggio during one of their

66 Wistreich, Richard. "Monteverdi in performance." In: Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 271.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 collaborations: “I see that the interlocutors are winds, amoretti, zefiretti and sirens, so that many sopranos will be needed.”67

Higher voices were more suitable for divisions and other fast passages, and therefore more likely to be cast in roles of gods and powerful figures. Bacilly68 wrote in

1668 that higher voices are more successful in effective performance because “a greater number of the emotions or passions will appear to good advantage in the higher voice ranges than in the lower ones.”69

Monteverdi’s scores can give us some information about the singers he had at his disposal. His Venetian works likely used men from the choir at St. Mark’s Basilica, since the range and general manner of writing in some of his operatic and secular works resemble very closely some of the solo parts of his sacred music writing. This also explains why, for instance, Monteverdi would sometimes give roles to tenors, instead of the already highly sought-after castrati: “While the ducal courts of Mantua and the like were prepared to pay huge sums for eunuchs, Venice was not.”70

If the singers of the time had to sing in dramatic stage works as well as in church, that implies a flexible technique able to fit the different venues, which already had different demands. In 1558, music theorist Gioseffo Zarlino wrote: “one sings in one way in churches and public chapels and in another way in private rooms. In [the former] one

67 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 68 Bertrand "Bénigne" de Bacilly (1625-1690), French composer and music theorist. 69 Harris, Ellen T. "Voices." In: Brown, Howard Mayer, and Stanley Sadie. 1990. Performance Practice: Music After 1600. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 111. 70 Arnold, Denis. "Monteverdi's Singers." The Musical Times 111, no. 1532 (1970), 983.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 sings in a full voice, but with discretion, nevertheless; . . . and in private rooms one sings with a lower and gentler voice, without any shouting.”71

There was also an important distinction between solo and ensemble singing. Both were part of the audition process for new singers joining church choirs. “In 1606 the

Procurators of St Mark's commented in their assessment of the tenor Stefano Rinieri that they had heard him several times, both with the choir and alone with the organ. . . .

Aspiring members of the Sistine Chapel choir had to take an ensemble audition, and were judged by the choir members themselves.”72

When it comes to the vocal technique of that period, the subject is more delicate and susceptible to divergent opinions. As we have seen before, the clarity of text and the ability to convey the emotions of the characters were the main concern of the singers of the time, but so were good intonation and well-articulated ornaments.73 The highly praised ornaments called gorgia seem to have been abandoned after the early Baroque era, probably because of the growth in the performance venues and the difficulty of making that kind of embellishment sound as clear in the bigger rooms.

These ornaments were, however, a crucial part of early Baroque singing, and are widely used today in historically informed performances. Coclico wrote that the gorgia must be done without moving the tongue, but pronouncing the ornaments from the throat

“correctly and ornately.”74

71 Wistreich, Richard. "'La Voce è Grata Assai, Ma . . .': Monteverdi on Singing." Early Music 22, no. 1 (1994), 8. 72 Ibid, 11. 73 Arnold, Denis. "Monteverdi's Singers." The Musical Times 111, no. 1532 (1970), 982. 74 MacClintock, Carol. 1979. Readings in the History of Music in Performance. Bloomington; London: Indiana University Press, 31.

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With the Venetian opera houses and the drastic changes in the performance practice, we see a change of the “emphasis on tunefulness rather than declamation, on rhythm rather than delicate ornamentation.”75 The rise of instrumental music and opera created a new class of musician whose primary emphasis was on technique.76

We cannot be certain how that contrasted with today’s technique.77 Some scholars believe that, since the emphasis was on clear text and ornaments, the technique was not as powerful or strong as today’s.78 Others argue that the same elements of singing were already being discussed back then and the descriptions of Baroque singers are remarkably similar to description of nineteenth-century singers. Those authors suggest that this singing may have been closer to modern day technique than we might think.79

Pitch Considerations

To talk about Monteverdi’s operas revivals in the last hundred years, we must start by tackling a crucial element of performing early opera in the twenty-first century: pitch. The efforts to standardize pitch began in the nineteenth century. Today, most orchestras in the world use standard or concert pitch, which is set by tuning the A above middle C to a frequency of 440 Hz. For modern singers looking to perform Monteverdi’s work, it is important to know what is usually the practice now, and interesting to research

75 Arnold, Denis. "Monteverdi's Singers." The Musical Times 111, no. 1532 (1970), 983. 76 Selfridge-Field, Eleanor. "Introduction." In: Brown, Howard Mayer, and Stanley Sadie. 1990. Performance Practice: Music After 1600. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 3. 77 We can, however, obtain some idea of the changing aesthetics of vocal technique throughout the centuries by listening to the early recordings of singers born in the nineteenth century. 78 Potter, John, and Neil Sorrell. 2012. A History of Singing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; and Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 79 Donington, Robert. 1973. A Performer's Guide to Baroque Music. Faber.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 what the pitch Monteverdi probably used was. This can also help us to better understand the characteristics and qualities of the voices of those who sang the roles.

Many singers who begin to perform early music pieces develop the erroneous idea that the Baroque pitch is a semitone below the standard pitch. Even though that became more common in the eighteenth century, in fact “there was no prevailing pitch in the

Baroque period.”80 Transposition was common and very frequent in that period, since each town had its own preferences. Even in the same city there were different tunings, depending on the venue. Different instruments would have disparate tunings, and changes in temperature would also greatly affect pitch. Other instruments had to match the tuning of organs. Choirs would also usually sing in a different tuning.

Surviving instruments from that time can provide us information on tuning, as can written evidence by Thomas Morley, Michael Praetorius, Georg Muffat, Johann Joachim

Quantz, and others.81 Quantz described the situation in 1752: “At the present time the

Venetian pitch is the highest; it is almost the same as our old choir pitch. The Roman pitch of about twenty years ago was low, and was equal to that of Paris.”82

This was a recurrent problem for singers, who had to adapt to the differences in tuning. Quantz mentions this too, by saying that “singers who perform arias in places where a high pitch level is used can scarcely perform the same pieces if they visit other localities where a low pitch is used.”83

80 Donington, Robert. 1973. A Performer's Guide to Baroque Music. Faber, 44. 81 Haynes, Bruce. 2002. A History of Performing Pitch: The Story of "A." Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, xxxv. 82 Cyr, Mary, and Reinhard G. Pauly. 1992. Performing Baroque Music. Amadeus Press, 60. 83 Ibid.

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In north Italy, specifically in Venice, the general pitch was a semitone or even a whole tone higher than modern pitch by the end of the sixteenth century.84 (Mantua is also located in north Italy). This can greatly affect the singers. If we alter the vocal ranges of Orpheus and Ulysses to conform to these different tunings, they might become prohibitive for baritones.

