B. PRZYBYSZEWSKA-JARMIŃSKA, HABSBURG QUEENS OF POLAND, ARMUD6 47/1-2 (2016) 7-25 7 HABSBURG QUEENS OF POLAND AND MUSIC AT THE POLISH ROYAL COURT AT THE END OF 16TH AND IN THE 17TH CENTURIES BARBARA PRZYBYSZEWSKA-JARMIŃSKA UDK / UDC: 78.03”15””16”(84) Polish Academy of Sciences, Izvorni znanstveni rad / Research Paper Institute of Art, ul. Długa 26/28, Primljeno / Received: 25. 2. 2016. 00-950 WARSAW, Poland Prihvaćeno / Accepted: 23. 11. 2016. Abstract The main heroines of the article are Au- Keywords: 17th century, Poland, court strian archduchesses, wives of Kings of Poland: music, court opera, royal marriage, Anna of Anna and Constance of Styria, two consecutive Styria, Constance of Styria, Sigismund III wives of Sigismund III Vasa (1595–98, 1605–31), Vasa, Cecilia Renata Habsburg, Ferdinand II Cecilia Renata, daughter of Emperor Ferdi- Habsburg, Ladislaus IV Vasa, Eleanora Maria nand II and wife to Ladislaus IV (1637–44), and Josefa, Ferdinand III Habsburg, Michael Eleanora Maria Josefa, daughter of Emperor Korybut Wiśniowiecki Ferdinand III and wife to Michael Korybut Ključne riječi: 17. stoljeće, Poljska, dvor- Wiśniowiecki (1670–73). The main objective is ska glazba, dvorska opera, kraljevsko vjenča- to show how the royal marriages strengthened nje, Ana Štajerska, Konstanca Štajerska, Sigi- cultural ties between the Polish royal court and smund III. Vasa, Cecilia Renata Habsburg, the courts from which the archduchesses arriv- Ferdinand II. Habsburg, Ladislav IV. Vasa, ed. Special emphasis is placed on the gradual Eleanora Maria Josefa, Ferdinand III. »Italianization« of music culture at the Austri- Habsburg, Mihael Korybut Wiśniowiecki an and Polish courts, and its signifi cance for the adaptation and dissemination of opera as a genre in Poland. Although the history of marriages between Polish monarchs and archduch- esses from the House of Habsburg starts as early as the middle of the 15th century, when King Casimir IV Jagiellon married Elisabeth, daughter of Albrecht II of Habsburg and Elisabeth of Luxembourg, the unions most signifi cant from a music historian’s perspective were concluded at the end of the 16th and in the 17th centuries. During that period, three members of the House of Habsburg were 8 B. PRZYBYSZEWSKA-JARMIŃSKA, HABSBURG QUEENS OF POLAND, ARMUD6 47/1-2 (2016) 7-25 queen consorts married to elective kings of Poland from the Vasa dynasty, whose reigns were the heyday of musical life at the Polish royal court. Two successive wives of Sigismund III Vasa (King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in the years 1587–1632) were Anna and Constance of Styria, who had moved to Poland from Graz and were daughters of Archduke Charles II of Austria (d. 1590) and Maria Anna of Bavaria (daughter of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, the patron of the composer Orlando di Lasso). Anna was Queen of Poland from 1592 until her death in 1598, while Constance reigned from 1605 until 1631. The fi rst-born son and successor of Sigismund and Anna, King Ladislaus IV Vasa (who succeeded his father on the throne and ruled in the years 1633–48) married Archduchess Cecilia Renata, daughter of Archduke Ferdinand (Ladislaus’ uncle), who was later crowned as Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, and his fi rst wife Maria Anna of Bavaria. Cecilia’s reign in Poland lasted from 1637 until her death in 1644. In the second half of the 17th century, Eleonora Maria of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III and Eleonora Gonzaga, became the last but one Habsburg queen on the Polish throne. Crowned in 1670 after her marriage to King Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki, she left Poland two years after the death of her royal spouse (in 1673) and married Charles V Duke of Lorraine in 1678. In the history of music at the Polish royal court the period from the late 16th until the middle of the 17th centuries is distinguished by the domination of Italian music in terms of origin or style, performed mainly by Italians recruited and employed by Sigismund III and Ladislaus IV. At that time, being Italian was synonymous with being the most up-to-date, sophisticated and valued in the court culture of the day. Across Europe, dukes and monarchs competed in recruiting the most famous virtuosos and composers from Italy. In the case of Poland, research- ers have devoted much att ention to eff orts made by Sigismund III to entice the most renowned Italian musicians to work at his court, including famous compos- ers (such as Annibale Stabile, Luca Marenzio, Giulio Cesare Gabussi, Asprilio Pacelli or Giovanni Francesco Anerio).1 As a comparison of the royal ensemble of the Polish king, reestablished in 1595, with its contemporary equivalents maintained by Emperor Rudolph in Prague and by the archduke in Graz reveals, according to Polish musicologists Anna Szweykowska and Zygmunt M. Szweykowski, »Sigismund III left [...] the Habsburgs far behind«2 as regards the percentage of Italians. In the case of Ladi - slaus IV, Polish musicologists, theatre and literature scholars focused their att ention in particular on the royal court theatre, which between 1635 and 1648 staged 1 For more on the subject see: Anna SZWEYKOWSKA – Zygmunt M. SZWEYKOWSKI: Włosi w kapeli królewskiej polskich Wazów [Italians in the royal chapel of Polish Vasa kings], Kraków 1997; Barba- ra PRZYBYSZEWSKA-JARMIŃSKA: Muzyczne dwory polskich Wazów [Musical courts of the Polish Va- sas], Warszawa 2007. 