(Dis)embodying Myths in Ancien Régime Opera: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Preface

Pre fa ce 9 pReFAce Recent decades have seen a remarkable upsurge of interest in what was long declared the “dark ages”1 of opera: the massive repertoire composed between claudio monteverdi’s demise (1643) and christoph gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). numerous baroque operas are currently being rediscovered, recorded, and (re)staged, renowned conductors are investing their time and energy in unperformed (or ‘unperformable ’) works, and singers of high caliber assemble record-selling recitals from arias by such forgotten composers as Antonio caldara or nicola porpora. now that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera have returned sound and safe from the library to the theater, where they belong, it seems that even the most conservative spectator is ready to adapt his (post-)romantic expectations to embrace, say, simple recitative and da capo arias. surfing this wave of enthusiasm, the editor of the present volume was given the rare opportunity to witness students and alumni from the brussels conservatoire revive one and a half hour of music from his doctoral dissertation on opera seria.2 on 7 December 2006, seven talented singers and twenty instrumentalists breathed new life into two so-called ‘cut & paste operas,’ Ifigenia and Ipermestra, which were stitched together from excerpts in unpublished manuscripts (see the cover picture and illustration 1).3 As the titles of both one-acters betray, mythological narratives provided the binding agent between the selected excerpts. the choice of iphigenia in Aulis and the Danaids was at once both deliberate and daring. in their focus on superstition and religious fanaticism, both stories – iphigenia must be sacrificed for the patriotic cause; hypermnestra is to kill her bridegroom on paternal order – fit twenty-first-century sensibilities like a straightjacket. still, it is a challenge to confront an audience accustomed to the gimmicks and gadgets of the modern stage 1. Kerman 1988, 39. 2. Forment 2007a. 3. they were performed using period vocal techniques, instruments, gestures, and costumes. paul Dombrecht was the conductor on duty, while sigrid t’hooft instructed the singers in historically informed stage performance. 10 Preface with eighteenth-century re-embodiments of these tales and characters. the experiment was refreshing, to say the least, and led to the conclusion that opera seria lacked a standard formula to represent even a specific myth – for instance, we found three composers endorsing as many different dramaturgical solutions to conclude the iphigenia in Aulis, despite their libretti being adapted from the same tragedy, Jean Racine’s Iphigénie (1674).4 Illustration 1. soprano soetkin elbers rehearsing clytemnestra in Ifigenia (brussels, December 2006). photograph by matthias schellens. 4. Ifigenia contained excerpts from Antonio caldara’s Ifigenia in Aulide (Vienna, 1718; libretto by Apostolo Zeno), carl heinrich graun’s Ifigenia in Aulide (berlin, 1748; libretto by Leopoldo de’ Villati after a scenario by Frederick the great and Francesco Algarotti), and niccolò Jommelli’s L’Ifigenìa (Rome, 1751; anonymous libretto). on their various conclusions, see Reinhard strohm’s chapter. Pre fa ce 11 (Dis)embodying myths in Ancien Régime opera seeks to shed new light on the chameleonic appearance of mythology in musical drama between c. 1600 and 1800.5 indeed, opera in this period capitalized on the scenic potential of myth to no mean degree. At its inception, in late Renaissance Florence, the favola in musica (literally: ‘fable in music’) was almost uniquely built upon the crystal palace of ovidian mythology. With the ‘rediscovered’ monody (recitar cantando) seen as a genuine equivalent to orphic song,6 the magical and healing powers of which were ascribed to extraordinary men, early opera staged the “ancient deities, such as Apollo, thetis, neptune, and other respected gods,” but also the “demigods and ancient heroes,” and in particular those “perfect musicians” like orpheus himself, Amphion, or David – the words are drawn from the anonymous tract Il Corago (see Jean-François Lattarico’s chapter).7 but the presence of myth in Ancien Régime opera was anything but uninterrupted or unproblematic. Difficulties arose from the very concept of ‘myth’ itself, which we today could define, with mircea eliade, as a “story of the deeds of supernatural beings” that “concerns a creation” and is considered “absolutely true” and “sacred” by its users.8 When applied to seventeenth- or eighteenth-century opera, however, this definition proves unstable, if not inadequate. For instance, pietro metastasio’s Didone abbandonata (1724), the most popular libretto ever to deal with the legend of Dido and Aeneas, introduces...