The role of Ulysses, for instance, if matched to possible Venetian standards of a whole step higher, would require a strong, recurring A4. Even though many baritones have this note, they may not be able to sing it with the required clarity and expressiveness—a task better suited to higher voice types. As Alessandrini states in the preface to his edition of Ulisse: “It is best to avoid those voices that tend to sit at the extremes and whose tessitura would consequently not be compatible with the aesthetic of stile recitativo.”85

Today, we can only match existing voices to Monteverdi’s roles. In the history of opera, however, the practice has generally been the opposite: roles match the voices available, and therefore make use of their best characteristics—and range. The fact that tenors and baritones with very different voices are sharing the same role only means that we are still trying to ascertain how to come as close as possible to Monteverdi’s original sounds.

84 Haynes, Bruce. 2002. A History of Performing Pitch: The Story of "A." Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 367. 85 Alessandrini, Rinaldo. "Introduction." In: Monteverdi, Claudio, Giacomo Badoaro, and Rinaldo Alessandrini. 2007. Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria: tragedia di lieto fine in un prologo e tre atti. Piano Reduction based on the Urtext edition by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 3rd printing, 2013.

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Monteverdi in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Musicology is a relatively recent discipline. It was only in 1863 that German music historian Friedrich Chrysander “contended that musicology should be treated as a science in its own right, on a level equal to that of other scientific disciplines.”86 The researchers of early music in the nineteenth century rediscovered Monteverdi’s work, and the composer was already credited as the “originator of the Modern style of

Composition” in the first edition of the Grove dictionary in 1880.87

The revival of Monteverdi’s operas started in the first few years of the twentieth century, through the efforts of French composer, Vincent d’Indy. He performed and arranged Monteverdi’s operas, at first in concert form. D’Indy translated them to French, and made heavy cuts to the works, especially for the lengthy Ulisse and Poppea, in what we can consider very free adaptations. He stated that the function of these versions was not musicological, but to facilitate the performance of the works.88

D’Indy’s first concert performances of Orfeo took place in Paris in 1904. A staged version, conducted by Marcel Labey, occurred in 1911, also in Paris.89 Orfeo was performed for the first time in the United States at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1912, and in Chicago the following year. The premiere of the opera at the Metropolitan

Opera House was not very well received, and the review in the New York Times on the following day stated that the audience was “nonplussed” and the music was the “most

86 Duckles, Vincent, et al. "Musicology." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 87 Barlow, Jeremy. "The Revival of Monteverdi’s Operas in the Twentieth Century." In: John, Nicholas. 1992. The Operas of Monteverdi. Calder in association with the English National Opera, 193. 88 Ibid. 89 Fortune, Nigel. "The Rediscovery of ‘Orfeo’." In: Whenham, John. 1986. Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 83.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 archaic music ever heard in the Metropolitan Opera House.”90 It is interesting to notice that clarity of text—so important in the early Baroque era—was also a point of concern here, as the review indicates: “The piece was sung in English with a very diverse measure of success in making the words understood. Mr. Weil’s singing and diction as Orpheus left much to be desired.”91

For the next several decades, Monteverdi’s music, as well as any other music from earlier centuries, was performed in contemporary style. This entailed productions using large orchestras and choruses, and vocal soloists employing singing styles that matched the aesthetics of twentieth century music.92 There was no differentiation between different styles, and the same forces were used for Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, for instance.

The attention to early music performance practices begun to grow in the mid-20th century, when musicians started to seek ways to perform music as it was intended originally by the composers, using instruments and musical principles that closely imitated those of the time the music was composed. This pursuit of authenticity was labeled the “early music revival.” It was at this time that the aesthetic began to change regarding which types of voices should sing the music of Monteverdi.

Around 1967, “David Munrow and Nikolaus Harnoncourt began to make original instrument performances of Renaissance and Baroque music the norm rather than the

90 Fortune, Nigel. "The Rediscovery of ‘Orfeo’." In: Whenham, John. 1986. Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 88. 91 Ibid, 89. 92 Wistreich, Richard. "Monteverdi in performance." In: Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 278.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 experimental exception.”93 Due to the improvisational style of the early seventeenth- century accompaniment, many of the musical choices are very open for interpretation, and having different ways to realise the accompaniment in the organ or harpsichord based on the single bass line provided in the score is firmly within Monteverdi’s style.

Instrumentation written to accompany certain passages is also open to interpretation, since there is no indication of it in the scores.94

Historical Recordings and Performances

The first Monteverdi opera to be recorded was a free adaptation of Orfeo in 1939.

Ulisse was first issued, with several cuts, in 1964. Digital technology has made many of the recordings readily available to us, and we can compare versions and study the different choices that various singers and conductors have made over the last eighty years. Recordings by Nikolaus Harnoncourt in the late ‘60s and ‘70s are examples of attempts to be faithful to the original aesthetics of Monteverdi. Even so, Harnoncourt chose the baritone Philippe Huttenlocher for his recordings in 1969 (issued in 1978), but opted for tenor Nigel Rogers for performances in 1976.95

For the purpose of comparing casting and pitch choices in historical recordings of

Monteverdi’s operas, I have compiled tables with useful information about the roles of

Orpheus and Ulysses throughout recording history. Here we can note the casting choices made over the course of 45 years, from the beginning of the “early music movement” to within a decade of the present time.

93 Barlow, Jeremy. "The Revival of Monteverdi’s Operas in the Twentieth Century." In: John, Nicholas. 1992. The Operas of Monteverdi. Calder in association with the English National Opera, 194. 94 Ibid. 95 Fortune, Nigel. "The Rediscovery of ‘Orfeo’." In: Whenham, John. 1986. Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 111.

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Table 1. Singers and tuning for Orfeo audio and video recordings. 96

Year Conductor Orpheus Voice Type Tuning

2008* William Christie Dietrich Henschel Baritone 0

2007 Rinaldo Alessandrini Furio Zanasi Baritone 0

2006 Daniel Stepner Frank Kelley Tenor 0

2006 Claudio Cavina Mirko Guadagnini Tenor 0

2006 Sergio Vartolo William Matteuzzi Tenor** 0

2004* Jean-Claude Malgoire Kobie van Rensburg Tenor 0

2003 Emmanuelle Haïm Ian Bostridge Tenor + ½

2002* Jordi Savall Furio Zanasi Baritone 0

1998* René Jacobs Simon Keenlyside Baritone 0

1996 Gabriel Garrido Victor Torres Baritone 0

1996 Sergio Vartolo Alessandro Carmignani Tenor 0

1995 René Jacobs Laurence Dale Tenor 0

1993 Gwendolyn Toth Jeffrey Thomas Tenor 0

1991 Philip Pickett John Mark Ainsley Tenor 0

1986 John Eliot Gardiner Anthony Rolfe-Johnson Tenor + 1

1985 Michel Corboz Gino Quilico Baritone 0

1983 Charles Medlam Nigel Rogers Tenor + ½

1978* Nikolaus Harnoncourt Philippe Huttenlocher Baritone 0

1973 Jürgen Jürgens Nigel Rogers Tenor 0

* video recording ** no ornaments in “Possente spirto”

96 The first column indicates the year the music was recorded. This does not always match the year the recording was released. The last column shows the pitch chosen for the recording. The number “0” means the music was performed in our modern, standard pitch of A being 440 Hz. Recordings with a “+ ½” and “+ 1” denote the pitch being a semitone and a whole tone higher than standard pitch, respectively. A few recordings were left out of these tables because they were not accessible, and therefore no information was found on the pitch used.

