Famous Opening Nights & The World Around Their Creation: ‘Orfeo’
‘Orfeo’, 24th February 1607, Mantua
Mantua is a very pleasant small town in Northern Italy, surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes, created in the 12th century as defensive projects, but which have also served in less warlike times as attractive features for elegant living. The Gonzaga dukes of Mantua had established their control over the city as far back as 1328, and over the years a combination of ruthlessness and enlightened despotism had led to a long lived dynasty, famed throughout the centuries as sponsors of high culture in the visual arts, architecture and music. Despite spending most of his time fighting as a condottiero, Duke Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, established the city as a centre of humanism (although not directly opposed to the Catholic Church), in the middle of the 15th century He engaged Alberti in architectural works, and, in a stroke of genius or good fortune, took on Andrea Mantegna as court artist in 1460. Mantegna stayed in Mantua for much of the rest of his life, painting the famous Camera degli Sposi in the ducal palace. Later when Isabella d’Este became Duchess by marrying Federico, Ludovico’s grandson, he produced more works of genius in Mantua, encouraged greatly by Isabella. The advantage of having one of the greatest painters in world artistic history as court artist was obvious and brought more fame to the small town.
The Gonzagas continued to fight wars on behalf of other noble families, and sponsor great art for several generations more, until in 1590 or 91, Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga decided to appoint a young vivuola player from Cremona, Claudio Monteverdi, as one of his court musicians. The vivuola was either what we now call the viola da gamba or the viola da braccio, nothing like the modern viola. Gamba means leg and braccio is arm, so the distinction lies in playing the instrument between one’s legs or on one’s arm. Cremona was already known as a city where instrument making was of the highest order, with the Amati family to the fore at this stage. Later, the Guarneri and Stradivari families became the most famous violin makers in the world, and their instruments, many from the 18th century, are still played by top violinists nowadays. I recently reviewed a concert at the Edinburgh Festival when Nicola Benedetti was playing on a Stradivari violin from 1717, a fact which I find mind-boggling.
Before he became duke, Vincenzo was involved in a story so bizarre and so shocking that future generations, had Monteverdi not been appointed, would have remembered him for a very different reason. A young Scotsman, James Crichton, later known as the Admirable Crichton, having been educated at the University of St Andrews (like me), being of an inquisitive nature, travelled all over Europe and established a reputation as a genius and polymath, famous for his command of languages, and his ability to dispute theories with the finest minds of his day. This reputation was forged before he even reached the age of 20, and in 1580, he found himself in Venice discussing Aristotle with humanist scholars. Moving on to Mantua, he was hired by Vincenzo’s father, possibly to teach his young son. What is certain is that Vincenzo became insanely jealous of young Crichton, possibly over a woman, and one night in July 1582 murdered the Scot in cold blood. Presumably, ducal children were exempt from normal rules, and Vincenzo became duke when his father died in 1587, becoming a great patron of the Arts!
Monteverdi was a huge success at the Gonzaga court, to the extent that in 1601 he was confirmed as Maestro di Capella, the head of music. His main compositional output up to this time was the writing of madrigals and by 1605 he had produced five books of part songs and madrigals. He was a singer as well as a vivuola player, and so it seemed natural that the duke, aware of the new fad for opera, the most up to date musical form of the moment, commissioned Monteverdi to write one. On February 24th, 1607, in the ducal palace in Mantua, the world experienced Monteverdi’s first opera, and one of the first operas ever written, ‘L’Orfeo’, a musical extravaganza based on the old myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Before I look at the work itself, let’s examine the historical context. Like most periods in European late mediaeval and modern history, the story is, sadly, of interminable wars, both local and national. It seems that it was almost impossible to reconcile differences among rulers without resorting to violence and brutality. Even the most enlightened rulers of this period in history seem to have lost the plot when presented with conflicts of interest. I have said that the Gonzaga dukes were condottieri, soldiers available for hire by other noble families, and it does appear that they were willing to put all other things to one side to allow them to wage war. All wars at this time were fought by professional soldiers, wearing fancy uniforms and flying flags, and the sheer ghastly horror of hand to hand fighting is passed over in descriptions of the day, as a necessary adjunct. We know that the aristocracy did indeed get their hands dirty, and in fact bloody, but it must be said that most of the dying and maiming was done by the usual suspects of the poor foot soldiers, under the command of the said aristocracy. The very fact that history relates the longevity of many of these condottieri suggests that they mostly took an overview of proceedings.
Let’s see what was going on in northern Italy in February 1607. The Bank of Genoa had problems in January, following the crisis in Spain which had led to national bankruptcy. The Genoese Bank had come to the rescue of the Spanish monarchy, transferring large quantities of American silver to its vaults. As a sea-faring republic, Genoa had maintained a strong position as a reasonably safe haven for money, especially after Phillip II of Spain had overspent terribly in the previous century, and had forced many of the big German banks to founder due to his profligacy. Even the Genoese bank suffered in the early years of the 17th century, but, as long as the Spanish and Portuguese kept up their trade in silver, tobacco and slaves, the bank prospered.
The period around the composition of ‘L’Orfeo’ was relatively calm in Mantua. Vincenzo appears to have been far more interested in culture than his predecessors, and as well as from having Monteverdi at court he also supported the great Dutch painter, Peter Paul Rubens, and was a friend of the poet Torquato Tasso. He employed an astronomer, Magini, to teach his children, and negotiated unsuccessfully with Galileo to accept a post at court. All this culture cost money, and Vincenzo was responsible for the decline of Mantuan wealth, but the court was famous for its cultural splendour. His successor, Francesco IV, grew up surrounded by great minds, and promised much. ‘L’Orfeo’ was dedicated to the young man, who became quite attached to Monteverdi, but unfortunately his dukedom was short-lived, as he died in December 1612, having only become Duke in February of that year, and his decease led soon to another war, the War of the Montferrat Succession.
