Monteverdi, Early Opera and a Question of Genre: The Case of Andromeda (1620)

ABSTRACT

In 1985, Albi Rosenthal reported his discovery of a printed libretto for the opera Andromeda, composed by Monteverdi for performance in Mantua in Carnival 1620. This libretto deserves a new examination for its dramatic content, its likely musical setting (now lost) and some fundamental questions of genre. Its patron, Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga, used the librettist Hercole Marliani to broker his self-fashioning by imitating both Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607), supported by Vincenzo's elder brother, and Arianna (1608), which in effect belonged to the prince's parents. Monteverdi was typically slow to produce the score. The customary explanation is his disenchantment with Mantua and his new duties at St Mark's, Venice. However, we now see that both the Gonzagas and Monteverdi used Andromeda, like others of his Mantuan-commissioned works, as a bargaining chip in a complex exchange of obligations and favours typical of the courtly world to which the composer still belonged.

Notes

This article is part of a larger project rethinking Monteverdi's relations with the Mantuan court during his long career, and the theatrical and other music he wrote for it (a good deal of which is now lost). All quotations from Monteverdi's letters follow the translations in The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, trans. Denis Stevens (2nd edn, Oxford, 1995), save that I expand the styling of honorifics. When it is useful to do so, I cite the original Italian from Claudio Monteverdi: Lettere, ed. Éva Lax, Studi e testi per la storia della musica, 10 (Florence, 1994) or, in cases where documents have not been discussed in the literature and/or have been inaccurately transcribed, from documents in Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga (henceforth AG). My own transcriptions have undergone some light silent editing, including the expansion of abbreviations, although unusual spellings have been retained. Reference is also made to documents catalogued and summarized in the online Herla Project, <http://www.capitalespettacolo.it>.¹He can also be found in the Monteverdi literature styled as Ercole and Marigliani.

²Albi Rosenthal, ‘Monteverdi's “Andromeda”: A Lost Libretto Found’, Music and Letters, 66 (1985), 1–8; Iain Fenlon, ‘Mantua, Monteverdi, and the History of Andromeda’, Claudio Monteverdi: Festschrift Reinhold Hammerstein zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Laaber, 1986), 163–73. Rosenthal (1, n. 2) announced the publication of a facsimile of the libretto held in his private collection, although it never appeared. The original now resides in the Albi Rosenthal Collection of Monteverdi and the Birth of Opera, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (call number: Monteverdi 1).

³The following summary derives from Tim Carter, ‘Winds, Cupids, Little Zephyrs, and Sirens: Monteverdi and Le nozze di Tetide (1616–17)’, Early Music, 39 (2011), 489–502.

⁴Monteverdi's biography during both his Mantuan and his Venetian periods is ripe for reinterpretation in the light of the complexities and obligations of the court system; an important first step is made in Roger Bowers, ‘Monteverdi at Mantua, 1590–1612’, The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi, ed. John Whenham and Richard Wistreich (Cambridge, 2007), 53–75, and idem, ‘Claudio Monteverdi and Sacred Music in the Household of the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua, 1590–1612’, Music and Letters, 90 (2009), 331–71. A broader interpretative framework is provided by Mario Biagioli, Galilei, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago, IL, and London, 1993).

⁵Carter, ‘Winds, Cupids, Little Zephyrs, and Sirens’. The term vaghezze could refer to vocal ornaments, a more tuneful musical style, or even (as John Whenham has pointed out to me in a private communication) poetic delights, the musical setting of which might have ornamental and/or tuneful consequences. While it is tempting to associate cantar di vaghezza with tuneful arias (the latter strictly defined as strophic settings), there is only a slight basis for doing so: in the preface to his Aretusa (Rome, 1620), Filippo Vitali called Giulio Caccini the inventor ‘delle grazie nel canto, e della vaghezza nelle musiche à aria’. But here we enter a terminological minefield: compare the arguments over John Walter Hill's proposed distinction (in Roman Monody, Cantata and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1997), i, 65) between recitational and cantillational styles (stil recitativo, e cantativo), disputed by Claudio Annibaldi in his review of Hill's book in Early Music History, 18 (1999), 365–98 (pp. 370–1). See also Margaret Murata, ‘“Singing”, “Acting”, and “Dancing” in Vocal Chamber Music of the Early Seicento’, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 9 (2003), <http://www.sscm-jscm.org/v9/no1/murata.html>.