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Table 2. Singers and tuning for Ulisse audio and video recordings.

Year Conductor Ulysses Voice Type Tuning

2014 Martin Pearlman Fernando Guimarães Tenor 0

2009* William Christie Kobie van Rensburg Tenor 0

2005 Sergio Vartolo Loris Bertolo Baritone 0

2002* Nikolaus Harnoncourt Dietrich Henschel Baritone 0

2002* William Christie Kresimir Spicer Tenor 0

1998 Gabriel Garrido Furio Zanasi Baritone 0

1998* Glen Wilson Anthony Rolfe-Johnson Tenor 0

1992 René Jacobs Christoph Prégardien Tenor 0

1991 Alan Curtis Leroy Villanueva Baritone 0

1985* Jeffrey Tate Thomas Allen Baritone 0

1979 Raymond Leppard Richard Stilwell Baritone **

1978* Nikolaus Harnoncourt Werner Hollweg Tenor 0

1973* Raymond Leppard Benjamin Luxon Baritone 0

1971 Nikolaus Harnoncourt Sven Olof Eliasson Tenor 0

1964 Rudolf Ewerhart Gerald English Tenor 0

* video recording ** keys changes throughout the opera

An analysis of casting decisions from the tables above shows us that choices between tenors and baritones have been fairly balanced, especially for the role of

Ulysses. In this selection, tenors have been more favored to sing Orpheus. Even though the recordings studied represent a fair example of performance practices over the last several decades, they may not be representative of the numerous live performances that were not recorded. However, the recording process usually reflects the norms of live

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 performances, and can be considered a credible sample of the musical practices of their time.

As for the pitches and tuning chosen for the recordings, we can notice that there is a general consensus of using the standard pitch, and none of the recordings uses a lower pitch. As we have seen earlier, Venetian pitch was likely higher than the modern one, and that was probably the reason some conductors adopted higher pitches in a few of the recordings. Because pitch choices affect all of the singers involved, for modern performances we must consider all of the already-cast voices before making pitch changes, or cast them to fit the pitch choice. In Orfeo, because the ranges of the roles are not as broad, it may not make much difference for most singers except those in the roles of Orpheus and Charon.

Choosing a higher pitch for Ulisse affects more singers, and the role of Ulysses in particular. The singer would need a very solid and comfortable higher range, with several

A♭ 4s or even A4s, depending on the pitch adopted. Keeping in mind that the text must be delivered in a clear manner, this suggests that a baritone might have a more difficult time delivering the vocal lines, and a tenor would be a better choice.

Voice Casting Considerations

Ultimately, choices must be made and different decisions can be defended using what we know from our studies of the aesthetics and performance practices of

Monteverdi’s time. The documents of that era are open for interpretation, and there is a wide spectrum of options that fit the knowledge we have. In a few interviews with conductors and music directors conducted by Bernard Sherman, we can observe some

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 interesting factors that they take into consideration for casting purposes. Alan Curtis, when talking about vocal technique, states that he prefers to avoid the extremes. To

Curtis, voices that are too heavy and possess a wide and “wobbly” vibrato are not suited for Monteverdi. The light production and straight-tone quality of the voices of “early music” singers are also not suited for his operatic works, for they lack the dramatic aspects that those works require. The best choice would be something in between.97

Rinaldo Alessandrini has similar ideas for singing Monteverdi. For him, the goal is to be expressive and convey the dramatic content of the text. The most important ability was to express the mood of the text. Alessandrini also believes that early

Monteverdi is more text-oriented, while his late works focus more on the emotions and dramatic possibilities. We must consider all of the possibilities of vocal expressiveness today, not only sheer power.98 A final consideration—and an important one—comes from

Anthony Rooley, who says that an attuned singer must adapt his technique to the audience and space,99 very much like what was done in the seventeenth century.

97 Sherman, Bernard D. 1997. Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 137. 98 Ibid, 140-142. 99 Ibid, 152.

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CHAPTER IV:

THE VOCAL WRITING FOR ORPHEUS AND ULYSSES

It is not my intent to directly compare the roles of Orpheus and Ulysses. They were written 33 years apart for different venues, audiences, and purposes. The nature of the roles, as of their characters, is also distinctive, and they were written for different singers. They were both, however, given to tenors, and with today’s norm of casting voices to parts instead of the opposite, we try to fit the same voices to different roles.

Instead of contrasting the two roles, the purpose of this chapter is to further discuss the vocal writing for both roles, indicating what was common in both operas and, therefore, expected from singers preparing either of the two roles. Furthermore, I will identify the demands and difficulties of the roles to provide singers who might want to perform them with enough information to allow a better preparation and performance.

It is important to start by calling attention to the requirements and expectations of the ideal singer of Monteverdi’s time. A few surviving documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries address the subject of what was expected of good singers. Perhaps the most important of those documents is the collection of monodies and songs for solo voice by Giulio Caccini, Le Nuove Musiche, published in Florence in 1602. Here we have not only musical examples to demonstrate what Caccini proposed to be the “new” way of singing, but also an informative preface describing the techniques desired for performing them.

Other sources that help us understand the singing of the time are writings by

Adrian Petit Coclico (Compendium musices), Giovanni Camillo Maffei, Hermann Finck

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(Practica musica), and Ludovico Zacconi (Prattica di musica), all dating from the sixteenth century and, therefore, preparing the way for Caccini and Monteverdi several decades later. Another good source of information is the first full-length treatise on singing, “Opinions of Singers Ancient, and Modern” by the castrato singer and composer

Pierfrancesco Tosi. Although Tosi’s treatise on singing was published in 1723—80 years after Monteverdi’s death—much of it is useful to Monteverdi’s scholars, since Tosi praised the “old” ways of singing.

