The Last Troubadours: Poetic Drama in Italian Opera 1597-1887 by Deirdre O'Grady (review)

268Rocky Mountain Review Laor explores self-knowledge and the potential for human autonomy by questioning Socrates, Nietzsche, and Lacan. The article by Vincent P. Pécora presents a series of poststructuralist and Marxian reassessments of ethics, politics, and liberty. His pertinent analysis ofsocial formation and hegemony as viewed by the neo-Marxian critics Laclau and Mouffe calls for a close look at political and ethical discourses as rhetorical categories. Also calling on Marxian critical tools for his reading ofSade as fabulist and pedagogue, Thomas Keenan defines social institutions as human constructs from which readers can be liberated. The volume closes with a poetic essay by Yves Bonnefoy in which he reflects on the restrictive nature of language and the fragmentation ofour perceptions of the universe. He then goes on to present poetry as the means by which we can recapture, if only fleetingly, the sense of immediate reality, of oneness. If poetry can do this, we also recover the liberty to be what we desire to be, without the constraint of linguistic formulation. This, Bonnefoy posits, is what makes us human. And thus we have come full circle, returning to a question which is treated throughout the book: that of our humanity. How appropriate it is, then, that when readers look again at the cover drawing by Antonin Artaud they witness the visages ofcruelty, suffering, and interrogation: an aesthetic representation of the issues raised by the volume. The questions posed by the joining ofliterature and ethics remain unresolved, as perhaps they must, but by having allowed several voices to speak, Nouvet calls upon her readers to continue this assessment, one which is inseparable from contemporary literary analysis. ANN WILLIAMS-GASCON Metropolitan State College ofDenver DEIRDRE O'GRADY. TAe Last Troubadours: Poetic Drama in Italian Opera 1597-1887. New York: Routledge, 1991. 236 p. Since my undergraduate days, when I enrolled in an honors seminar entitled "Don Juan Meets Don Giovanni," the topic ofopera's literary foundations has impressed me as a fertile field worthy of scholarly cultivation. But to attempt a "history ofthe Italian opera libretto from its courtly origin in the sixteenth century to the nineteenth-century struggle for national unity and the birth of social realism" (dust jacket) in less than 250 pages is so bold as to border on folly. The length of the historical period (almost three centuries), the rich diversity of subtexts (from Shakespeare to Sir Walter Scott), and the variety of the librettists (from Rinuccini to Boito) unitedly cry out for extensive treatment. Just as no 700-word review can do full justice to a 250-page book, no 250-page book can do complete justice to such an encyclopedic topic. Nevertheless, it can be argued that a place exists for both the short review and the condensed survey in the dual world of research and writing, and I am pleased to provide a brief assessment of TAe Last Troubadours. O'Grady commences by noting what quickly becomes obvious: "Many great works have been accorded merely a passing glance, or in some cases have been Book Reviews269 totally ignored" (xii). (Italian opera's earliest period receives extremely cursory treatment.) She then divides her study into two symmetrical parts, each containing four chapters. Part one—"Baroque, Arcadian and Enlightenment Influences"—contains "Aristocratic Beginnings in Florence, Mantua and Rome," "Popular Success and Maturity in Venice: Busenello, Badoaro and Cicognini," "Innovation and Reform: Zeno, Metastasio and Calzabigi," and "Of Servants and Masters: Federico, Goldoni and Da Ponte." Part two—"The Expression ofIndividualism"—contains "A Cry for Freedom: High Priests and Patriots," "Of Reason and Delirium," "Jester, Troubadour and Courtesan," and "The Devil's Advocate: Evil in the Works of Arrigo Boito." In addition to a very briefintroduction and a dozen black-and-white illustrations (mainly portraits of librettists), the study has ample notes, a select bibliography, and an adequate index. Unfortunately, the work lacks a conclusion or summing up that synthesizes the results of the study. The points O'Grady makes concerning Italian letters and literary movements are unquestionably succinct and usually accurate, if at times redundant. Sample declarations include the following: "The melodramma or early opera is a child of the Renaissance, and came into its...