⁶Compare the account of ‘high’, ‘middle’ and ‘low’ styles in Joachim Steinhauer, ‘Orfeo (1607)’, The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi, ed. Whenham and Wistreich, 119–40 (pp. 131–40).

⁷For Marliani's career, see Claudia Buratelli, Spettacoli di corte a Mantova tra Cinque e Seicento, Storia dello spettacolo: Saggi, 3 (Florence, 1999), 120–4. He formally petitioned Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga for a position in his segretaria on 2 August 1616, saying that he had served the court for 13 years; AG 2735, fasc. 3, doc. 191. He informed Alessandro Striggio (then the Mantuan Resident in Milan) of his official appointment as secretary in a letter of 1 June 1617; AG 2738, fasc. 2, doc. 67. However, Marliani had been acting in some such capacity for a number of years, often writing to Striggio when the latter was away from Mantua on official duties; see, for example, the 35 letters from Marliani to Striggio (in Casale Monferrato) from 1609–10 in AG 1977–80.

⁸Bowers, ‘Monteverdi at Mantua’, 70–5.

⁹The Breve descrittione delle feste fatte dal Serenissimo Sig. Principe di Mantova nel giorno natale della Serenissima Infanta Margherita (Casale Monferrato, 1611) is partly transcribed in Angelo Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 3 vols. (Milan, 1904; repr. Hildesheim, 1969 and Bologna, 1976), i, 157–61; see also Isabella Data, ‘Il “Rapimento di Proserpina” di Giulio Cesare Monteverdi e le feste a Casale nel 1611’, Claudio Monteverdi: Studi e prospettive; Atti del convegno, Mantova, 21–24 ottobre 1993, ed. Paola Besutti, Teresa M. Gialdroni and Rodolfo Baroncini, Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti: Miscellanea, 5 (Florence, 1998), 333–46.

¹⁰The 1608 intermedi are described (and the texts given) in Federico Follino, Compendio delle sontuose feste fatte l'anno MDCVIII nella città di Mantova, per le reali nozze del serenissimo prencipe d. Francesco Gonzaga con la serenissima infante Margherita di Savoia (Mantua, 1608), 74–99. A facsimile of the complete Compendio is available in Federico Follino, Cronache Mantovane (1587–1608), ed. Claudio Gallico, Biblioteca mantovana, 3 (Florence, 2004), 103–257. For the 1622 version of the story, see Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi (Turin, 1985), 243 (trans. Tim Carter (Cambridge, 1994), 181–2). It is much briefer: Proserpina and Plutone are seen in the Inferno; Amore Celeste, wanting to limit Cupid's ambition, sends Mercurio to free her; and Proserpina is brought back to Earth and welcomed by Aurora. For the broader issues concerning the gendered messages of such entertainments, see Anne MacNeil, ‘Weeping at the Water's Edge’, Early Music, 27 (1999), 407–17.

¹²Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, i, 158: ‘i quali sono i due Poli che a’ tempi nostri sostengono l'arte del ben cantare, poichè chi ci può far sentire accenti più soavi, passaggi più veloci, affetti più pietosi, sospiri più ardenti, fughe più leggiadre, groppi più annodati, tremoli più gratiosi, più dure dolcezze e più dolci durezze di quelle che ci fan sentire questi, mercè de’ quali godiamo per l'orecchie il Paradiso et vediamo realmente operarsi quanto dagli ingegnosi Poeti fu favolosamente ascritto all'armonia d'Orfeo, d'Arione e d'Anfione.’ The description has strong echoes of Monteverdi's (later?) duet ‘Mentre vaga Angioletta’ (published in the Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi of 1638). For Rasi and Campagnolo in Orfeo, see Tim Carter, ‘Singing Orfeo: On the Performers of Monteverdi's First Opera’, Recercare, 11 (1999), 75–118. It is not clear what roles they took in Il rapimento di Proserpina.