From all those treatises and documents on singing styles, we can summarize the ideals of the time into four essential vocal qualities: 1) perfect intonation, 2) good breathing technique, 3) clear enunciation of the words, and 4) proper expression of the text.100 The first two of these ideals can be matched with today’s perception of good vocal technique: a healthy, pleasant production that can be applied to the different styles of music that the singer wishes to perform. The other two items must receive the most attention, because they emphasize the importance of text and meaning in the music of the time. All of the other elements of singing were directly subordinate to the poetry. Clarity and expressiveness can describe much of what people liked in the singers of the seventeenth century, and it is important that every singer today keep that in mind while preparing roles from the period.

An example of the values of the time can be found in a letter by an audience member, Vincenzo Giustiniani, who witnessed three famous women singers at the court of Ferrara in the late sixteenth century:

100 Harris, Ellen T. "Voices." In: Brown, Howard Mayer, and Stanley Sadie. 1990. Performance practice: music after 1600. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 99.

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. . . they moderated or increased their voices, loud or soft, heavy or light, according to the demands of the piece they were singing; now slow, breaking off with sometimes a gentle sigh, now singing long passages legato or detached, now groups, now leaps, now with long trills . . . They accompanied the music and the sentiment with appropriate facial expressions, glances and gestures . . . They made the words clear in such a way that one could hear even the last syllables of every word, which was never interrupted or suppressed by passages and other embellishments.101

As we can see, the description above has so much in common with what is expected from singers today that it could pass as this year’s music review. This brings us back to the concept of clarity of words and expressiveness of the text, also always expected from singers, but not always delivered.

Monteverdi published his fifth book of madrigals in 1605, with a preface by his brother, Giulio Cesare Monteverdi. The preface makes clear that Monteverdi’s purpose with his music was to “make the words the mistress of the harmony and not the servant.”

The Mistress of the Harmony

Before Monteverdi’s defense of his new styles putting the meaning of the text above all else, the words had already been the focus of composition since the

Renaissance period. The difference was that earlier, it was the form and structure of the text rather than its meaning that concerned the composers.102

One of the reasons Monteverdi was so respected in his time was his ability to set the words to music full of emotion and expression going beyond the pure meaning of the words, reaching further to touch the core of human emotions. He saw any opportunity to convey the affections as a chance to push the boundaries of his compositional methods.

To achieve these dramatic goals, Monteverdi would change the text, sometimes

101 Palisca, Claude V. 1968. Baroque Music. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 17. 102 Ibid, 12.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 drastically, to better suit his needs. Michelangelo Torcigliani, the possible librettist for

Monteverdi’s Venetian opera Le nozze d’Enea in Lavinia (with music unfortunately lost), wrote about these events in a letter: “Such changes of affection please our Signor

Monteverdi very much because they allow him to display the marvels of his art.”103

This emphasis on evoking emotions was true from Monteverdi’s first opera to his last. Even though the musical styles are very different between them, his care for the text was one of the unifying characteristics of his writing. Tim Carter observes: “as many have noted, [Monteverdi’s] acutely musical perception of his texts—for all the differences in style between his early and late works—remained constant, informed by an extraordinary understanding of emotional arousal through music.”104

In addition to the text and emotional state being delivered, Monteverdi took the dramatic situation—such as who was singing, when, and where—into account in his madrigalisms (elaborate ornaments, embellishments, and other musical devices that composers of the second practice used to emphasize important words and images in their music). These adornments, which also include other forms of text painting such as changes in tone, volume, range, and texture of the music to depict the words being sung, were already being used extensively in madrigals. Monteverdi, however, applied these in innovative ways. “In addition to those used in Orfeo, in his late operas Monteverdi develops new musical devices, such as repetition and style shift, to highlight deictics—a strategy that contributes even further to the total dramatic effect.”105

103 Rosand, Ellen. 2007. Monteverdi's Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 200. 104 Carter, Tim. "Possente Spirto: On Taming the Power of Music." Early Music 21, no. 4 (1993), 522. 105 Ibid, 398.

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Another reason Monteverdi’s music was so effective was that he understood the environment of the performance, and fit his music to it. “Especially in recitatives,

Monteverdi conveyed other meanings in addition to affections, meanings dependent on the new situation in which his music resonated—the stage. And these meanings were embodied in texts—the librettos—that were no longer destined in primis to readers (as most of those set as madrigals were) but to audiences.”106

Repetition of the words is one considerable contrast between Orfeo and Ulisse.

While the text was more fluid and through-composed in the former, the latter opera contains several passages in which Monteverdi repeats the same text multiple times to achieve dramatic emphasis. In Ulisse, these repetitions commonly occur as some form of arpeggio of a chord, such as in the first appearance of Ulysses in Act 1. Here, Ulysses awakes from his long trip and asks himself repeatedly, “Dormo ancora, o son desto?” [Do

I still sleep, or am I awake?].

106 Calcagno, Mauro. "“Imitar Col Canto Chi Parla”: Monteverdi and the Creation of a Language for Musical Theater." Journal of the American Musicological Society 55, no. 3 (2002), 384.

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Ex. 1. Excerpt from “Dormo ancora.” Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, Act 1, Scene 7, mm. 1-11.107

This is one of many cases of textual repetition for dramatic purposes in

Monteverdi’s late operas, and a further example of how the composer molded the libretto to his preferences. “Monteverdi's extensive use of repetition thus deserves the utmost attention as one of the most effective ties that musical setting can establish with ordinary language. . . . repetition is a distinctive characteristic of everyday conversation, a way of focusing the attention of the listener on some specific words.”108

The lack of ornaments also has a strong impact on the atmosphere of certain passages of music, such as in “Lasciatemi morire” from Arianna. When we compare it with “Possente spirto,” from Orfeo, we find them to be extreme opposites in terms of ornamentation, while each serving the purpose of the moment in the operas.

107 All musical examples shown in this document were based on the Bärenreiter vocal reductions edited by Rinaldo Alessandrini. 108 Calcagno, Mauro. "“Imitar Col Canto Chi Parla”: Monteverdi and the Creation of a Language for Musical Theater." Journal of the American Musicological Society 55, no. 3 (2002), 406-407.

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The focus of how to achieve this text painting, however, changed throughout

Monteverdi’s career. In 1627 “Monteverdi stipulates that musical imitation must respond to the single word, and not to the meaning of phrases or sentences, and that the imitation must change as quickly as the words.”109 This meant another contrast between Orfeo and

Ulisse. By depicting individual moods for each word, we encounter passages with rapid successions of different emotions in a very short amount of time, sometimes in the same measure of music. In the aria “O Fortunato Ulisse,” Ulysses experiences extreme happiness with the prospect of finally seeing his son again. The excerpt shows the passage where Ulysses exclaims: “Oh happy Ulysses, delight in the vicissitudes that enable one to bear either delight or torment, either peace or war.” The music changes with each of the words to match their meaning.

Ex. 2. Excerpt from “O Fortunato Ulisse.” Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, Act 1, Scene 9, mm. 50-58.

