L'Arianna

Claudio Monteverdi
Operas L'Orfeo (1607) L'Arianna (1608) Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642) See also: Monteverdi's lost operas
Discographies L'Orfeo Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria L'incoronazione di Poppea

L'Arianna (English: Ariadne) (SV 291) was the second opera written by the Italian Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). It was composed and first performed in 1607–08, as part of the musical festivities for a wedding at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua, and was revived under the composer's direction in Venice, in 1640. The work is a setting of a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini, who based his story on Ovid's Heroides and other classical sources. It recounts Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus on the island of Naxos, and her subsequent elevation as bride to the god Bacchus.

The opera, produced with lavish and innovatory special effects, was highly praised after its original performance, and was well received in Venice on its revival. Although the libretto has survived in several editions, Monteverdi's music has disappeared except for one segment, the extended recitative known as Lamento d'Arianna ("Ariadne's lament"). This was published by Monteverdi independently from the opera, in several different versions, and was widely imitated; the expressive lament became an integral part of Italian opera for at least half a century. In recent years it has become popular as a concert piece outside the context of the opera, and has been frequently recorded.

Historical context

In about 1590 Claudio Monteverdi, born in Cremona in 1567, secured a position as a viola player at the Mantuan court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga. Over the following ten years he advanced to become Duke Vicenzo's maestro della musica. During that time, significant developments were taking place in the world of musical theatre; in 1598 the work generally recognised as the first in the new genre of "opera"—Jacopo Peri's Dafne—was performed in Florence. Two years later Vincenzo, who had a passion for musical entertainments, was present in Florence for a production of Peri's second opera, Euridice; it is probable that Monteverdi, his senior musician, accompanied him. The duke was quick to recognise the potential of this new musical form, and its scope for for bringing prestige to those willing to sponsor it.

The Palazzo del Te, Mantua, seat of the Gonzaga dynasty which Monteverdi served as a court musician between 1590 to 1612

Monteverdi's duties to the Gonzaga court included many arrangements of staged music. In 1604 he wrote Gli amori Diana ed Endimione ("The Loves of Diana and Endymion"), a ballo with sung parts, for the 1604–05 Mantua Carnival. His next theatrical work, L'Orfeo, was a fully-fledged opera, written to a libretto by Alessandro Striggio and performed before the court on 24 February 1607. This premiere pleased the duke, who ordered a further performance for March 1. A contemporary account records that the work "could not have been done better ... The music, observing due propriety, serves the poetry so well that nothing more beautiful is to be heard anywhere". After this success, Monteverdi took leave from the court to nurse his ailing wife, Claudia; she died in Cremona on 10 September. Despite his grief, Monteverdi was ordered back to Mantua by the duke, who required him to undertake several commissions for performance at the wedding of his son and heir Francesco, planned for May 1608. The works requested from Monteverdi included a musical prologue for Battista Guarini's play L'idropica and a setting of the dramatic ballet Il ballo delle ingrate ("Dance of the Ungrateful Ladies'"), the text for which was by Ottavio Rinuccini. There was also to be an opera, though it was not initially certain that Monteverdi would provide this. An early candidate was Peri's Le nozze di Peleo e Titede ("The marriage of Peleus and Thetis"), with a libretto by Francesco Cini, and a new setting of Dafne by Marco da Gagliano was also considered. In the event, the former of these was rejected and the latter designated for performance at the 1607–08 Carnival. The wedding opera would be a new work by Rinuccini, L'Arianna, and Monteverdi was required to set the music.

Creation

Libretto

At the time of his commission for L'Arianna, Rinuccini, born in Florence in 1562, was probably the most experienced and distinguished of all librettists. His working span stretched back to 1579, when.he had written verses for the Florentine court entertainment Maschere d'Amazzoni. Rinuccini moved easily between the main Medici court in Florence and that of Maria de' Medici in Paris. He had become widely known through his verse contributions to the celebrated intermedi for Girolamo Bargagli's play La Pellegrina (The Pilgrim Woman), performed in May 1589 at the wedding of Ferdinando I de' Medici and Christine of Lorraine. According to Gagliano, Rinuccini was a primary influence in the emergence of opera as a genre; he adapted the conventions of his contemporary lyric poets to produce the librettos for both Dafne and Euridice.

