United States or Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From every account we glean testimony that the costuming of these spectacles was admirable. It must follow that so simple a task as the dressing of the characters in Poliziano's "Orfeo" was easily accomplished at that time when the Arcadian spirit of the story was precious to every cultured mind. There were no mechanical problems of stage craft to be solved.
"Ah, yes!" said Giannozzo Pucci, "lead the last chorus from Poliziano's `Orfeo, that you have found such an excellent measure for, and we will all fall in: "`Ciascum segua, o Bacco, te: Bacco, Bacco, evoe, evoe!" The servant put the lute into Tito's hands, and then said something in an undertone to his master.
In that case the lecture-rooms of Florence would never have echoed to the sonorous hexameters of the "Rusticus" and "Ambra." Italian literature would have lacked the "Stanze" and "Orfeo." European scholarship would have been defrauded of the impulse given to it by the "Miscellanea."
At the suggestion of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, a great patron of letters, Poliziano had written the poem in the short space of two days. Carlo Canale was the cardinal's chamberlain. The Orfeo saw the light in 1472. When Gonzaga died, in 1483, Canale went to Rome, where he entered the service of Cardinal Sclafetano, of Parma.
We must content ourselves with the conclusion that the vocal music of the entire drama was simple in melodic structure, for such was the character of the part music out of which it was made. It was certainly well fitted to be one of the parents of the recitative of Peri and Caccini with the church chant as the other. The Orchestra of the "Orfeo"
They have revived Monteverde's Orfeo and his Incoronazione di Poppea, which had been forgotten these three centuries; and it was following an interest created by repeated performances of Rameau at the Schola that Dardanus was performed at Dijon under M. d'Indy's direction, Castor et Pollux at Montpellier under M. Charles Bordes' direction, and that in 1908 the Opera at Paris gave Hippolyte et Aricie.
It was not the first attempt at bringing the pastoral upon the boards, since Poliziano's Orfeo with its purely bucolic opening had been performed as early as 1471; but Castiglione's ecloga rappresentativa was the first of any note to depend purely on the pastoral form and to introduce on the stage the convention of the allegorical pastoral.
Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo, which he had recently heard at Covent Garden.
Of Alessandro Striggio and his art work at the court of Mantua and elsewhere special mention will be made in another part of this work. Moreover it is not necessary that anything should be said here of the epoch-making creations of Claudio Monteverde, who was long in the Gonzaga service and who produced his "Orfeo" at Mantua.
But in 1762 came 'Orfeo ed Euridice, a work which placed Gluck at the head of all living operatic composers, and laid the foundation of the modern school of opera. The libretto of 'Orfeo' was by Calzabigi, a prominent man of letters, but it seems probable that Gluck's own share in it was not a small one.
Word Of The Day