In the example above, Monteverdi was inspired by the words to structure the passage as a modified strophic aria, since the text invites song. “Monteverdi’s lyrical

109 Tomlinson, Gary. "Madrigal, Monody, and Monteverdi's "Via Naturale Alla Immitatione"" Journal of the American Musicological Society 34, no. 1 (1981), 102.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 setting effectively changes not only the weight but the form of the text.”110 The rapid transformation of mood in the music was to become an outlet in which composers could underline the unstable psychology of characters. The method, although popular, meant

“sacrificing the musical continuity in order to mirror rapidly changing psychological states in the characters. This is particularly marked in the music for Nero [in

L'Incoronazione di Poppea], underlying the unstable psychology of the character.”111

Monteverdi’s operas are infused with text painting. In the aria “Godo anch’io ne so perchè rido” (“I too, rejoice, I do not know how”), from Act 2, Scene 10, Ulysses is laughing as he sings, and that is the purpose of the descending fast figures written at the end of the passage, when the character, in a “curiously realistic theatrical effect, bursts out laughing.”112

This diligent text setting by Monteverdi and his contemporaries was not copied by other composers for long. By the 1630s, at the same time the first opera houses appeared, there were already reports in Rome and Florence of how “spectators cared only to applaud extraordinary feats of mechanism and the marvellous voices of great singers.”113

Literaries criticized new librettos being produced for the opera houses of being too simplistic. But, the art needed to fit its audience. Librettists knew they were writing for a broader audience, not high society.114 “For the first time in the Western art tradition, musicians wrote music for singers who were acting on a stage for an extensive and

110 Rosand, Ellen. "The Bow of Ulysses." The Journal of Musicology 12, no. 3 (1994), 387. 111 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 112 Prunières, Henry; Baker, Theodore. "Monteverdi's Venetian Operas (Il Ritorno D'Ulisse, L'Incoronazione Di Poppea)." The Musical Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1924), 181. 113 Ibid, 179. 114 Calcagno, Mauro. "“Imitar Col Canto Chi Parla”: Monteverdi and the Creation of a Language for Musical Theater." Journal of the American Musicological Society 55, no. 3 (2002), 385.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 continuous stretch of time . . . in plots akin to those of spoken theater, the stage art with which opera initially had to compete.”115

Sheer voice continued to take continuously more space and preference over words, and by 1715, it was all that mattered to the audiences. Gian Vincenzo Gravina, in

Rome, wrote in a letter that year: “The philosopher remains confined to schools, the poet to academies; and for the people what is left in the theaters is only pure voice, stripped of any poetic eloquence and of any philosophical feeling.”116 In the performance practice of today, there is a general tendency to put sheer vocal power before elegant, stylistic delivery. Respected conductors and directors, however, still take the early Baroque aesthetics very seriously, and their recordings reflect this. Singers should, for this reason, give as much importance as possible to expressing and delivering the text.

Tempo

Gauging the tempo of early music is always a difficult matter, since we cannot know for sure exactly how fast or slow the composers of the period envisioned their music. The human pulse was the earliest measurement system for musical tempos. In the

Baroque period, music rarely contained indications of tempo, as “it was implied to a considerable extent by the meter. Proportional relationships between meters often governed the tempos of sections within pieces.”117

115 Calcagno, Mauro. "“Imitar Col Canto Chi Parla”: Monteverdi and the Creation of a Language for Musical Theater." Journal of the American Musicological Society 55, no. 3 (2002), 386. 116 Calcagno, Mauro. "Signifying Nothing: On the Aesthetics of Pure Voice in Early Venetian Opera." The Journal of Musicology 20, no. 4 (2003), 461. 117 Cyr, Mary, and Reinhard G. Pauly. 1992. Performing Baroque Music. Amadeus Press, 30.

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The meter and the values of the notes, combined with a fixed pulse (or tactus, that usually remained constant in meter changes),118 would generally define the tempo of early Baroque pieces. “Later, tempo could sometimes be inferred from a work’s title, or its origin in a dance form.”119

When considering tempo choices, we must keep in mind that the entire concept of monody was to achieve something between speech and song. That inevitably leads to some freedom of recitation and declamation of the text. In his Lamento della Ninfa (from his eighth book of madrigals, in 1638), Monteverdi marked two different instructions of tempo: first, “al tempo della mano” (roughly translating, “in time with the beat”). Later in the piece, as the nymph starts her lament, it is marked “al tempo dell’affetto” (“in time with the emotion”).120 This can be interpreted as permission to delivery of the music with more freedom and expressiveness.

Although clarity and expressiveness were the ultimate goals for performances according to the writings of the time, we must keep in mind that they still had the constant tactus, and make educated choices based also on the forces that are accompanying the vocal line at any time. Freedom of delivery is expected and encouraged, but the larger-scale beat of the music indicated by the meter and note values must still be felt throughout the piece.

Recitatives, by their very nature and simple accompaniment, allow more flexibility. Caccini mentions, in his Le nuove musiche, that certain parts can be sung with sprezzatura—a certain “negligence,” according to him. Singers were expected to convey

118 Cyr, Mary, and Reinhard G. Pauly. 1992. Performing Baroque Music. Amadeus Press, 30. 119 Scholes, Percy, et al. "tempo." The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 120 Carter, Tim. "Possente Spirto: On Taming the Power of Music." Early Music 21, no. 4 (1993), 519.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 the words “without regular rhythm, as if speaking in tones, with the aforesaid negligence.”121 Caccini added that the practice had “something noble about it, believing that by means of it I approach that much closer to the essence of speech.”122

Recitatives

Since the new monody and recitative style of the early Baroque era sought to imitate speech, it is natural that it covered a smaller range of the singers’ voices.123

Higher notes might be included in more urgent passages, when the human voice naturally becomes higher pitched. Composers sought to set instinctive speech patterns to music by reproducing oral discourse and borrowing from its manners and expressions.124 To

Monteverdi and others, this way of setting text to music was “the very foundation of the drama. It [was] the vehicle for expressing emotion and passion; whereas the songs, choruses and ballets merely aim at relaxing the strain on the auditor's attention.”125

From the beginning, with Orfeo, Monteverdi’s recitatives were different than

Caccini’s and included more contrasts in the rhythmic writing. In Monteverdi’s music, we find “abrupt juxtapositions of contrasting note values. . . . In Monteverdi, the singers sometimes declaim the opening syllable of a verse on a long note, then rush headlong through the following words on eighth notes.”126 (This effect was also commonly used in his multi-voice madrigals, for counterpoint effects.) In Act 2, as Orpheus learns that his

121 Nigel Fortune. "Sprezzatura." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press 122 Ibid. 123 Carter, Tim. "Singing Orfeo: On the Performers of Monteverdi's First Opera." Recercare 11 (1999), 88. 124 Calcagno, Mauro. "“Imitar Col Canto Chi Parla”: Monteverdi and the Creation of a Language for Musical Theater." Journal of the American Musicological Society 55, no. 3 (2002), 391. 125 Prunières, Henry; Baker, Theodore. "Monteverdi's Venetian Operas (Il Ritorno D'Ulisse, L'Incoronazione Di Poppea)." The Musical Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1924), 178. 126 Tomlinson, Gary. "Madrigal, Monody, and Monteverdi's "Via Naturale Alla Immitatione"" Journal of the American Musicological Society 34, no. 1 (1981), 67.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 wife is dead, this device is used in addition to dissonant intervals to convey the extreme sorrow of the character, as seen in the example below.