¹¹Tim Carter, ‘Some Notes on the First Edition of Monteverdi's Orfeo (1609)’, Music and Letters, 91 (2010), 498–512.

¹³Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, i, 159: ‘et tutte queste composizioni musicali furono fatiche del Sig. Giulio Cesare Monteverde Mastro di Capella del serenissimo Sig. Principe, et fratello minore del signor Claudio, Mastro di Capella del serenissimo Signor Duca, nel quale le muse fanno il secondo Choro, come nel fratello maggiore fanno il primo; onde sentendosi i componimenti dell'uno, par che si sentano dell'altro, e che l'uno è l'Idea, l'altro sia il Modello, l'uno la Figura, l'altro il Ritratto, et s'uno la Voce, l'altro l'Echo.’

¹⁴ Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, i, 159: ‘et tutte queste composizioni musicali furono fatiche del Sig. Giulio Cesare Monteverde Mastro di Capella del serenissimo Sig. Principe, et fratello minore del signor Claudio, Mastro di Capella del serenissimo Signor Duca, nel quale le muse fanno il secondo Choro, come nel fratello maggiore fanno il primo; onde sentendosi i componimenti dell'uno, par che si sentano dell'altro, e che l'uno è l'Idea, l'altro sia il Modello, l'uno la Figura, l'altro il Ritratto, et s'uno la Voce, l'altro l'Echo.’., 158: ‘Venne la famosa Sig. Florinda, Idea del bel dire, Gloria de’ Comici, Pompa de’ Teatri et così efficace spiegatrice degli affetti dell'animo che col pietoso canto mosse altri al pianto.’ There is no evidence that Andreini played Cerere either in 1608 or 1611, but for the latter she can hardly have done anything else. The other performers in Il rapimento di Proserpina, according to the 1611 description, included two male sopranos from Milan; the rest were Mantuan court musicians.

¹⁵ 158: ‘Venne la famosa Sig. Florinda, Idea del bel dire, Gloria de’ Comici, Pompa de’ Teatri et così efficace spiegatrice degli affetti dell'animo che col pietoso canto mosse altri al pianto.’ There is no evidence that Andreini played Cerere either in 1608 or 1611, but for the latter she can hardly have done anything else. The other performers in Il rapimento di Proserpina, according to the 1611 description, included two male sopranos from Milan; the rest were Mantuan court musicians.: ‘Et quelli che già videro rappresentarsi in Firenze Il satiro, La disperatione di Fileno, l’Arianna et tante altre poetiche inventioni, vedendo questa sommamente la commendarono.’ The mention of Emilio de’ Cavalieri's La disperatione di Fileno and Il satiro, performed in Florence in 1590 and 1595 respectively, is also a little strange, given that these works had tended to disappear from the historical record in the prefaces of early opera scores (save in that of Cavalieri's own Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo (Rome, 1600)) amid the debates over precedence in inventing the genre. However, La disperatione di Fileno had provided another virtuoso female singer, the Florentine Vittoria Archilei, with the chance to move an audience to tears; see Tim Carter, ‘Finding a Voice: Vittoria Archilei and the Florentine “New Music”’, Feminism and Renaissance Studies, ed. Lorna Hutson (Oxford, 1999), 450–67.

¹⁶Tim Carter, ‘Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo’, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 9 (2003), <http://sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu/jscm/v9no1.html>.

¹⁷Tim Carter, Monteverdi's Musical Theatre (New Haven, CT, and London, 2002), 226–36.

