[123] Grove: Article on ‘Palestrina.’
[124] Riemann: Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, II¹.
CHAPTER XI
THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA AND ORATORIO
The forerunners of opera—The Florentine reform of 1600; the ‘expressive’ style; Peri and Caccini; the first opera; Cavalieri and the origin of oratorio—Claudio Monteverdi: his life and his works.
I
In tracing the genesis of the connection of music with dramatic action we shall rely upon the delightful and exhaustive study of M. Rolland entitled L’Opéra avant l’opéra,[125] in which he shows our most popular species of musical art to have descended from the pastoral play and the ‘antique’ drama with music, this in turn to have come out of the sacre rappresentazione (sacred representations) and the maggi, the May festivals, which still exist in Italy. The sacred representations again were a union of the fourteenth century divozione or liturgical plays (dramatizations of the religious offices), and the national festival of Florence, held in honor of its patron saint, John. These remarkable festivals date back to the thirteenth century and were staged so sumptuously and elaborately as to require months of preparation.
Research has shown that the words of the sacred plays were at first entirely sung, and by analogy with the traditional May festivals we are even informed as to the nature of the melodies used. There were traditional cantilena forms for every part of the action: prologues, epilogues, prayers, etc., and we meet already the familiar variety of solo, duet, trio and semi-choir, even though all the voices sing in unison. Popular songs and dance music were interpolated as well as Te Deums and Laudi, and the intermezzi, later so popular, were already in evidence. The costuming and personation of characters were consistently carried out and the properties and mechanical devices (ingegni teatrali) were the creations of the genius of such men as Brunelleschi in Florence and Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. Parallel phenomena are the Marienklagen existing in Germany from the fourteenth century on, the music of which was similar to the liturgical chant of the church.[126]
We have mentioned the interest which Lorenzo de Medici took in the carnival celebrations. The sacred representations engaged his attention no less: following the spirit of the age, he secularized them to some extent, substituting classic myth for Christian allegory. The fifteenth century saw the spread of Humanism in the wake of the Revival of Learning, and the sixteenth beheld its ultimate triumph. The theatre felt the effect of the movement no less than architecture and sculpture. The love of show, of rich display, which obsessed the princely despots of the period, coupled with their ardor for the beauties of antiquity, found its expression in the classic tragedies, the comedies and pastoral plays which now taxed the talents of poets, of painters and of musicians. Far from being exclusive, these spectacles became the popular amusements in such centres as Rome, Urbino, Mantua, Venice and Ferrara. On festival occasions they assumed phenomenal proportions, as for instance at the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia to the son of Hercules d’Este, when five comedies by Plautus were played in one week in a theatre holding five thousand spectators. Music always played an essential part in the performance, though mostly in the form of intermedii, which, as they assumed a more independent dramatic character and developed their dancing features, became in themselves the forerunners of the ballet-opera.[127]
Notable exceptions, in which the purpose of music was something more than mere relief, were the great poet Poliziano’s Orfeo given in 1474 with music by one Germi, and also a Dafne produced with music by Gian Pietro della Viola, in 1486, both at Mantua, ‘that same Mantua in which there were to be played one hundred and forty years later the Orfeo of Monteverdi and the Dafne of Gagliano.’ The coincidence is indeed striking as is also the fact that the Florentine ‘inventors’ of opera in 1600 chose as their first themes the same two classic tales. It would be interesting to compare the 1474 version of the perennial—and ideal—operatic subject, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, with that of the mighty Gluck; but, alas, the music has not been preserved to us. Mr. W. J. Henderson, who has endeavored to prove this Orfeo to be the first opera of record, concludes that the frottola, in its solo arrangement, formed the basis of the music; that the dialogue was probably sung throughout; that there were choruses and ballets—all the accessories of modern opera in fact.[128] It was nevertheless nothing more than an ‘antique’ drama with music, with the only difference that in this case the subject was a musical one, that the leading character represented a singer, and was in fact impersonated in the original performance by one of the most famous Italian vocalists of the period, Baccio Ugolino, who sang to the accompaniment of his own lyre (lira da braccia). The scenery of this performance at the Palazzo Gonzaga was simple, only one setting being required. The stage was divided, one side representing the Thracian countryside, and the other the realm of Pluto. But Poliziano later revised the work, dividing it into five acts and elaborating it along the line of the sacre rappresentazione.