For his story Rinuccini used the myth of Ariadne, her abandonment by Theseus and her subsequent marriage to Bacchus. He drew on a variety of classical sources, notably the tenth book of Ovid's Heroides, parts of the Carmina of Catullus, and Dido's abandonment by Aeneas in Virgil's epic Aeneid. He also used aspects of more recent literary works—Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, and Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara's 1561 translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Monteverdi's biographer, Paolo Fabbri, Rinuccini saw the commission for L'Arianna as "an opportunity to realize his own theatrical ideals, including an overt rejection of epic poetry and an ideological defence for the new genre of opera. The libretto was extended during the rehearsals after Carlo de' Rossi, a member of the duke's court, reported the Duchess Eleonora's complaint that the piece was "very dry" and needed to be enriched with further action.

Composition

It is likely that Monteverdi began composing in late October or early November 1608, since Rinuccini's arrival in Mantua can be dated to 23 October. With rehearsals due to begin in the new year, Monteverdi composed the work in a hurry and under considerable pressure; nearly 20 years later he was still complaining, in a letter to Striggio, of the hardships he had been made to suffer: "It was the shortness of time that brought me almost to death's door in writing L'Arianna".

Monteverdi had apparently completed the score by early January, and rehearsals began. However, his work was not over; he was required to write further music when the work was extended after Rossi's intervention. Among the material added or lengthened were the early scene between Venus and Cupid, and Jupiter's blessing from heaven at the end of the opera. In March 1608, well into the rehearsal period, the opera's scheduled performance was jeopardised by the death, from smallpox, of the leading soprano Caterina Martinelli. Fortunately a replacement was to hand; a renowned actress and singer, Virginia Ramponi-Andreini, professionally known as "La Florinda", was performing in Mantua. She is said to have learned the part of Arianna in six days; Carter suggests that Arianna's lament may have been added to the opera at this late stage, to exploit La Florinda's well-known vocal capabilities.

Roles

The casting for the opera's premiere is a matter of some uncertainty. While the participation of singers such as "La Florinda" and Francesco Rasi can be established, in other cases the singer's involvement is speculative, based on their presence in Mantua during the wedding festivities or their positions as musicians in the Mantua court. There are several versions of the published libretto; the list of roles is taken from the publication by Gherardo & Iseppo Imberti, Venice 1622.

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast 28 May 1608	Notes
Apollo	soprano	Francesco Rasi
Venere (English: Venus)	soprano	not established
Amore (Cupid)	soprano	not established
Teseo (Theseus)	alto	Antonio Brandi ("Il Brandino")
Arianna (Ariadne)	soprano	Virginia Ramponi-Andreini ("La Florinda")
Consigliero (Counsellor)	tenor	Francesco Campagnolo
Messaggero (A messenger)	unknown	Not established
Dorilla	soprano	Sabina Rossi
Nuntio I (First Envoy)	alto castrato	Not established
Nuntio II (Second Envoy)	tenor	Francesco Campagnolo
Giove (Jupiter)	tenor	Bassano Casola
Bacco (Bacchus)	tenor	Francesco Rasi
Coro di soldati di Teseo; Coro di pescatori; Coro di soldati di Bacco (Chorus of Theseus's soldiers; Chorus of fishermen; Chorus of Bacchus's soldiers)

Synopsis

Bacchus (centre) arrives on the Naxos shore, as depicted by Titian

The action is preceded by a brief prologue, delivered by Apollo. Venus and Cupid are then discovered, in conversation, on a desolate seashore. Venus informs Cupid that Ariadne and Theseus will soon be arriving on the island of Naxos on their way to Athens. They are fleeing from Crete, where the pair have been complicit in the slaying of Ariadne's monster half-brother, the Minotaur, in the labyrinths below the palace of her father, King Minos. Venus has learned that Theseus had decided to abandon Ariadne on Naxos, and to proceed to Athens alone. Cupid offers to rekindle Theseus's passion for her, but Venus has decided to unite her with the god Bacchus, and requests Cupid to arrange this.

Cupid conceals himself, as Theseus and Ariadne arrive on the island a short distnce away. Ariadne muses over her disloyalty to her father, but declares her love for Theseus. She departs to find shelter for the night, after which a fishermen's chorus compares her eyes with the stars of heaven. Theseus, alone with his counsellor, discusses his intention to abandon Ariadne, and is advised that this decision is justified, as she will not be acceptable to the people of Athens as their queen.