¹⁸The first edition of Chiabrera's Galatea (Mantua, 1614) is edited in Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, iii, 105–36, which also notes the additions and revisions that Chiabrera made for the wedding festivities as seen in the libretto's second edition (Mantua, 1617). Orlandi's composition goes back at least to August 1612, when he pitched the work to both Duke Francesco Gonzaga and Cardinal Ferdinando; see the documents summarized in Herla C-971, C-973, C-1213, C-1214 (suggesting additions to the part of Aci) and C-1215. However, on 10 September 1613 Ferdinando declared his preference for Arianna; Herla C-1216.

¹⁹The case of the 1608 entertainments, identified quite precisely with separate members of the ducal family, is discussed in Tim Carter, ‘New Light on Monteverdi's Ballo delle ingrate (Mantua, 1608)’, Il saggiatore musicale, 6 (1999), 63–90.

²⁰The classic example of lurid fiction is Maria Bellonci's oft-reprinted Segreti dei Gonzaga (Milan, 1947).

²¹Vincenzo's estranged wife is the Isabella di San Martino mentioned in Monteverdi's letter of 22 January 1611 as attending Friday evening concerts in the Sala degli Specchi. For the whole protracted affair, see Guido Errante, ‘Il processo per l'annullamento del matrimonio tra Vincenzo II duca di Mantova e donna Isabella Gonzaga di Novellara’, Archivio storico lombardo, 43 (1916), 645–764.

²²For Vincenzo and Carnival 1619, see his letters to Duke Ferdinando and others in AG 2173, fasc. 3. For Carnival 1620, see, for example, AG 2174, fasc. 3, fol. 225 (Vincenzo to Ferdinando, 25 November 1619; on procuring comici for Carnival if Ferdinando is to send a troupe to France, as planned) and fol. 239 (Vincenzo to Ferdinando, 12 December 1619; on having ordered Giovanni Battista Andreini and his company to be in Mantua). The tour to France was deferred; see Adriano Mangini to an unknown recipient, 26 March 1620, AG 2749, doc. 63.

²³Striggio to Annibale Iberti, 19 February 1615, Herla C-2160.

²⁴Marliani to Striggio, 13 October 1617, AG 2738, fasc. 2, doc. 70: ‘Io partirò martedi per Venetia per miei affari, et sarò di breve ritorno.’ He was back in Mantua by 10 November at the latest.

²⁵Antonio Costantini, a court secretary, refers to balli and comedies in a letter probably addressed to Striggio (in Milan), 9 February 1618, AG 2741, fasc. 1, doc. 1: ‘Di nuovo non ho che dirli, perche in questa stagione non si tratta d'altro che di balli, e di comedie.’

²⁶Around this same period, Vincenzo also seems to have arranged the loan from Giovanni de’ Medici in Florence of his troupe of comedians, the Compagnia dei Confidenti (led by Flaminio Scala); see the various documents cited in Susan Parisi, ‘Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627: An Archival Study’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989), 345–6, n. 112, and (for Vincenzo's involvement) Herla C-1698.

²⁷Angelo Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte medicea dal 1600 al 1637: Notizie tratte da un diario con appendice di testi inediti e rari (Florence, 1905; repr. New York, 1968 and Bologna, 1989), 127–8, transcribes Giulio Caccini's account of the performance ‘yesterday evening’ dated 10 March 1617 (stile fiorentino; = 1618) and sent to the grand-ducal secretary, Andrea Cioli. See also Sara Mamone, ‘Andromeda e Perseo: Cicognini, Adimari & Co. sulle scene di accademia a Firenze al tempo di Cosimo I [recte II]’, Teatri barocchi: Tragedie, commedie, pastorali nella drammaturgia europea tra Cinquecento e Seicento, ed. Silvia Carandini (Rome, 2000), 407–38. Cicognini had sent an earlier version of his text (as a play) to Ferdinando Gonzaga in 1611; see Fenlon, ‘Mantua, Monteverdi, and the History of Andromeda’, 167, and Herla C-708.

