A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers: Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) can be seen as the linking composer between the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. Yet another long-lived composer, his career spanned the decades when opera was born, and his ‚L’Incoronazione di Poppea‘ (The Coronation of Poppea), written in 1643, the year of his death, can legitimately be said to be the first great opera in history.
He was born in Cremona, which some readers will remember from my memoire ‚A Singer’s Life Part 29‘ was where I sang one of the most memorable concerts of my career, the Mass in B Minor by J S Bach, with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert. When I wrote about that concert, I pointed out that from the middle of the 16th Century, Cremona became Europe’s greatest centre for making string instruments, and so, at the time of Monteverdi’s birth, this tradition was beginning to establish itself. The son of an apothecary, it cannot have been entirely coincidental that the young Claudio became a master of one of those beautiful instruments which were beginning to be sought after, the “vivuola”, which could have been what we know as the viola da gamba, the forerunner of the modern cello. His early years are shrouded in mystery, but at the age of 15, he published, in Venice, his first set of sacred motets, and soon became known as a composer, initially of motets and then of madrigals, the secular part songs beloved of the 16th century.
Around 1590 or 1591, he entered the service of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, as assistant to the Maestro di Capella, Giaches de Wert, a Flemish musician. The Duke was keen to establish his court as one of the foremost artistic centres in Italy, and as well as de Wert and Monteverdi, he was a great supporter of the painter Peter Paul Rubens after 1600. An interesting aside here for all our Scottish readers is that in 1582, a few years before Claudio arrived in Mantua, and while Vincenzo was still heir to the dukedom, he murdered the famous Scottish polymath, James Crichton, who was employed by his father Duke Guglielmo. Crichton had already established himself by the age of 21 as one of the finest minds in Europe, having graduated from the University of St Andrews, moved on to Paris, where he famously challenged all the professors at the university there to ask him any question about any subject, defeating all-comers, and then continued to Venice, where he proceeded to do the same thing in an array of languages. Guglielmo was naturally keen to have such a genius at his court, but when Crichton, who was apparently as handsome as he was brilliant, began to woo Vincenzo’s mistress, the young heir, in a fit of jealousy, murdered the Scottish upstart. Whether Crichton was as gorgeous and brilliant as his story maintains, such that history and literature remember him as the Admirable Crichton, is open to doubt, but what is not disputed is that Vincenzo personally killed him. Fortunately for him, as the son of the ruler of Mantua, he was allowed to continue his life as if nothing had happened, and he became Duke himself in 1587 on the death of his father and lived to establish one of the great Renaissance courts.
Monteverdi eventually took over as Maestro di Capella in 1601, and after a controversy about the way music was going (Monteverdi was cited as dangerously modern!), his star was clearly in the ascendant. His first opera ‚L’Orfeo’ with a libretto by Striggio, the son of the composer I wrote about in the article about Tallis, who composed a 40 part Mass, is still performed today, and is a stunning example of early opera. Written for a court performance during the Carnival in Mantua in 1607, it tells the classical story of Orpheus’ fruitless attempt to bring his dead wife Eurydice back to life, and gave great scope, particularly in the scenes in Hades, for splendidly creepy music. It seems that Monteverdi, after the first performance which used Striggio’s ambivalent ending, decided to make the end more upbeat with the intervention of the famous theatrical trick of the Deus ex Machina, in this instance Apollo, transporting Orpheus to the heavens.
The composer used all his skill to define, musically, the various components of the story, with brass instruments to the fore in the Underworld sections, and in his published score (Venice 1609), he states the instrumentation necessary for performance. There had been a few operas composed before L’Orfeo, but this is definitively the work that has become associated with the birth of a new form of entertainment and a new way of singing. Much of the vocal line is what we now call recitative, but there are arias, strophic songs and choruses which we will come to understand as Italian Opera. In the published edition, the performers, both instrumental and vocal, are instructed to play what is written, but there was much scope for improvisation and embellishment. I have never sung in L’Orfeo but there are a couple of juicy parts for bass which I would have loved to sing - Charon, the Infernal ferryman, and Pluto, King of Hades. Orfeo himself is written for a low tenor or high baritone. I have heard it sung by both, but have no view as to which is better. At this early stage of opera, the idea of the tenor dominating the stage with his wonderful, long-held high notes was absent, and so the casting matters less about the timbre of the voice and more about the singer’s use of contrast and word painting.
In addition, most if not all of the earliest interpreters would have been men, with castrato voices to the fore. The practice of castrating male singers so that they could sing high roles seems utterly repugnant now, but it was the practice of the day, and for centuries to follow. There is a recording from the very early 20th century of the last castrato, but I am afraid I have never got round to listening to it.
