Wayward Son
We have a casualty in the Opster Project! And an important one at that. Cavalli’s Giasone, or a Medea With a Happy End (and perhaps a happy ending or two). Before I delve into this bad boy, I want to make a MCM PSA:
I’m working with the most recent–but nonetheless in need of an update–New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Which is 85-90% accurate for operas before the 20th Century, however in the wake of new score discoveries and the likes of Rene Jacobs, Marc Minkowski, and William Christie, there are always new discoveries and I’m only so good. So if on the Project Page you notice something missing, please give me a shout (oliviagiovetti AT gmail DOT com) or leave a comment. Cheers, thanks a lot.
Back to Jason and the Argonauts…
In the preface to Giasone, librettist Giacinto Andrea Cicognini writes (quoting Ellen Rosand’s Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice) “I write out of mere whim; my whim has no other aim than to give pleasure. To bring pleasure to myself is nothing other than to accommodate the inclination and taste of those who listen or read.” In Italian, “mere whim” translated into “mero capriccio,” and though Cicognini was not the first to coin this turn of phrase, it became associated with him due to his popularity.
This popularity carried over into Giasone. Defining mid-17th Century opera, if not opera for the century on the whole, Giasone is the first opera to fully separate recit with aria. Breaking more of the rules, it appealed to both the Venetian aristocracy and middle/lower classes with its mix of myth and humor, a mix that we would soon see in La Calisto. As Alex Ross wrote in his review of Yale’s recent production of Giasone (from which I’ve nicked the artwork), “The line forward to Mozart’s ‘Figaro,’ ‘Don Giovanni,’ and ‘Così’ is straight and short” (and to add on to that, it’s no surprise that the librettist to all three of those operas grew up in the Venetian tradition). Rosand adds that the opera is “a moment of equilibrium in the cycle, a perfectly adjusted meeting of music and drama, the model of the genre to future generations.” The praise heaped onto Giasone seems to indicate that Cavalli’s genius as a composer was doubtless, but perhaps Faustini was not his ideal librettist.
Cavalli’s hand in L’incoronazione di Poppea is more evident here, particularly in the parallels between Pur ti Miro and the duet between Medea and Jason (Dormi stanco Giasone), a lustful piece that exemplifies the male/female balance in opera (Medea sings of submission, “And for my heart, which your eyes have ravished,let your eyelids be the sweet prison”; Jason of power, “Today, because of you, Jason can boast that he has his soul in the shadows and the sun in his arms”). Repetition is once again used here for both comic and boisterous effect, and the contrast of this and Hypsipyle’s minor laments, again growing so minor and set apart from the rest of the music that you know it must end well. The combattimento shows another side of the coin, a rapid fire of pulsating staccato in the basso continuo. Yet for all this musical range, the prologo still carries the same elements of Cavalli’s other prologues. I’m coming to see this as a calling card; a means of identifying the composer–and his mark–in the first few measures.
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Tags: mozart, medea, alex ross, don giovanni, fail, new grove dictionary of opera, william christie, cavalli, ellen rosand, figaro, la calisto, rene jacobs, jason, giasone, hypsipyle, cavali, marc minkowski, argonauts, cicognini, cosi, da ponte, combattimento
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