²⁸See Marliani's letters to various court officials with the duke on his trip to Rome and Florence, in Parisi, ‘Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua’, 347–9, n. 119 (Herla C-1146, C-1148, C-1151, C-1153, C-1154, C-1156 and C-1197). Throughout this exchange, Marliani expresses concern over whether Ferdinando and Caterina would spend Carnival in Florence, thereby obviating the need for any entertainments in Mantua. Note that the letter from Marliani to Giovanni Magni that Parisi dates 3 November 1618 is in fact from 13 November. His letter to Magni of 6 November also included a (now lost) letter from Monteverdi that may have discussed the 1619 entertainments. To this sequence should be added one from Marliani to Magni, 12 December 1618, AG 2741, fasc. 2, doc. 71bis: ‘Facendo fine bacio à Vostra Signoria col solito riverente affetto le mani, et le do memoria di cavar ordine da S.A. che cosa debbo fare per la comedia grande, perche si la volesse questo carnevale converrebbe mettervi del buono, et far lavorare.’ Duke Ferdinando had appointed Alessandro Guarini, the nephew of Battista, a gentilhuomo della camera in June 1618; Guarini to Striggio, 6 June 1618, AG 2743, doc. 200.

²⁹Monteverdi's letter of 9 February is in response to a second letter by Striggio following up on a first that had arrived in the second half of January; the second letter seems to have set the Easter deadline, which Striggio then extended.

³⁰The recipient of the 7 March letter has sometimes been identified as Marliani (thus the granting of extra time is made to apply to Andromeda), though both Stevens and Lax prefer Striggio, which matches the styling of the address (‘Illustrissimo mio Signore e Padrone Collendissimo’) and makes better sense.

³¹Buratelli, Spettacoli di corte a Mantova tra Cinque e Seicento, 122.

³²Parisi, ‘Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua’, 346–7, n. 118. Marliani was also away for some of January 1620, which is no doubt why Monteverdi dealt only with Striggio during this period.

³³See Monteverdi's letters to Striggio of 13 March 1620 (Campagnolo) and 8 March 1620 (Dognazzi). In the 8 March letter, the composer also refers to Striggio's recent third offer.

³⁴Marliani probably to Annibale Chieppio (in Casale Monferrato), 16 November 1619, AG 2745, fasc. 15, doc. 454 (Herla C-1264), relating a conversation with Caterina de’ Medici, Duchess of Mantua: ‘Dice che le pare di intendere, che il Serenissimo Padrone voglia tornar presto, et con pensiero di fare bel carnevale, et però desiderebbe sapere se Sua Altezza vuole che si prepari cosa alcuna nella scena, di che attenderà risposta da Vostra Signoria.’

³⁵Marliani to Chieppio, 2 December 1619, AG 2745, fasc. 15, doc. 461 (Herla C-1265): ‘Per conto della scena io non posso tener preparata comedia in musica essendo con Sua Altezzi tutti i cantori. / Procurerò bene, che sia all'ordine la comedia grande, cioè l'opera sola [i.e. the play itself], che per conto degl'intermedii v’è bisogno d'ordine al signor Prefetto per gli apparati, et che vi sieno tutti i musici, ma perche non vorrei fare la fatica indarno, et iscommodare tutti i recitanti desidererei [sic] sopra ciò un'ordine preciso.’ For other letters, see Parisi, ‘Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua’, 349–50, n. 124; the one Parisi transcribes from 21 December is to Princess Eleonora Gonzaga, not Duke Ferdinando.

³⁶On 17 January 1620, Striggio informed Duchess Caterina of the duke's safe return, and of his having attended a comedy the previous evening; AG 2750, fasc. 2, doc. 56. Vincenzo left Mantua for Monferrato in late January or early February, returning with the duchess on 18 or 19 February.

³⁷In a letter probably to Chieppio, dated 24 January 1620, Marliani writes that he has not had an hour of rest because of the comedies to be prepared, especially given that the one to be performed in music on behalf of Prince Vincenzo had been added to his load (‘tanto più essendomisi aggiunta quella in musica per il signor Don Vincenzo’); see Parisi, ‘Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua’, 349–50, n. 124.

