Music and Women of the Commedia dell'Arte in the Late Sixteenth Century

The core of this book is an expanded version of three previously published articles by the author: 'The Divine Madness of Isabella Andreini', Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 120 (1995), 195-215; 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman', Musical Quarterly, 83 (1999), 247-79; and 'Weeping at the Water's Edge', Early Music, 27 (1999), 406-18. These studies, comprising the three central chapters, are framed by a 'Prologue' (ch. 1), which provides historical background for the subsequent chapters, and an 'Epilogue' (ch. 5), which contains a substantial study of a new topic followed by a brief summary of the principal themes of the book. Despite their integration through related subject matter and common interpretative issues, the individual chapters retain to a large extent their character as self-contained studies. Two lengthy appendices complete the book: a chronology of events from 1544 to 1624 (the dates of Francesco Andreini, a leading commedia dell'arte actor and husband of the book's principal protagonist, Isabella Andreini) and a collection of documents.

The book's contents are broader than its title suggests. Its themes encompass the relations of music and theatre to politics, courtly life, Neoplatonist thought, educational practices, and issues of women and gender, and its chronological scope extends from the 1560s to the second decade of the seventeenth century. Anne MacNeil weaves these diverse topics together in ways that reveal a wealth of connections that often contradict superficial appearances. She does not gloss over contradictory evidence, but highlights the complexity of the questions raised by her work. The book is an important contribution to all of the fields of study that it involves.

The image of the commedia dell'arte that emerges from this book bears little resemblance to the popular stereotype that identifies it with improvised plays displaying the foolish antics and coarse humour of lower-class characters. The prime donne of commedia troupes, whose roles embodied the qualities of the ideal noblewoman, were lauded for their virtue, erudition, rhetorical skill, and ability to evoke the Harmony of the Spheres through the perfect proportions of their words and music. Chief among them were Vincenza Armani, Vittoria Piisimi, Isabella Andreini, and Isabella's daughter-inlaw Virginia Andreini (wife of her son Giovan Battista), all of whom performed at one time or another with the Compagnia dei Gelosi. Although the membership of commedia troupes was quite fluid, the Gelosi came to be closely identified with Isabella Andreini; they disbanded upon her death in 1604 and were succeeded by the Compagnia dei Fedeli, in which Giovan Battista and Virginia Andreini played leading roles. The Gelosi and similar groups performed not only improvised comedies, but also intermedi and written plays in a wide range of genres. Their leading actresses were noted as much for their musical skills as for their acting, and their repertory included songs from both written and oral sources.

In chapter 2 ('Turn About is Fair Play') MacNeil analyses competitive performances by comediennes, which she associates with Neoplatonic ideals and the theme of divine madness. The chapter builds on her earlier study of Isabella Andreini's La pazzia d'lsabella, which was performed in competition with Vittoria Piisimi's La cingana for the Medici wedding celebrations in 1589, adding discussions of two further competitions between singer-actresses: a contest between Vincenza Armani and a Roman named Flaminia in 1567, which included both tragedy and intermedi, and a singing contest between two nymphs in Andreini's pastoral play Mirtilla (1588). The only surviving records of these performances are descriptions by contemporary witnesses and the text (but not the music) of Mirtilla. Drawing on a variety of sources, MacNeil reconstructs vividly, though of course hypothetically, many lost details of the dramatic content of La pazzia d'Isabella and the music of both that play and Mirtilla. She examines an eyewitness description of the songs in La pazzia d'Isabella as 'canzonette pure alia francese' in relation to Giulio Cesare Monteverdi's enigmatic reference to 'canto alia francese' in the preface to his brother's Scherzi musicali of 1607 and concludes that this French style was known in Italy at least a decade before Monteverdi supposedly introduced it there in 1599. Her attempt to resolve the contradiction between her evidence and Giulio Cesare's testimony by suggesting that what Monteverdi brought to Italy was not the canto alia francese itself, but simply the modern manner of composing it (p. 73), is ingenious, but the issue remains problematic.

Chapter 3 ('Behold, now there are Amazons of Learning') explores issues of gender representation in poetry and music through a study of Andreini's poems, some of which were set to music by her contemporaries, and her correspondence with the humanist Erycius Puteanus. Emphasizing the complexity of the subject, MacNeil examines the masculine or feminine connotations of various features of poetry and music, but rejects formulaic classifications along these lines. She contrasts Artusi's gendering of nature as masculine and art as feminine in his notorious attacks on Monteverdi's madrigals with Puteanus's opposite gendering of nature and art in a letter to Andreini. She also analyses Andreini's rhetorical strategies for asserting 'masculine' authority as an artist without compromising her feminine identity. Andreini herself comments ironically on the artificiality of such constructs in the opening sonnet of her first book of Rime, characterizing her poems and dramatic performances, in which she played both female and male roles, as 'lies'—that is, products of self-conscious artistic creation, not representations of externally given reality.

