This confusion of Poliziano's "Orfeo" with spoken drama interspersed with intermezzi is unfortunate. There were no intermezzi at the representation of this lyric drama. It was in itself an entire novelty and nothing was done to distract the attention of the audience from its poetic and musical beauties. We can hardly believe that there was any close consideration of the fact that the work was an adaptation of the apparatus of the sacra rappresentazione to the secular play. The audience was without doubt absorbed in the immediate interest of the entertainment and was not engaged in critical analysis or esthetic speculations.
The costuming of the drama presented no difficulties. The skill already shown in the preparation of the sacred representations and the festal processions could here be utilized with excellent results. From 1470 to 1520, as we have already seen, was the period of the high development of the sacred play. Only a few years earlier the civic procession, or pageant, had shown in brilliant tableaux vivants the stories of the Minotaur and Iphigenie. The study of classic art and literature had blossomed in the very streets of Italy in a new avatar of the dramatic dance. From every account we glean testimony that the costuming of these spectacles was admirable. It must follow that so simple a task as the dressing of the characters in Poliziano's "Orfeo" was easily accomplished at that time when the Arcadian spirit of the story was precious to every cultured mind.
There were no mechanical problems of stage craft to be solved. The men who designed the cloud effects and the carriages for the floating angels in the open air spectacles might have disposed of them with ready invention, had they existed, but the theater of action, with its two pictures standing side by side, was simplicity itself. But let us not fall into the error of supposing that the scenery was crude or ill painted. The painter of the scenery of the production of Ariosto's "Suppositi," described by Pauluzo, was no less a personage than the mighty Raphael. The accounts of the writers of the latter part of the fifteenth and all of the sixteenth centuries are prolific in testimony as to the splendor of the pictorial elements in the festal entertainments of courts and pontiffs.[19]
Celler,[20] in speaking of the theater of the period of Louis XIV, says: "The simplicity of our fathers is somewhat doubtful; if they did not have as regards the theater ideas exactly like ours, the luxury which they displayed was most remarkable, and the anachronisms in local color were not so extraordinary as we have often been told." The author a little further on calls attention to the fact that the mise en scène of the old mystery plays had combined splendor with naïve poverty. But he is careful to note that the latter condition accompanied the representations given by strolling troupes in small villages or towns, while the former state was found where well paid and highly trained actors gave performances in rich municipalities. In the villages rude stage and scenery sufficed; in the cities all the resources of theatric art were employed.
Without doubt one of the most serious of all problems was that of lighting. One cannot believe that at so early a date as that of this first secular drama of Italy, the system of lighting the stage was such as to give satisfactory results. Yet it is probable that artificial lighting was provided, because it would have been extremely difficult to admit daylight in such a way as to illumine the stage without destroying much of the desirable illusion. Celler, in the first of his two volumes already quoted, tells how the "Ballet de la Reine" (1581) was lighted by torches and "lamps in the shape of little boats" so that the illumination, according to a contemporary record, was such as to shame the finest of days. But hyperbole was common then, and from Celler's second book we learn that even in the extravagant times of Louis XIV the lighting problem was an obstacle. It caused theatrical enterprises to keep chiefly to pieces which could be performed in the open air or at any rate by daylight. "The oldest representation," he says, "given in a closed hall, with artificial light and with scenery, appears to have been that of the 'Calandra,' a comedy which Balthazzar Peruzzi caused to be performed before Leo X in 1516 at the Château of St. Ange." Duruy de Noirville[21] says that Peruzzi revived the "ancient decorations" of the theater in this "Calandra" which "was one of the first Italian plays in music prepared for the theater. Italy never saw scenery more magnificent than that of Peruzzi." This is a matter in which Noirville cannot be called authoritative, but it is certain that the fame of the production of "Calandra" was well established. Noirville's authority for his statements was Bullart's "Académie des Sciences et d'Arts," Brussels, 1682. Whether the comedy had music or not we cannot now determine, and it is a matter of no grave importance. The interesting point is that the fame of the scenic attire of "Calandra" seems to have been well established among the early writers on the theater and that they also regarded as significant its indoor performance. The performance of Poliziano's "Orfeo," however, took place some forty years earlier than that of "Calandra," and it was without doubt in a closed hall and therefore most probably with artificial light of flambeaux and lamps.
[CHAPTER VII]
CHARACTER OF THE MUSIC
It becomes now the duty of the author to make some examination of the music of this first lyric drama. But here we unfortunately find ourselves adrift upon a windless ocean. We are driven to the necessity of deducing our information from the results of analogical reconstruction. Nothing indeed can be more fascinating than the attempt to arrive at a comprehension of the music of Poliziano's "Orfeo." All record of it appears to be lost and the Italian savants who have given us illuminating studies of the literary structure of the work, of its environment and its performance, have hazarded scarcely a remote conjecture as to the style of its music.
But we are not without a considerable amount of knowledge of the kinds of music in use at the time when this work was produced and we can therefore arrive at some idea of the nature of the lyric elements of the "Orfeo." First of all we may fairly conclude that some portions of the text were spoken. It seems, for instance, improbable that the prologue delivered by Mercury could have been set to music. If all other considerations are set aside there still remains the important fact that the hero of the play is a musical personage. He is to move the powers of hell by his impassioned song. It would, therefore, be artistically foolish to begin this new species of work with a piece of vocal solo which might rob the invocation of Orpheus of its desired effect. It is altogether probable that the prologue was spoken, and that the opening dialogue in the scene between the two shepherds was also spoken. After the lines