2 SZWEYKOWSKA – SZWEYKOWSKI: op. cit., 22. B. PRZYBYSZEWSKA-JARMIŃSKA, HABSBURG QUEENS OF POLAND, ARMUD6 47/1-2 (2016) 7-25 9 at least 10 drammi per musica with original Italian librett i and music writt en in Po- land. It has been strongly emphasized by theatre historian Karolina Targosz- Kretowa that »the sequence of operas staged during Ladislaus’ reign was long and was interrupted only sporadically, while an opera performed in Vienna two years earlier remained a single instance for many years. As far as the reception of Italian opera is concerned, the Polish court was well ahead of all other German courts and 10 years ahead of the French court.«3 However, at this point it should be added that at the time when Sigismund Vasa was assembling his Italian court chapel in the 1590s, the number of musicians at the court in Graz dwindled slightly after the death of Archduke Charles and continued in a reduced state until his son Ferdi- nand came of age. Nonetheless, before this period of relative decline and shortly afterwards (during the fi rst two decades of the 17th century), the Graz court belonged to the most renowned centres of music life north of the Alps, in terms of the quality of music performed there and the participation of both Italian musi- cians and German musicians educated in Italy. As regards music and theatre at the imperial courts in Vienna and in Prague in the fi rst half of the 17th century, new research has revealed that although no music-related documents survive,4 it is evident that operas and stage performances involving music were performed there.5 It appears that the richness and variety of opera performances during the reign of Leopold I, relatively well-documented by extant scores and librett i, 3 Karolina TARGOSZ-KRETOWA: Teatr dworski Władysława IV (1635–1648) [The court theatre of Ladislaus IV (1635–1648)], Kraków 1965, p. 159. The author ignores performances that had been staged earlier at German courts, such as Torgau, Salzburg and Prague. However, they were one-off events or were connected with earlier productions of stage works in Italy. 4 Anyway, the music of the operas performed at the court of Ladislaus IV has not survived either. The extant documents are the librett os or their summaries. 5 A large bibliography contains among others: Herbert SEIFERT: Die Oper am Wiener Kaiserhof im 17. Jahrhundert (Wiener Veröff entlichungen zur Musikwissenschaft, 25), Tutz ing 1985; ID.: Der Sig-pran- gende Hochzeit-Gott . Hochzeitsfeste am Wiener Hof der Habsburger und ihre Allegorik 1622–1699 (dramma per musica, 2), Wien 1988; ID.: Die Comoedie der Hof-Musici 1625: Die erste Oper in Wien?, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, 42 (1993), 77–88; ID.: Das erste Musikdrama des Kaiserhofs, in: Österreichische Musik. Musik in Österreich. Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte Mitt eleuropas, Theophil Antonicek zum 60. Geburtstag, Elisabeth Theresia Hilscher (ed.) (Wiener Veröff entlichungen zur Musikwissenschaft, 34), Tutz ing 1998, 99–111; ID.: Das erste Librett o des Kaiserhofs, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, 46 (1998), 35–75; ID.: The Beginnings of Sacred Dramatic Musical Works at the Imperial Court of Vienna: Sacred and Moral Opera, Oratorio and Sepolcro, in: L’oratorio musicale italiano e i suoi contesti (secc. XVII-XVIII), Att i del congresso internazionale Perugia, Sagra Musicale Umbra, 18-20 sett embre 1997, Paola Besutt i (ed.) (Quaderni della Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 35), Firenze 2002, 489-511; ID.: The Establishment, Development and Decline of Operatic Institutions in Austria, in: Melania Bucciarelli, Norbert Dubowy and Reinhard Strohm (eds.), Italian Opera in Central Europe, vol. 1: Institutions and Ceremonies, Berlin 2006, 21–49; (see also ID.: Texte zur Musikdramatik im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Aufsätz e und Vorträge, Matt hias J. Pernersterfer (ed.) (Summa Summarum, 2), Holitz er Wissenschaftsverlag, Wien 2014); Sta- nislav BOHADLO: Na tropie pierwszych wystawień dramma per musica w Pradze. Hipotezy w świetle nowych materiałów źródłowych [On the track of the fi rst staging of dramma per musica in Prague. Hypotheses in light of new source materials], Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska, Sectio L Artes, 9,1 (2011), 31–43. 10 B. PRZYBYSZEWSKA-JARMIŃSKA, HABSBURG QUEENS OF POLAND, ARMUD6 47/1-2 (2016) 7-25 eclipsed earlier accomplishments and diverted scholars’ interest from the times of Emperor Ferdinand II and his second wife Eleonora Gonzaga, as well as the reign of Emperor Ferdinand III.6 At the beginning of his reign, Sigismund III probably devoted litt le att ention to his court chapel and was basically satisfi ed with the line-up inherited from his predecessor, King Stephen Báthory.