Ex. 3. Excerpt from “Tu se morta.” L’Orfeo, Act 2, mm. 229-238.

Novelties of Monteverdi’s recitative style, other than the already-discussed complexity of rhythms, include his unique uses of madrigalisms and the bass line and its implied harmonic progressions.127 We can also find sequences in Monteverdi’s operas.

Orfeo has a few melodic ones, and by the time he composed Ulisse, melody and text are further explored in sequential passages.

There were a few distinct approaches to recitative singing, as we can see in

Giovan Battista Doni’s treatise, Trattato della musica scenica, written between 1640 and

1647, where he differentiates between vocal styles such as stile recitativo and stile rappresentativo: “And if indeed they use ‘recitativo’ broadly to mean any melody that is

127 Tomlinson, Gary. "Madrigal, Monody, and Monteverdi's "Via Naturale Alla Immitatione"" Journal of the American Musicological Society 34, no. 1 (1981), 75-80.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 sung by one voice, it is however very different where one sings with precision, almost as for madrigals, and where the rule is a simple and flowing style . . .”128

To Doni, stile recitativo was a “melody that can be decorously and gracefully delivered, that is, that can be sung by a solo voice in such a way that the words are intelligible”129 regardless of the venue. He also referred to the term as signifying any music sung by one voice with an accompaniment, “with little lingering on the notes and sung in such a way that it resembles normal speech, though with sensitivity.”130

The stile rappresentativo, on the other hand, was more related to the staging and dramatization of the music: “I therefore prefer to call this style that accommodates the scenes ‘rappresentativo’ or ‘scenico’ rather than ‘recitativo’, because the actors . . . do not recite, but rather represent by imitating human actions and habits.”131

The styles of recitatives in Orfeo and Ulisse changed considerably. In Orfeo, there is a clear distinction between the recitatives and the arias and dances. In Ulisse, we have more through-composed music that blends the styles, going from one to the other frequently, quickly, and smoothly. In Monteverdi’s last operas, we can also see a fusion of his early recitative style with the aesthetics of the Roman cantata.132

128 Alessandrini, Rinaldo. "Preface." In: Monteverdi, Claudio, Alessandro Striggio, and Rinaldo Alessandrini. 2012. L'Orfeo: favola in musica in un prologo e cinque atti. Piano Reduction by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2nd printing, 2016. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. 132 Prunières, Henry; Baker, Theodore. "Monteverdi's Venetian Operas (Il Ritorno D'Ulisse, L'Incoronazione Di Poppea)." The Musical Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1924), 179.

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Arias

In early Venetian operas, arias and recitatives were not as clearly distinct as they would be during the late Baroque era. In this period, operatic music could shift flexibly from recitative to aria in just a few bars. The structure of the poetry was the deciding factor for the nature of the music.133

In the early years of monody, the term “aria” was applied mainly to strophic songs, as in Caccini’s first collection of monodies.134 The concept of the recitative also embraces that of the aria—which means not only “tunefulness,” but also the setting of a strophic text.135 Arias tended to be in triple meter, while recitatives were usually in 4/4 or duple meter.136 The virtuosic “Possente spirto,” an exception to many standards of the time, also has characteristics of both aria and recitative.

By the time Monteverdi wrote his Venetian operas, he was experimenting with blending the styles. “The backbone of Il ritorno d’Ulisse is no longer recitative, as in

Orfeo. Instead, ‘neutral’ communication is now to some extent the province of aria, meaning not only tunefulness and tonal unity but also closed musical forms.”137 In many occasions in Ulisse, Monteverdi relates the characters’ emotional moments with musical and tuneful passages.138 “In offering them the possibility of breaking out of recitative when mere speech becomes too constricting, allowing them to sing when they must, but

133 Carter, Tim. "Monteverdi Returns to his Homeland." In: John, Nicholas. 1992. The Operas of Monteverdi. Calder in association with the English National Opera, 76-77. 134 Palisca, Claude V. 1968. Baroque Music. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 105. 135 Whenham, John. "‘Orfeo’: A Masterpiece for a Court." In: John, Nicholas. 1992. The Operas of Monteverdi. Calder in association with the English National Opera, 28. 136 Cyr, Mary, and Reinhard G. Pauly. 1992. Performing Baroque Music. Amadeus Press, 111. 137 Carter, Tim, and Geoffrey Chew. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. 138 Rosand, Ellen. "Monteverdi's "Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria" and the Power of 'Music'" Cambridge Opera Journal 7, no. 3 (1995), 181.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 also powerfully withholding that outlet, forcing them to rail against their bonds, or simply accept them, the composer reveals a universal truth about music as a human activity, a truth that is particularly relevant to opera.”139

Some of the characters in Ulisse have their personalities revealed by the kind of music they sing. Eumaeus can only speak through songs. Irus, the parasite, has no aptitude for singing; “he is unable to master its language: he splutters and stutters, even in his one aria. There is no melody in him.”140 All these musical moments are even more impressive when we consider that Badoaro’s libretto was largely designed for recitatives, and the composer had to change much to fit his will.141

Ornaments and Agility

Monteverdi’s works require voices capable of diverse ornamentation and fast passages. It is part of the performer’s job to be familiar with the performance practices of the style being sung. When it comes to embellishments and ornaments, the singer must know when to add them and how they are structured. The main principle of the early

Baroque ornaments is, as with much else in the period, their relationship with the text.

The music is driven by the emotions of the words, and the ornaments and other madrigalisms are means of expressing these emotions.

Singers should keep several important aspects in mind when planning where and how to place their own ornaments. First, even though virtuoso ornamentation in recitative style is very prominent, it needs to be restricted in theory—and most of the time in

139 Rosand, Ellen. "Monteverdi's "Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria" and the Power of 'Music'" Cambridge Opera Journal 7, no. 3 (1995), 182. 140 Rosand, Ellen. "Monteverdi’s late operas." In: Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 235. 141 Ibid, 234.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 practice—to where it can support the meaning of the text.142 We must be mindful of where words call for ornamentations and where they do not.