³⁸Monteverdi had made a similar claim about his current detachment from theatrical music in his correspondence over Le nozze di Tetide; see his letter to Striggio of 31 December 1616, where he excuses the likely deficiency of his work on the piece, ‘I being a most feeble creature, and through having been somewhat removed from this kind of music’ (‘e in simile genere di canto anco per esser un poco statto lontano’).

³⁹For the schedule, see Buratelli, Spettacoli di corte a Mantova tra Cinque e Seicento, 122 (and n. 190), though she does not mention Apollo.

⁴⁰The same also seems to have applied to Apollo, where at least some of the florid songs came late in the proceedings, not least the alla bastarda setting for Peneo. Compare also Monteverdi's later composing of some of the intermedi for Le tre costanti (1622), where he seems to have written ‘canti rapresentativi’, leaving to other composers on site in Mantua the production of music to cover the movement of stage machinery (because it had to be timed precisely), as the composer says in his letter to Marliani of 17 April 1621.

⁴¹See Ghivizzani's letter of 12 March 1620 to an unknown recipient (but probably Alessandro Striggio, to judge by the opening honorific), given in Alessandro Ademollo, La bell'Adriana ed altre virtuose del suo tempo alla corte di Mantova: Contributo di documenti per la storia della musica in Italia nel primo quarto del Seicento (Città di Castello, 1888), 76–7: ‘fra tanto la prego dell’Andromeda dalla Settimia molto desiderata’. Ghivizzani and his wife had very recently left court service in Mantua.

⁴²In the Discorso sesto sopra il recitare in scena con l'accompagnamento d'instrumenti musicali, which Giovanni Battista Doni published in his Annotazioni sopra Il compendio de’ generi e de’ modi della musica (Rome, 1640), Doni noted that Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga had sponsored the performance of some plays that were part-sung and part-spoken and had given great satisfaction (‘Contuttociò intendo che gran satisfazione dessero già in Mantova alcune Azioni, fatte rappresentare dal Duca Ferdinando, Principe molto erudito, le quali in certe parti si cantavano, e in altre semplicemente si recitavano senza altro aiuto d'instrumenti’); Claudio Gallico, ‘Discorso di G. B. Doni sul recitare in scena’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 3 (1968), 286–302 (p. 295).

⁴³For the Rasi, published as the second of his La cetra di sette corde: Rime (Venice: G. B. Ciotti, 1619), see Susan Parisi, ‘Francesco Rasi's La favola di Cibele ed Ati and the Cybele Legend from Ovid to the Early Seicento’, Music Observed: Studies in Memory of William C. Holmes, ed. Colleen Reardon and Susan Parisi (Warren, MI, 2004), 361–99. The music does not survive, but Parisi notes the dramatic and likely musical parallels with Orfeo.

⁴⁴The ‘actually’ is necessary: Chiabrera's Angelica in Ebuda (published in 1615; Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, iii, 137–87) has 1,347 lines, and Rinuccini's Narciso (which remained in manuscript; ibid., ii, 189–239) has 1,205. Although both were intended for musical setting, Monteverdi pointed out some of the defects of Narciso, and Chiabrera was rather curmudgeonly about his text; see Carter, ‘Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo’, nn. 42, 60.

⁴⁵So Alessandro Guidotti noted in the preface to Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo (Rome, 1600).

⁴⁶Tim Carter, ‘Lamenting Ariadne?’, Early Music, 27 (1999), 395–405, and idem, Monteverdi's Musical Theatre, 202–11. The comments on Arianna come from a report of a meeting on the 1608 entertainments held on 26 February 1608.

⁴⁷Chiabrera's Angelica in Ebuda adopts the same solution for a very similar dramatic situation.

⁴⁸All these events are enacted in Cicognini's 1617 intermedi on the same theme; see Mamone, ‘Andromeda e Perseo’, 415–19, n. 10.