A chorus greets the dawn as Ariadne, after a troubled night's sleep, returns to the shore with her companion, Dorilla, to find that Theseus has departed. Dorilla offers her comfort; in despair at the thought that Theseus will not return, Ariadne nevertheless decides to go to the landing area to wait for him. In a pastoral interlude a chorus sings of the joys of rural life, and expresses the hope that Theseus will not forget Ariadne. Primed by an envoy with the news that Ariadne is alone and sorrowing, the chorus again sings in sympathy with her. On the beach, Ariadne sings her lament for her lost love and prepares to kill herself. At this point fanfares are heard heralding an arrival, and her hope that it is Theseus returning. In another interlude the chorus expresses hope on her behalf, but a second envoy announces that it is Bacchus who has arrived, having taken pity on Ariadne. A chorus of soldiers precedes the god's appearance, followed by a sung ballo to celebrate the forthcoming betrothal. In the final scene Cupid reappears, and Venus rises from the sea before Jupiter speaks his blessing from the heavens. The union is sealed as Bacchus promises Ariadne immortality in heaven and a crown of stars.

Performance history

Premiere: Mantua, 1608

After the tragic replacement of Martinelli in March 1608, and Andreini's rapid assimilation of the leading role, there was a slowing-down in the preparations for the festivities. The date of the wedding was repeatedly postponed because of diplomatic problems which delayed the bride's arrival in Mantua until 24 May. The wedding festivities began four days later; L'Arianna was the first of the several spectacular entertainments. A large temporary theatre had been built for the occasion; according to the court's chronicler Federico Follino this held 6,000 people—a figure which Carter deems unlikely. Whatever its size, the arena could not hold everyone who wished to be present. Follino's account records that although the duke had strictly limited the numbers from his household entitled to be there, many distinguished foreign visitors could not be seated and were obliged to crowd around the doors.

Despite being contained within a single stage set, the production was lavish, with 300 men employed to manipulate the stage machinery. Follino's report described the set as "a wild rocky place in the midst of the waves, which in te furthest part of the prospect could be seen always in motion". As the action began, Apollo was revealed "sitting on a very beautiful cloud ... which, moving down little by little ... reached in a short space of time the stage and ... disappeared in a moment". Thereafter, all the performers proved excellent in the art of singing; "every part succeeded more than wondrously". Follino's enthusiasm was echoed in other reports made by dignitaries to their own courts. The ambassador for the House of Este, who referred to the work as "a comedy in music", mentioned in particular Andreini's performance which, in her lament, "made many weep", and that of Francesco Rasi, who as Bacchus "sang divinely". Monteverdi's fellow-composer Marco da Gagliano, whose Dafne had been superseded, wrote that Monteverdi's music had moved the entire audience to tears." In all, the opera lasted for 2½ hours.

Revival: Venice, 1639–40

Front page of the 1623 Venice edition of "Ariana's lament"

Despite the positive reception accorded to L'Arianna at its premiere, the duke did not, as he had with L'Orfeo the previous year, request a second showing. The next hint of a performance of L'Arianna is in 1614, when the Medici court in Florence requested a copy of the score, presumably with the intention of staging it. There is, however, no record of any such performance there. Early in 1620 Striggio asked Monteverdi to send him the music, for a projected performance in Mantua as part of the celebration for the duchess Caterina's birthday. Monteverdi went to the trouble and expense of preparing a new manuscript with revisions; had he had more time, he informed Striggio, he would have revised the work more thoroughly. Hearing nothing further from the Mantuan court, Monteverdi wrote to Striggio on 18 April 1620, offering to help with the staging. A month or so later, however, he learned that the duchess's celebrations had been scaled back, and that there had been no performance of L'Arianna.

The only known revival of the work came in 1640. Public theatre opera had come to Venice in March 1637, when the new Teatro San Cassiano opened with a performance of L'Andromeda by Francesco Manelli. The popularity of this and succeeding works led to more theatres converting their facilities for opera; L'Arianna, was chosen to inaugurate the Teatro San Moisè as an opera house during the 1639–40 Carnival (the precise date of this performance is not recorded). A revised version of the libretto had been published in 1639 with substantial cuts and revisions from the 1608 version, to remove passages too specifically linked to the Mantuan wedding. The composer, who was by then 73 years old, had acquired considerable prestige in Venice; the dedication the revised and republished libretto describes him as " [the] most celebrated Apollo of the century and the highest intelligence of the heavens of humanity." The opera was received with great enthusiasm by a Venetian audience already familiar with the lament, which had been published in the city in 1623. Within a few weeks the theatre replaced L'Arianna with Monteverdi's new opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, which provided an even greater success.

Loss

Further information: Monteverdi's lost operas

After the Venice revival of 1639–40 there are no further records of performances of L'Arianna. Rinuccini's libretto, which was published on several occasions during Monteverdi's lifetime, has survived intact, but the opera's music disappeared some time after 1640, with the exception of Ariadne's Scene 6 lament, known as Lamento d'Arianna. In the loss of its music the opera shares the fate of most of Monteverdi's theatrical works, including six of his other nine operas. Carter's explanation for the high rate of attrition is that "memories were short and large-scale musical works often had limited currency beyond their immediate circumstances"; such music was rarely published and quickly discarded.

