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Updated: June 4, 2025
It had, too, in embryonic form all that apparatus for the enchantment of the sense and the beguilement of the intellect which in the following century was the chief attraction of a lyric drama, partly opera, partly spectacle and partly ballet. Dr. Poliziano's "Favola Di Orfeo" In the year 1472 the Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, who had stayed long in Bologna, returned to Mantua.
In a certain passage, speaking of Poliziano's Orfeo, Symonds remarks that 'while Arcady became the local dreamland of the new ideal, Orpheus took the place of its hero. Without inquiring too closely how far the writers of the renaissance actually connected the hero of music, as a power of civilization, with their newly discovered country, it is interesting to note that the earliest work in the Italian language containing in however amoebean a state the pastoral ideal opens with an allusion to Orpheus.
Among these I may here mention Gino Capponi's history of the Ciompi Rebellion, Giovanni Cavalcanti's memoirs of the period between 1420 and 1452, Leo Battista Alberti's narrative of Porcari's attempt upon the life of Nicholas V., Vespasiano's 'Biographies, and Poliziano's 'Essay on the Pazzi Conspiracy. Gino Capponi, born about 1350, was Prior in 1396, and Gonfalonier of Justice in 1401 and 1418; he died in 1421.
There are only 434 lines in the "Orfeo" and therefore the feat of writing it in two days was no great one for a man of Poliziano's ability. Sismondi regards this work as an eclogue rather than a drama. He says: "The universal homage paid to Virgil had a decided influence on the rising drama.
What we do need to remember here is that the method of the lute singers entered fully into the construction of the score if it may be so called of Poliziano's "Orfeo" and passed from that to the madrigal drama and was there brought under the reformatory experiments of Galilei and his contemporaries. This subject must be discussed more fully in a later chapter.
This orchestra was probably playing for dancing, as no singers are in sight. In a fifteenth century breviary reposing in the library of Brussels there is a representation of a similar orchestra, and this brings us nearer to the era of Poliziano's "Orfeo." One of the musicians did not play, but beat time as a director.
But the Italian madrigal had not been well developed at the time of the production of Poliziano's "Orfeo," while the frottola was the most popular song of the people. The frottola was a secular song, written in polyphonic style. The polyphony was simple and the aim of the composition was popularity.
There were no opera houses, and the theater, though revived in Italy in the fifteenth century, had no permanency till Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara, at the suggestion of Ariosto built in his capital a real play house. There is nevertheless no reason to think that the performance of Poliziano's "Orfeo" lacked admirable scenic and histrionic features.
The point to be made here is that, at the time when Poliziano's "Orfeo" was produced at Mantua, the Italian madrigal was in its infancy, while its plebian parent, the frottola was in the lusty vigor of its maturity. At the same time the popularity of part song was established in Italy and music of this type was employed even for the most convivial occasions.
An illuminative fact in the history of the madrigal drama is the growth of the comic element. Poliziano's dream of Arcadia was perhaps neither deep nor passionate, but it was at any rate serious and for some time after its production the lyric drama aspired to the utterance of high sentiments.
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