After ‚ L’Orfeo‘, Monteverdi wrote a long lost opera ‚L’Arianna‘, on the Ariadne story. All that remains is the Lamento di Arianna, which has been sung by many famous singers.
In 1610, he composed his famous Vespers, dedicated to Pope Paul V, which has come down to us as one of the great works of the sacred choral tradition. I have only sung in the Vespers a couple of times, but it is a quite magnificent work. The question of pitch (what music sounded like in the past and how we relate what is printed to what the composer expected to hear) is a difficult topic, and a great deal of modern interpretation of old music is devoted to matters of pitch. I will write much more extensively in later articles about Bach and Handel, but here I will say that, on the whole, it seems that what Monteverdi was hearing is either a half tone or a full tone lower than what we call Modern Pitch, which is described scientifically as 440 Herz for A above middle C (Herz being a measurement of audio frequency). Consequently, modern editions of the Vespers seem too high in the bass part for me, but can work if using a different pitch. End of technical bit!
Monteverdi was becoming unhappy at the Mantuan court of the Gonzagas, and in 1613, he was appointed Maestro at the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, one of the greatest and most illustrious posts in the world in one of the great churches of Italy. The Republic of Venice at that time was a very rare place, republics being in short supply, and it seems that Monteverdi enjoyed the freedom that a ducal or imperial court would not grant to a mere musician. Monteverdi spent the rest of his life in Venice, although his renown allowed him to take up short contracts elsewhere. He set about making St Mark’s a leader in the performance, liturgically, of sacred music, developing the older polyphonic style of the likes of Palestrina and the Flemish masters while innovating with his own style of continuo and ritornelli. All the while, he turned out reams of madrigals, which endeared him to princes and citizens everywhere. His madrigals are enormous fun to sing, and can give pleasure to any amateur group with a bit of time to practice.
During this time he was writing prolifically, but his stage works of the period are now lost. Towards the end of his life, he produced two more operas, one ‚Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria‘ on a classical subject, the story of Ulysses return, and one and for the first time on a historical subject ‚L’Incoronazione di Poppea‘, the story of Nero’s deposition of his wife, Octavia, replacing her with his mistress, Poppea.
The original manuscript of Poppea is lost, and there is considerable speculation as to whether the old composer wrote it alone, with help from one or more assistants, or indeed was involved at all. General opinion now is that he was closely associated with its composition with the librettist Busenello, and that it was performed in Venice during Carnival 1643, and then again in Naples in 1651. After this, it was neglected for over 200 years until the rediscovery of the score in 1888. Poppea is now a staple of most opera companies’ repertoire, and in its melodic splendour and dramatic verisimilitude, it stands as the first great opera. The historical characters were embellished and recreated by Busanello quite shamelessly, but the plot of Emperor Nero working tirelessly to scupper the influence of the philosopher Seneca, to traduce his wife and to force his mistress on to the throne is a telling one.
Seneca is one of the great bass roles in the repertoire, even though he commits suicide halfway through. I sang the role at Guildhall in 1980 in a lovely production by Tom Hawkes, which was warmly received by all the London critics. It is a beautiful role to sing, with deep notes, warm legato phrases and a sense of gravitas about this famous man which is very appealing to the audience. His impending death is announced by the God Mercury in a brilliant scene, and his dialogue with Nero is a masterpiece of political argument, in which he keeps the moral high ground throughout. The renowned scene before his wrist slitting in the bath, mercifully off stage (although the scene of Poppea in her bath was very popular, especially as we had three Poppeas at Guildhall that year!), with his acolytes pleading with him not to die is one of the first great male ensembles in opera.
Sadly, I never sang Seneca again (note to opera casting directors who may be reading – I’m still available!), but sang Mercury in the production at the Spitalfields Festival in the late 80s, which was later recorded and issued as a CD box set, conducted by Richard Hickox, with a fabulous cast including Arleen Auger, Della Jones, James Bowman, Gregory Reinhart and many other brilliant British singers. My scene with Gregory as Seneca was particularly well-received by the critics. It involved us both singing some stunning coloratura, which is something of novelty in bass recordings. My young voice was considerably more flexible then than now – I could still sing Seneca but Mercury would defeat me!
Apart from the occasional burst of quick-fire coloratura (elaborate melody with runs, trills and leaps), singing Monteverdi is possible for young singers and old. The melodies do not often take the singer into stratospheric regions, and the emphasis is on pure legato line and beauty of tone. It really is most rewarding to sing, and pleasurable for the listener.
With the development from the Renaissance to the Baroque period, Monteverdi takes us into the world I spent many years perfecting, and it is with Bach, Handel and Purcell that we will continue this journey.