Lamento d'Arriana

The lament was saved from oblivion by the composer's decision to publish it independently from the opera: in 1614 as a five-voice madrigal, in 1623 as a monody and in 1640 as a sacred hymn. The musicologist Suzanne Cusick opens her feminist analysis of the lament by saying that "[T]o a large extent Monteverdi's fame and historical status rested for centuries on the universal appreciation of his achievement in the celebrated lament [which] was among the most emulated, and therefore influential, works of the early 17th century". In Cusick's view Monteverdi "creat[ed] the lament as a recognizable genre of vocal chamber music and as a standard scene in opera ... that would become crucial, almost genre-defining, to the full-scale public operas of 17th-century Venice". Ringer suggests that the lament defines Monteverdi's innovative creativity in a manner similar to that in which, two-and-a-half centuries later, the "Prelude and Liebstod" in Tristan und Isolde announced Wagner's discovery of new expressive frontiers.

Dominant seventh (in blue) handled conservatively, "prepared and resolved as a suspension, clearly indicating its dissonant status," in Monteverdi's "Lasciatemi Morire", Lamento d'Arianna.  Play

In its operatic context the lament takes the form of an extended recitative of more than 70 vocal lines, delivered in five sections divided by choral comments. The general construction of the piece, and even some of the wording, is prefigured in the immediately preceding scene in which the First Envoy describes Arriana's plight to a sympathetic chorus of fishermen. The lament depicts Arianna's various emotional reactions to her abandonment: sorrow, anger, fear, self-pity, desolation and futility. Cusick draws attention to the skilful manner in whiuch Monteverdi is able to match in music the "rhetorical and syntactical gestures" in Rinuccini's text. The opening repeated words "Lascitemi morire" (Let me die) are illustrated with a dominant seventh chord in what Ringer calls "an unforgettable chromatic stab of pain"; Monteverdi was one of the first users (some authorities assert the originator) of this device. What follows, says Ringer, has a range and depth "comparable to Shakespeare's most searching soliloquies". "Lascitemi morire" is followed by "O Tèseo, O Tèseo mio" (O Theseus, my Theseus") these two refrains representing Arianna's contrasting emotions of despair and longing. Throughout the lament indignation and anger are punctuated by tenderness until the final iteration of "O Teseo", after which a descending line brings the lament to a quiet conclusion.

The female members of the 1608 audience would have been familiar with the character of Arianna from the recent Italian translation of Ovid by Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara. In what Cusick terms her "gynocentric" reading of the lament, she defines Arianna as "a woman whose wilfulness and autonomy must be purged through suffering before she is worthy to be taken as a wife." Monteverdi sought to represent in music the eventual triumph of female piety over promiscuity: "Arianna's gradual loss of her passionate self in the lament constitutes a public musical chastening of this incautious woman who dared to choose her own mate". Furthrmore, the women of Mantua wept because they recognised the transformations enacted in the lament as representative of their own life stories.

Monteverdi published a five-voice arrangement of the lament in 1614, as part of his Sixth Book of Madrigals. Fabbri attributes to the Florentine scholar Giovan Battista Doni the view that this arrangement was "done at the request of a Venetian gentleman" who thought that the melody would benefit from counterpoint. This form was copied by several composers, including Giulio Cesare Antonelli from Mantua and two Sicilians, Claudio Pari and Antonio il Verso. Among other composers who adopted the format and style of Arianna's lament were Francesco Cavalli, whose opera Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo contains three such pieces; Francesco Costa, who included a setting of Rinuccini's text in his madrigal collection Pianta d'Arianna, and Sigismondo d'India, whose wrote several laments in the 1620s after the monodic version of Arianna's lament was published in 1623. Monteverdi himself used the expressive lament format in each of his two late operas, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea, for the respective characters of Penelope and Ottavia. In 1641 Monteverdi adapted the lament into a sacred song with a Latin text, "Pianto dell Madonna", which he included in Selva morale e spirituale, the last publication of his works during his lifetime.

List of scenes

Before its revision in advance of the 1640 Venice revival, the libretto had been published in Mantua, Florence and Venice. The scenic breakdown indicated below follows the organisation of the 1622 Venice publication. The musicologist Bojan Bujić has indicated how the five-scene version prepared for a performance in Dubrovnik in or before 1620, might have been arranged. In this version the initial dialogue between Venus and Cupid forms a second prologue, and the choruses which open Scenes 4 and 5 in the 8-scene version become the closing lines of Scenes 3 and 4 respectively.