North of the Alps matters which came to a head in 1618 with the beginning of the disastrous 30 Years War were beginning to manifest themselves. The Protestant Reformation, inspired by Martin Luther, had divided much of Europe in the 16th century, and as usual religion was used by the great powers of the time to advance their own authority. Riots in Donauwőrth in 1606 were symptomatic of a general chaos, as various areas changed allegiance from Catholic to Protestant worship and vice versa. Germany at this time was divided up into myriad small states, and the larger powers like the Habsburgs in Austria and the Bourbon kings of France, as well as the Spanish king, jockeyed for position and influence. The opening up of the colonies across the Atlantic allowed the European maritime countries like England, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal to compete for these new territories. Religious conflict in the Low Countries, most of which was ruled by Spain, added to the mix, and Henry VIII’s very personal reformation, followed by Elizabeth I’s continuation of the process, contributed further to the eventual explosion of the 30 Years War, which is thought to have cost between 5 and 8 million lives, and brought devastation to much of Europe. The Union of the Crowns in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became James I of England and Britain caused eventual turmoil in Britain, leading to the execution of Charles I and the English Civil War, although at least it kept ‘this sceptred isle’ largely out of the 30 Years War.
The period leading up to the first performance of ‘L’Orfeo’ was notable for the setting sail of the first English settlers in America. The accession of James I had led many puritans (Protestants more extreme in their beliefs than the recently founded Church of England) to believe that they would be free to worship as they liked, but the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 denied them almost all of their requests. This group was eventually to form the Pilgrim Fathers, who established a community in Massachusetts in 1620. However, the first colonists left England in December 1606, sent out by the London Company to set up a colony in North America. The purpose of this expedition was trade and commerce rather than religious freedom, and, as the first notes of Monteverdi’s extraordinary new opera rang out, three ships were sailing to America via Puerto Rico, the Spanish colony, eventually to make landfall in Chesapeake Bay in April 1607, where 104 men and boys (no women on the first crossing) proclaimed the founding of Jamestown, named after the new king. Much was to come of this settlement!
In China in 1607, Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty ruled over a strong and populous country, little known yet to the west. The silver mines of South America allowed the Spanish Empire to trade effectively with the Chinese, despite obvious suspicion on both sides. In Japan, the Tokugawa period (also known as the Edo period) had been founded in 1603 by the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, initiating an extraordinary 250-year shogunate. In 1600, a royal charter set up the East India Company, which was to dominate Indian history for centuries, and when Akbar the Great died in 1605, the rule of Jahangir as Fourth Mughal Emperor was ushered in.
Ahmed I had become Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1603 and his reign was memorable for the construction of the Blue Mosque in Constantinople and the abolition of the old custom of royal fratricide by which a new Sultan was expected to execute all his brothers on acceding to the throne (good luck for brother Mustafa!). In 1606 the Ottomans were closing in on Vienna, reaching Esztergom in Hungary, before finally agreeing to treat with the Habsburg Emperor as equal and suing for peace. We often forget how close eastern Europe came over the centuries to being part of the middle east. I remember when I sang in Sarajevo in 1997, hearing the muezzin’s cry and realising that this was a largely Muslim city! The terrible Balkan War of the early 1990s was fought between Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbians and Muslim Bosnians. Religion again!
Across the Adriatic Sea, Mantua flourished, and Monteverdi amazed everyone with his retelling musically of the great Classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Virgil, Ovid, Plato and others told versions of the myth about Orpheus, son of Apollo and Calliope, the great musician, who, enamoured of Eurydice, married the beautiful girl, and serenaded her with lovely music on his harp. She was lured away by Aristaeus but stepped on a viper and died. Orpheus was so sad and sang such mournful songs that he was told to go to Hades where he might win her back to life. His music so charmed Hades and Persephone that he was allowed to bring her back from the underworld, on condition that he walk ahead of her and not look back. The inevitable happened and she was taken back to Hades, and Orpheus himself was killed by the Maenads on the orders of Dionysus. So far, so Greek!
The libretto for ‘L’Orfeo’ was written by Alessandro Striggio, the son of a famous composer who had written a 40-part mass which had been performed in London, arousing the interest of Thomas Tallis, who himself wrote a 40-part motet, ‘Spem in Alium’. Striggio’s libretto seems to have had two optional endings, one in which Orpheus is torn to bits by the Maenads, the other in which he is rescued by Apollo, and taken to the heavens where he will see Eurydice in the stars. This happier ending was apparently favoured by the court, and so another tragedy was resolved through the arrival of a deus ex machina. Several further performances took place in Mantua and other Italian cities, but then the opera was lost for centuries until rediscovered and published in the late 19th century in France. During the 20th century, it was performed infrequently, but has now established itself as a hugely important work in the history of music. I expected to sing Caronte and Plutone during my career, but it never cropped up. I sang in Monteverdi’s final opera, ‘The Coronation of Poppea’ several times, and recorded it with Richard Hickox on a critically acclaimed set in 1988. This miraculous piece, akin to Verdi’s ‘Falstaff’ in being the triumphant swansong of an aged composer, is a shocking tale of vice triumphing over virtue, with the most sublime music, and is now considered as a work of Monteverdi’s studio rather than the single composition of the old maestro. His name is nowhere to be found on any manuscript, and scholars are convinced he could not have written it alone. Nonetheless it is a work of genius, as is ‘L’Orfeo’, in an earlier style, and we now recognise Monteverdi as the greatest composer of the nascent form of music theatre, opera!