Another factor to consider is one’s technique and capabilities. Different voices have distinct facilities and difficulties, and each singer must be aware of what his voice can and cannot do. That will greatly affect the selection of madrigalisms each singer can choose from. Sir John Eliot Gardiner, founder and artistic director of the Monteverdi

Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, mentions this when talking about his 1985 recording of Orfeo. “During this recording . . . we never fixed or standardised ornaments, which were prompted, rather, by the mood and skill of each singer and, to some extent, by the relative status of the character sung: the more godlike the character . . . the more elaborate and extravagant the embellishment!”143 This statement makes another very interesting point: the nature and frequency of ornaments depends on the character being portrayed.

Singers must also avoid the pitfall of lack of creativity. The ornaments should not all sound the same, since the words and emotions are different. One of the foremost interpreters of early italian opera today and founder of the Italian early music ensemble

Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini, wrote in 2007 about Monteverdi’s ornaments:

Modern singers generally resort to a highly repetitive formula consisting of diminuite ornamentation of the cadential notes, neglecting any judicious application of trills, accents, clamazione, or more subtle gestures such as syllabic anticipation. . . . Abundant coloratura, on the other hand, is chronologically misplaced when applied to this music, by

142 Donington, Robert. 1973. A Performer's Guide to Baroque Music. Faber, 161. 143 Barlow, Jeremy. "The Revival of Monteverdi’s Operas in the Twentieth Century." In: John, Nicholas. 1992. The Operas of Monteverdi. Calder in association with the English National Opera, 196.

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at least thirty years. With specific reference to Ulisse, Monteverdi reserved florid passages for the gods . . .144

Ornaments such as the trillo and gruppo were not written on the scores,145 and their use varied based on the factors mentioned above. We can find some examples from that period of several choices of ornamentation from a simple line of music, such as in

Coclico’s Compendium musices. Below are some of the author’s examples used to discuss vocal technique.

Ex. 4. Excerpt from Compendium Musices, by Adrian Petit Coclico.146

Very similar to Coclico’s examples is the unique writing for the aria “Possente spirto,” a depiction of Orpheus’ power and abilities as a singer and a demi-god placed right at the center of the structure of Orfeo. Here, Monteverdi made an exception to the rule of not writing down the ornaments in the voice parts, and curiously wrote two

144 Alessandrini, Rinaldo. "Introduction." In: Monteverdi, Claudio, Giacomo Badoaro, and Rinaldo Alessandrini. 2007. Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria: tragedia di lieto fine in un prologo e tre atti. Piano Reduction based on the Urtext edition by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 3rd printing, 2013. 145 Cyr, Mary., and Reinhard G. Pauly. 1992. Performing Baroque Music. Amadeus Press, 124. 146 Musical examples edited from the version on MacClintock, Carol. 1979. Readings in the History of Music in Performance. Bloomington; London: Indiana University Press, 31.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 different vocal lines simultaneously for the aria. One is very simple and unornamented, the plain version of the melody. The other line is both the centerpiece and the most ornamented and complex section of the entire opera.

Ex. 5. Excerpt from “Possente spirto.” L’Orfeo, Act 3, mm. 133-136.

The aria is structured in long strophes in modified form, over a slow-moving bass and alternating with ritornello passages that use different instruments and have new musical material each time.147 The stanzas become increasingly more ornamented on each new entrance. The aria, written to depict Orpheus’ extraordinary skills, requires a skilled singer who is able to display the attributes of the “early-seventeenth-century

147 The instrumentation Monteverdi chose for each ritornello uses instruments to match the general mood and meaning of words. First, we have two violins, then two cornettos, then a harp, and finally the violins again.

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 virtuoso: a singer schooled both in the older art of complex ornamented song and in the newer Florentine art of passionate rhetorical declamation.”148

The vocal technique required for early Baroque ornaments is unique, and much was written about it. “It is well established that the use of 'throat articulation' for fast ornaments was a fundamental aspect of 16th- and 17th-century vocal technique; the word gorgia (sometimes plural, as in gorgie) for such ornamentation is a natural development from gorga or gola, meaning 'throat.’”149

This kind of throat articulation made it possible for singers to repeat the same note at an extremely fast rate. In Monteverdi and Caccini’s time, singers negotiated coloratura passages of lightning-quick glottal articulation performed on the soft palate. “Flexibility in the alternation of fast and sustained notes was considered the essence of good singing.”150 Glottal singing became unpopular in the larger public opera houses, where that style couldn’t be heard as well.

In Monteverdi’s letters, we can find references to what he considered good singing. In a letter where he criticizes a young bass from Bologna for his crude and offensive gorgia ornaments, we can conclude that, to the composer,

if the voice is only articulated in the throat, with no support from the chest—or, in other words, without a legato stream of breath support—the throat-articulated notes are too separated and come out harsh and unconnected. If, on the other hand, the movement of the voice is too smooth and is not articulated sufficiently (or at all) in the throat, there is no distinction between the separate notes.151

148 Whenham, John. "Five Acts: One Action." In: Whenham, John. 1986. Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 68. 149 Wistreich, Richard. "'La Voce è Grata Assai, Ma . . .': Monteverdi on Singing." Early Music 22, no. 1 (1994), 14. 150 Baird, Julianne. "Beyond the Beautiful Pearl." In: Sherman, Bernard D. 1997. Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 231. 151 Wistreich, Richard. "'La Voce è Grata Assai, Ma . . .': Monteverdi on Singing." Early Music 22, no. 1 (1994), 14.

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From this, we can infer that the technique for the ornaments must be balanced, precise, supported, and articulated. Johann Joachim Quantz, an eighteenth-century

German flutist and composer, compares chest articulation versus throat articulation. He states that the former is more distinct and better suited for large places, while the latter results in greater flexibility and facility.152 He still affirms that every note in fast passages

“must be performed distinctly and stressed by a gentle breath of air from the chest.”153

We must keep in mind, however, that his writings are separated from Monteverdi’s performances by a century, and that musical venues—and the vocal technique to match them—had changed.

The demands for the roles of Orpheus and Ulysses, then, are slightly different.

Orpheus has more declamatory lines, but requires a singer able to handle “Possente spirto,” full of fast articulations and gorgia-style ornaments. Orpheus’ final duet with

Apollo also has similar vocal demands. The role of Ulysses has more passages with faster singing in longer lines and some coloratura passages, but the ornaments for the role, since they are not written in the score, are more adaptable to the capabilities of each singer.

Range and Tessitura

The vocal range of a role is one of the first things singers look for when researching new opportunities. Here, the roles of Orpheus and Ulysses reflect the demands and circumstances of the times they were composed, as well as the singers for whom they were composed.

152 Harris, Ellen T. "Voices." In: Brown, Howard Mayer, and Stanley Sadie. 1990. Performance Practice: Music After 1600. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 107. 153 Ibid.

