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Updated: May 20, 2025
the condition being that he shall not turn to behold her before attaining once again to the land of the living. The condition, of course, is not fulfilled. Orfeo seeks to clasp 'his half regain'd Eurydice, with the triumphant cry of Ovid holding the conquered Corinna in his arms: Lyrical beauty rather than dramatic power was, it has already been remarked, Poliziano's aim and achievement.
But when the authority of Poliziano was thrown upon the side of Italian and when he made such a triumphant demonstration of its beauties in his "Stanze" and his "Orfeo," he carried conviction to all the writers of his country.
His choice for the opening work was Orphée, which requires only three principals, Orpheus, Eurydice, and Love. It has become the custom to add a fourth, a Happy Spirit, but this spirit is one of Carvalho's inventions and has no reason for existence. There are, however, two Orphée. The first is Orfeo which was written in Italian, on Calzabigi's text, and was first presented at Venice in 1761.
After this the news of her death is reported to Orfeo by a shepherd in the original, by a dryad in the revised version. That the substitution of the chorus for the Sapphic ode is an improvement from the poetic point of view will hardly be denied, yet this improvement has been attained at the cost of some dramatic sacrifice.
This is not the place for a discussion of Poliziano's importance in literature, but it is essential that we should understand the significance of his achievement in the "Orfeo." The philosophic and poetic spirit of the period and of this poem has already been discussed.
Love accomplished this miracle and the work ended with the song "Love Triumphs," which is exceedingly joyful and in harmony with the situation. They did not want this ending, which was in Orfeo and which Gluck retained in Orphée, at the old Théâtre-Lyrique and the Opéra-Comique, and they replaced it with a chorus by Echo and Narcissus. This chorus is charming, but that does not excuse it.
With such a simple and dignified beginning as that of the "Orfeo" how came the lyric drama of the next century to wander into such sensuous luxuriance, such spectacular extravagance of both action and music? In the drama of Poliziano the means employed, as well as the ends sought, were artistic and full of suggestions as to possible methods of development.
I gave them, first, the opening speech of the Orfeo of Politian, where the sad shepherd accounts his plight, his pursuit of the nymph Euridice, her abhorrence of him, and the like. All eyes were fixed upon me; I saw those of La Panormita glisten. The smooth-flowing verses moved her. They were silent when I had done, which a little disconcerted me; but presently the dwarf snapped out, "More."
But Haydn had plenty of matters beside love-making to attend to. One Gallini got a licence to give entertainments in the King's theatre, and Haydn was engaged to compose, and did compose, for them. He had also been paid for an opera, Orfeo, and tried to finish it at Lisson Grove, but nothing ever came of it as the enterprise collapsed.
The careful study which he had given to the proper conditions of opera was not likely to exclude so important a question as that of the construction and diction of the libretto, and the poem of 'Orfeo' shows so marked an inclination to break away from the conventionality and sham sentiment of the time that we can confidently attribute much of its originality to the influence of the composer himself.
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