Chapter 4 ('The Politics of Description') is a study of the laments from Monteverdi's Ballo dette Ingrate and Arianna, which were performed for the wedding festivities of Francesco Gonzaga and Margherita of Savoy in Mantua in 1608. Although both laments were written by the same composer for the same occasion, they represent opposite musical approaches to the genre, the former drawing on the established conventions of the canto alia francese and the latter breaking new ground in the style Monteverdi called via naturale alla immitatione. The justification for including this chapter in a book about women of the commedia dell'arte is that Virginia Andreini sang the principal roles in both works. MacNeil accepts Tim Carter's suggestion in 'Lamenting Ariadne?' (Early Music, 27 (1999), 395-405) that Rinuccini and Monteverdi added the lament to the opera only after Andreini was chosen as a replacement for the intended Arianna, Caterina Martinelli, who died of smallpox before the performance, and that the words and music of the lament were designed with Andreini's particular style and abilities in mind. If this hypothesis is correct, the lament reveals much about the distinctive expressive and dramatic powers of a leading commedia actress. If, however, the lament was originally intended for Martinelli, the fact that it could be reassigned to Andreini raises questions about the extent to which the abilities and performance styles of comediennes differed from those of other singer-actresses, especially in the first decades of the seventeenth century, when composed works increasingly replaced improvised ones in the repertory of commedia troupes. There is no doubt that Andreini performed the role with great success; to what extent her experience with the commedia dell'arte provided her with unique skills to accomplish this feat remains an open question.

Chapter 5 ('Epilogue') focuses on Giovan Battista Andreini's play Lo schiavetto, which was published in 1612 with a dedication stating that the work had been in the repertory of the Fedeli for some time and that it originated as a collaborative effort in live performance, not as a preconceived written work by a single author. Its title character, played by Virginia Andreini, is a noblewoman disguised as a black male slave. His canzonetta 'Tu c'hai le penne Amore' provides a rich source for investigating issues of gender representation, since it has one meaning for the audience, who are aware of the singer's true identity, and another for the other characters on stage, who are not. Ambiguity of gender, which may involve both the performer and the person addressed, is not simply a product of the dramatic context of this piece, but is typical of many canzonettas with no known dramatic function. Caccini published a musical setting of 'Tu c'hai le penne Amore' two years after the publication of its text in Andreini's play; the chronology suggests that Giovan Battista or Virginia Andreini may have written the words and that Virginia's performance may have influenced Caccini's music.

Canzonettas play an important role in most of the works discussed in this book, and the opening sonnet of Isabella Andreini's first book of Rime alludes to the origin of her canzonettas in the theatre. These observations lead MacNeil to identify the canzonetta as 'an inherently dramatic song' with origins in the theatre (p. 182) and to associate the explosive rise in popularity of the genre in the 1580s with contemporary events in theatrical history, including the opening of two public theatres in Venice in 1581. The importance of the canzonetta in theatrical works is beyond doubt, but the popularity of the genre probably had more to do with its versatility than with its specifically dramatic functions. Canzonettas were simple enough to allow for performance by amateurs, as well as artful interpretations by professionals. They were sung in homes and schools, at social gatherings and meetings of intellectual academies, and (with contrafact texts) at meetings of religious confraternities and in churches, as well as in the theatre. Recognition of their dramatic functions should not obscure their equally important roles in other contexts.

The design of MacNeil's book as a set of studies that were originally conceived independently results in some duplication of material from one chapter to another and in the division of some topics into separate discussions in two or more chapters. Important issues that are split in this way include the nature of the canto alia francese, the role of laments in humanistic education, and the representation of gender in Isabella Andreini's poetry. Although MacNeil points out the common themes that unite her studies and provides a thorough index to assist the reader in locating discussions of particular topics, one might wish that she had taken advantage of the book format to present her material in a way that would place her ideas in a new perspective, rather than simply enlarging and enriching her earlier articles. In the light of the wealth of information and interpretative insights in the book, however, this is a minor consideration. The book is a significant contribution to the history of Italian music and theatre and their relationships to culture and politics in the period around 1600. By successfully integrating numerous fields of study, it enriches our understanding of all of them.