Scene number	Characters appearing	Opening line	Page range (1622)	Possible 5-scene arrangement
Prologue	Apollo	"Io, che ne l'alio a mio voler governo"	4	Prologue (1)
1	Venus, Cupid	"Non fenz'alio consiglio"	5–9	Prologue (2)
2	Chorus of soldiers, Theseus, Ariadne, Counsellor, Chorus of fishermen	"Se d'ismeno in sù la riva"	10–14	Scene 1
3	Chorus of fishermen, Theseus, Counsellor, Messenger	"Deh come son lucenti"	15–21	Scene 2
4	Chorus of fishermen, Ariadne, Dorilla	"Stampa il ciel con l'auree pìante"	22–27	Scene 3
5	Chorus of fishermen, First Envoy,	"Avventurose genti"	28–33	Scene 4 (1)
6	Arianna, Dorilla, Chorus of fishermen	"Lascietemi morire, lascietemi morire"	33–37	Scene 4 (2)
7	Chorus of fishermen, Second Envoy	"Sù L'orride palludi"	38–42	Scene 5 (1)
8	Chorus of Bacchus's soldiers, Cupid, Ariadne, Venus, Jupiter, Bacchus	"Spiega homai giocondo nume"	43–44	Scene 5 (2)

Editions

At least eight versions of the libretto were published between 1608 and 1640. The following is a list of the known editions.

• Aurelio et Ludovico Osanna, Mantua 1608. Publication of the text included in Federico Follini's report of the 1608 performance
• Heredi di Francesco Osanna, Mantua 1608. Possibly the text circulated to the audience at the 1608 performance.
• I. Giunti, Florence 1608.
• Bernardo Giunti, Giovan Battista Ciotti & co., Venice, 1608.
• Ghirardo et Iseppo Imberti, Venice 1622.
• G. F. Gundulić, Ancona 1633. Croation translation, prepared for possible performance in Dubrovnik c. 1620. (5 scenes version)
• Angelo Salvadori, Venice 1939. Revised version prepared for the 1640 revival.
• Antonio Bariletti, Venice 1640.

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

• Arnold, Denis and Foortune, Nigel (eds) (1968). The Monteverdi Companion. London: Faber and Faber. 
• Benward, Bruce, and Saker, Marilyn (2003). Music in Theory and Practice. New York: McGraw Hill. ISBN 978-00724-9297-2. 
• Carter, Tim (2002). Monteverdi's Musical Theatre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09676-3. 
• Fabbri, Paolo (tr. Carter, Tim) (1994). Monteverdi. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-35133-2. 
• Grout, Donald Jay (1971). A Short History of Opera. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-08978-3. 
• Murata, Margaret, The Recitative Soliloquy, Journal of the American Musicological Society 32:1 (1979), pp. 45-73
• Ringer, Mark (2006). Opera's First Master: The Musical Dramas of Claudio Monteverdi. Newark, N.J.: Amadeus Press. ISBN 1-57467-110-3. 
• Rosand, Ellen (2007). Monteverdi's Last Operas: A Venetian trilogy. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24934-9. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4nAImAfyxvYC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=monteverdi+le+nozze+d%27Enea&source=bl&ots=cAlObYkAA-&sig=QJU66Rmxbsq1N42WngOiyobKpA8&hl=en&ei=7XjFTtLTMI3usga5lKDrBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=monteverdi%20le%20nozze%20d%27Enea&f=false. 
• Rosand, Ellen (2007). "An Icognito debate: questions of meaning". In Whenham, John and Wistreich, Richard (eds). The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87525-7. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MvW1CPh84MwC&pg=PA328&lpg=PA328&dq=monteverdi+la+finta+pazza+licori&source=bl&ots=BtH1QThYtf&sig=rLBQYGS5xgIPv56ohwGJvLnNmDQ&hl=en&ei=AmzFTvHBEcnbsgb-3ryCDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwADgU#v=onepage&q=monteverdi%20la%20finta%20pazza%20licori&f=false. 
• Stevens, Denis (1980). The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi. New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-23591-X. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tBVL9_1__ioC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=monteverdi+nozze+tetide&source=bl&ots=kyf1XB7JjZ&sig=ZsmmA_kK2FPcvaaLaA1GHXXRNLU&hl=en&ei=wkfFTtvyJoWcsAb-39GQBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=monteverdi%20nozze%20tetide&f=false. 

External links

• Free scores of Lamento d'Arianna in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)