1608 -- "Arianna" (Monteverdi). "Lasciatemi morir"

by Luigi Speranza for "Gli Operai"jlsperanza@aol.com

L'Arianna (English: Ariadne) (SV 291) was the second opera written by Monteverdi, and one of the most influential and famous specimens of early Baroque opera.

"Arianna" was first performed in Mantova on 28 May 1608.

The libretto is by Ottavio Rinuccini, who took the classical myth of Ariadne and Theseus from Ovid's Heroides.

All of the music to the opera has been lost with the exception of Il lamento d'Arianna ("Ariadne's Lament").

Monteverdi wrote "Arianna" for the festivities to mark the wedding of Francesco Gonzaga (the son of the composer's patron Duke Vincenzo of Mantua) and Margaret of Savoy.

In October 1607 Monteverdi asked Francesco Gonzaga to let him compose the music for a dramatic piece for the wedding celebrations.

Monteverdi was wary of his rival composer, Marco da Gagliano, who had already been commissioned to write an opera, "Dafne", for the occasion.

In the event, the wedding was postponed until May 1608 for political reasons and Gagliano's opera was performed as part of the carnival festivities in February instead.

The stage works now planned for the marriage were Giovanni Battista Guarini's comedy "L'idropica" with intermedi by Gabriello Chiabrera, and Monteverdi and Rinuccini's L'Arianna.

Another work, the dramatic ballet "Il ballo delle ingrate" was later added to Monteverdi's commission.

Monteverdi probably finished the music for L'Arianna in the last two months of 1607 because, in a letter of 9 January 1620, he refers to the "five months of strenuous rehearsal" the opera took.

In other letters from long after 1608, Monteverdi mentions the "great suffering I underwent with Arianna" and claims "lack of time was the great reason I almost killed myself when writing [the opera]."

The title role was due to be sung by
Caterina Martinelli (nicknamed "La Romanina"),
who had played "Dafne" in Gagliano's opera in February,
but by the end of the same month she
was suffering from smallpox and she
died on 7 March.

Fortunately for the production, Giovan Battista Andreini and his acting company had come to Mantova to rehearse L'idropica and Andreini's wife, Virginia Ramponi (nicknamed "La Florinda"), proved an ideal substitute for the role of Arianna.

The bride, Margaret of Savoy, finally arrived in Mantova on 24 May 1608 and the celebrations began immediately.

"Arianna" was staged on Wednesday 28 May.

Federico Follino, a Mantuan courtier, published an account of the wedding celebrations (Compendio delle suntuose faste..., 1608).

He described the performance taking place in a specially built theatre in front of a large, aristocratic audience and commended the work as "very beautiful in itself", writing that Monteverdi had "excelled himself".

The festivities continued with a naval battle on the lagoon on 31 May, a performance of "L'idropica" (with the music for the prologue by Monteverdi) on 2 June, and Monteverdi's Il ballo delle ingrate on 4 June.

The heavy work load of writing the music for the three pieces for the wedding took its toll on Monteverdi's health.

As soon as the festivities were over, Monteverdi went back to his native Cremona for his annual summer holiday but he continued to compose for the Gonzagas.

In November 1608, Monteverdi's father Baldassare wrote to the Duchess of Mantua:

"My son came to Cremona seriously ill, with debts, poorly clothed and without the salary of Signora Claudia [the composer's late wife], with two poor little sons thus left on his shoulders after her death, having nothing but the usual 20 scudi per month, all of which I consider as being caused by the Mantuan air, which by its nature is harmful, and by the great tasks he has carried out and will continue carrying out if he stays in service, and by the bad fortune which has persecuted him for the nineteen years in which he has found himself in the service of the Most Serene Lord Duke of Mantua."

Baldassare, who was a doctor by profession, thought the state of his son's health was so bad that he begged the duchess to persuade her husband to release the composer from his service.

The Duke refused and on 30 November ordered Monteverdi to return to Mantua to resume his duties.

Monteverdi revived the opera in Venice in 1640.

He did this to inaugurate the Teatro San Moisè.

He revised the score, cutting the choruses and references to the Mantuan wedding, to adapt the music to the tastes of the audience, which had changed over the three decades since the premiere.

Rinuccini's libretto was printed in 1608.

But Monteverdi's music for the opera has been lost except for a single famous piece, Il lamento d'Arianna (Ariadne's Complaint), also known by its first words, "Lasciatemi morire" ("Let me die").

It is a solo aria, illustrating Ariadne's desperation after being forsaken by Theseus on the island of Nasso.

It was already famous in its own time as a prime example of the then-revolutionary new musical style of operatic monody, the so-called seconda pratica.

It was discussed as such by the contemporary music theorist Giovanni Battista Doni in 1640.

Other composers soon began to imitate Il lamento d'Arianna and write their own music to Rinuccini's text (there were versions by Severo Bonini in 1613 and Francesco Costa in 1626) or compose monodic laments for other characters ("Olimpia", "Erminia", "Dido" and the Virgin Mary, for example).

The lament became a popular feature in Italian opera for almost the next 50 years.

More than a simple aria, it usually comprised a whole dramatic scene.

Monteverdi himself returned to the form when he wrote a lament for Ottava in
L'incoronazione di Poppea and his disciple Francesco Cavalli included three laments in his first opera "Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo" (1639).

The Lamento d'Arianna was preserved because Monteverdi later published it as a stand-alone piece in 1623.

He also wrote two re-arrangements: one as a five-voice madrigal, published as part of his Sixth Book of Madrigals in 1614, and one with a new religious text in Latin, "Pianto della Madonna", published in his collection Selva morale e spirituale in 1640.

Premiere, 28 May 1608

Arianna/Amore -------- soprano Virginia Ramponi-Andreini ("La Florinda")
Venere/Apollo -------- soprano Settimia Caccini
Dorilla -------------- soprano -- Sabina Rossi
Teseo ---------------- tenor Antonio Brandi ("Il Brandino")
Bacco ---------------- tenor Francesco Rasi
Giove ---------------- tenor Bassano Casola
Tirsi ---------------- tenor Sante Orlandi
Consigliere/Messaggero tenor Francesco Campagnolo

Sources

Paolo Fabbri Monteverdi, translated by Tim Carter (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Donald Grout A Short History of Opera

Ellen Rosand, "Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice"

Amadeus Online (for roles and cast)

External links
Free scores of Lamento d'Arianna in the Choral Public Domain