A Seventeenth-Century Franciscan Opera: Music for a Chigi Princess

A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCISCAN OPERA: MUSIC FOR A CHIGI PRINCESS The early seventeenth century was a time of musical innovation in Italy, as humanistically inspired composers such as the Florentines GiuUo Caccini and Jacopo Peri forged a new musical style: a style of monodic, declamatory music in which the audibility of the text and musical enrichment of its passion were given priority over purely musical considerations. With the ancient Greek tragedy as a model, Caccini and Peri wedded their music to mythological tales of Orpheus and Daphne in the first attempts at opera.1 Early opera, like much seventeenth-century music, was often produced in commemoration of festive occasions, opportunities for grand display and patronal homage. Peri's Euridice, for example, was produced in October, 1600 to celebrate the wedding of Maria de' Medici and Henri IV, King of France; other operas mark similar occasions. Although secular in its origins—the humanistic academies of Florence—the operatic style was quickly appropriated by the CounterReformation Church. Sacred opera and its unstaged counterpart, the oratorio, instructed as well as entertained with allegorical, hagiographie , and scriptural Ubrettos, performed in private family theatres as well as oratories. These sacred music dramas were patently didactic, but also clearly popular. For example, the seventeenthcentury Oratorian Orazio Griffi, in his dedication of G. F. Anerio's Teatro armónico spirituale (Rome, 161g), writes of the use of music by the founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, St. Philip Neri: And to attain the desired aim [of spiritual profit] so much more easily, and to draw, with a sweet deception, the sinners to the holy exercises of the Oratory, you introduced Music there, seeing 1 For a survey of the development of opera, see Donald Grout's standard A Short History of Opera (New York, 1965). A Seventeenth-Century Franciscan Opera181 to it that vernacular and devotional things were sung, so that the people, being allured by song and tender words, would be all the more disposed to spiritual profit; nor was your idea in vain, since some, coming at times to the oratory only to hear the music, and then remaining, moved and captivated by the sermons and the other holy exercises that are done there, have become servants of God.2 The oratorio offered, as well, an inoffensive substitute for prohibited opera during Lent. Sacred opera, especially under the patronage of the Barberini family, flourished in Rome during the first half of the seventeenth century. Its highpoint around mid-century could not be sustained however, and spiritual librettos became more commonly associated with the oratorio than the opera.3 Although sacred opera was rare in the last half of the century, the tradition did persist, as the performance of an anonymous operina sacra to celebrate the Franciscan clothing of Princess Olimpia Chigi in 1686 documents.4 This operina sacra is an explicitly allegorical, small-scale opera, performed by young members of the Chigi family. The informative title-page of the manuscript score (Biblioteca Apostólica Vaticana, Chigi Q VI 84)5 states that the Princess Olimpia was clothed in the 2 Trans, in Howard Smither, A History of the Oratorio (Chapel Hill, 1977), I, 122. 3 See Silke Leopold, "Das geistliche Libretto im 17. Jahrhundert, zur Gattungsgeschichte der fruehen Oper," Die Musikforschung, 31 (1978), 245-246. 4 For a musical-contextual study of the Chigi operina sacra, see the author's "Music for a Chigi Princess: A Study of an Anonymous operina sacra of 1686." Diss. Washington University, 1980. The insightful advice of Profs. Curtis Price (London), Franco Agostini (Bologna), Mary Miller (Oberlin), James Hepokoski (Oberlin), and Arnold Klukas (Oberlin), given at various stages of this project, is gratefully acknowledged. 8 The musical manuscripts of the Vatican Library's Chigi collection richly document the musical life of seicento Italy. Over one hundred manuscripts present operas, oratorios, cantatas, and instrumental music by leading Italian composers of the seventeenth century. (In addition, around eighty manuscripts present material from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). See Joseph Paul Catalano , "The Chigiani Music Manuscripts: A Descriptive Catalogue," M. A. Thesis Washington University 1982. The composers represented include Marco Marazzoli , Luigi Rossi, Giacomo Carissimi, and Antonio Cesti. (Cesti was a Franciscan...