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Orfeo's roles tend to have a narrower range than those found in today's usual operatic repertoire, because this opera's emphasis on recitatives and speech-like patterns doesn't call for such extremes of pitch. The ranges of most of the roles in the opera, save for Orpheus and Charon, vary from a simple sixth to a tenth.154 Orpheus, as the hero and title character, but also as the representation of the “vocal power of the mythical musician of antiquity,”155 was given a wider range to show his artistry. The fact that Francesco

Rasi, the respected and famous tenor who created the role, was a successful performer certainly allowed for more elaborate and virtuosic vocal writing. Technically, the range of the role goes from B♭ 2 to F♯4. But one can argue that the practical range is from C3 to

F4, since there is only one B♭ 2 and only one F♯4 written in the score, both of them being very short (sixteenth) notes, occurring on weak beats.

Ex. 6. Excerpt from “Possente spirto.” L’Orfeo, Act 3, mm. 144-146.

“Possente spirto” is the most virtuosic part of the role, and where the extremes of the range occur. If we consider the non-ornamented vocal line, the lowest note in the entire opera would be a C3. The highest, however, would still be the F♯4, since it appears later in the aria, when there is only one vocal line written for Orpheus.

154 Carter, Tim. "Singing Orfeo: On the Performers of Monteverdi's First Opera." Recercare 11 (1999), 85. 155 Ibid.

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Considering the role in its entirety, Orpheus alternates parts where the voice sits in a low register with parts using a higher tessitura. The singer who performs this role needs good low notes, singing several C3s and even more D3s. He also needs to have a solid F4, since that is a recurring note, sometimes appearing as a sustained half-note in modern notation. Many other passages have repeated high E4s as well.

We must keep in mind that ornamentations can potentially change the range by placing extra notes in its extremes. However, there are not many opportunities to do so.

The entire role of Ulysses sits slightly higher than that of Orpheus. It is simpler to discuss the range for Ulysses. Extending from C3 to G4, the role seems to be very balanced from top to bottom, using its entire range uniformly throughout the opera. The singer’s voice must have a very solid top, since he must sing many G4s and the approach to these notes is sometimes quite fast. In many occasions, the notes fall on the strong, emphasized beat.

Ex. 7. Excerpt from “O Fortunato Ulisse.” Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, Act 1, Scene 9, mm. 18-25.

When talking about range and tessitura, we must keep in mind that pitch and tuning differ according to the performance practice adopted by each production. Ulysses, and to some extent Orpheus, are roles that use a good part of the range of the higher male

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 voice, and tuning differences can be decisive and can greatly affect casting choices for both roles. As discussed in the previous chapter, most of the recordings throughout the last century used standard pitch, but a few were recorded in a higher tuning. Singers must keep that in mind and make sure that, if that is the case, they will still be able to approach the role in the same manner.

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CHAPTER V:

CONCLUSIONS

Moving people’s emotions through music has been discussed since the time of ancient Greece. Monteverdi sought to achieve that ideal in his music, and his works for the stage have passages full of great beauty and dramatic opportunities. It is up to the performers of today to complete the task the written music has left us. Regardless of the role or the voice type being sung, there must be a clear delivery of text, music, and emotions.

Determining the elements of the performance (such as venue, orchestral and choral sizes; voice parts for each role; and musical styles) is always open for interpretation and is the choice of the musicians involved. The attempt to imitate the aesthetics and musical standards of Monteverdi’s time can lead to different readings of his operas. However, the documents we have at our disposal help us better understand what Monteverdi was looking for in his music, and give us the guidelines for historically informed performances. Through research, singers can better understand how free improvisation of ornaments and embellishments can be added to their parts, following the treatises of Monteverdi’s time. Elements such as sprezzatura, gorgia, and trillo, among others, must be familiar to anyone learning early Baroque music.

We cannot know for sure whether the tenors of the seventeenth century would be considered the same voice type now. Several writers of the time discussed vocal technique and blending the registers, but there is no telling how the sounds described would compare to those being sung today. We can only try to fit the voices available now

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 to the roles written by Monteverdi, attempting to find voices that can sing the parts as beautifully and freely as did the original singers.

We must keep in mind that the opera in Monteverdi’s time was composed for specific occasions and venues, and the work would always conform to the space. Orfeo was composed for a modest-sized audience in a small room and, therefore, the music only needed to fill that space. Different forces and vocal writing would certainly have been applied to the opera had it been performed in a different space. We must, then, ask ourselves: do I need to adapt my singing (or playing) to match the music of Orfeo’s performance in the Ducal Palace in 1607 Mantua, or do I match the space I am singing in today? There is a limit to how faithful to original performances we can be, and each performance is unique and has its own essence.

Singers in the seventeenth century were already adapting their voices to match the new spaces at the first opera houses. Baroque opera developed into spectacles designed to amuse and entertain the audience, not different than performances today. Opera houses and concert ensembles today seek to keep a high level of music while looking to profit and sell tickets, and that means singers need to match a certain standard and aesthetic.

Every singer should prioritize the delivery of text in a clear and expressive manner as one of the most important aspects of performing Monteverdi’s works. Roles should be assigned taking into consideration the singer’s ability to deliver the text. To achieve this, the entire range and tessitura of the role should feel comfortable in the singer’s voice. Tenors and baritones alike may be able to sing the roles of Orpheus and

Ulysses, as long as their voices allow them the previously mentioned requirements. The ornaments and fast passages of the roles, however, may make them prohibitive for

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Texas Tech University, Gustavo Steiner Neves, May 2017 heavier voices. For that reason, as well as the other historical aspects discussed throughout this document, Orpheus is better suited for either a lighter baritone or a lyric tenor, as long as the singer has the facility for fast passages and the gorgia technique.

Ulysses, with his higher tessitura, is more appropriate for light or lyric tenors. Although many baritones have sung the role, the expressiveness of text and the light, easy production in the higher part of the register is usually compromised.

The opportunity to sing Monteverdi’s music is a valuable learning experience for any singer new to the style. The dramatic opportunities, as well as the myriad possibilities for ornaments and madrigalisms, provide the singer with a demanding yet rewarding vehicle for testing every element of his vocal technique. It is my hope that this research can provide information and resources to any singer interested in early Baroque vocal style. Although the information here focuses on the roles of Orpheus and Ulysses, much of it applies to any role by Monteverdi and his contemporaries. Further research can be done on other roles in Monteverdi’s operas, on the relationship between the librettos and his music, and on the differences between the vocal classification available in the seventeenth century and the voice types of today. Whether my research serves to introduce young singers to Monteverdi’s music or to provide experienced singers with further study materials, my hope is that it also encourages a better understanding of the vocal demands and requirements of Monteverdi’s operatic roles.

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