⁴⁹In the quotations from Marliani's libretto here and below, the text is very lightly edited, though I have tended to preserve the original punctuation.

⁵⁰The point is clear from even just a very rough count of ‘musical’ words in these librettos that prompt or somehow respond to mimetic music (and excluding immediate repetitions): ‘canto’ (‘cantare’, etc.) – Euridice (16), Il rapimento di Cefalo (8), Orfeo (10), Galatea (6, plus 2 in the 1617 version), Arianna (4), Andromeda (3); ‘suono’, etc. – Euridice (9), Il rapimento di Cefalo (3), Orfeo (5), Galatea (4), Arianna (6), Andromeda (4); ‘ballo’, etc. – Euridice (2), Orfeo (1). Rinuccini's first version of Dafne is much more restrained – ‘canto’, etc. 2 (plus 2 in the 1608 version); ‘suono’, etc. 3 (plus one in 1608); ‘ballo’, etc. none (but one in 1608) – although the poet seems to have learnt a lesson by Euridice, which is clearly the most ‘musical’ of these texts.

⁵¹Thus it is significant that Giulio Caccini's account of the intermedi based on the Andromeda story performed in Florence in March 1618 (see above, p. 13) specifically notes that the composer, Domenico Belli, had achieved the unusual feat of creating sufficient musical variety to counteract the normal tedium of such plays in music; see Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte medicea, 128.

⁵²Paola Besutti, ‘Da L'Arianna a La Ferinda: Giovan Battista Andreini e la “Comedia musicale all'improviso”’, Musica disciplina, 49 (1995), 227–76 (pp. 261–2). However, Giovanni Battista Andreini did not include Andromeda in his list of the ‘opere recitative e musicali’ that he had seen in Florence and Mantua (and several of which included Virginia Andreini) in the preface to La Ferinda; see ibid., 246.

⁵³Tim Carter, review of Buratelli, Spettacoli di corte a Mantova tra Cinque e Seicento, Early Music History, 19 (2000), 291–9 (p. 299, n. 10).

⁵⁴Paola Besutti, ‘Variar “le prime 7 stanze della Luna”: Ritrovati versi di ballo per Jacopo Peri’, Studi musicali, 34 (2005), 319–74. Giovanni Battista and Virginia Andreini were still in Mantua for the birthday celebrations; on 5 August 1620, Giovanni Battista wrote (from Milan) to Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga complaining about his financial situation after ‘a bad Carnival, a long Quadragesima, and two [more] months in Mantua’ (‘essersi fatto un cattivo carnevale, una lunga Quadragesima, essere stati 2 mesi a Mantova’); see Comici dell'arte: Corrispondenze, ed. Siro Ferrone, with Claudia Buratelli, Domenica Landolfi and Anna Zinani, 2 vols. (Florence, 1993), i, 122, and ii, 22.

⁵⁵The idea of the fondo was first mooted in 1615, it seems, although the principle went back further to the request (November 1606) made by Monteverdi's wife, Claudia Cattaneo, that her and her husband's salaries should be paid from tax receipts from Viadana; see Claudio Gallico, ‘Monteverdi e i dazi di Viadana’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 1 (1966), 242–5. Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga approved the idea of the fondo in 1615, but it was never established, despite further discussions in the aftermath of Le nozze di Tetide. The issue was also one cause of Monteverdi's taking holy orders in the early 1630s so as to secure a benefice which might generate the appropriate income.

⁵⁶This was a standard means of rewarding services provided by someone from outside a given state and therefore working with a different currency; see Biagioli, Galilei, Courtier, 41. It was common for the gold to be sold or pawned for cash – as Monteverdi eventually did – whereas any medal or the like attached to the chain would be kept. Denis Stevens, ‘Monteverdi's Necklace’, Musical Quarterly, 59 (1973), 370–81, misses the point.

⁵⁷For the sacred opera, see Buratelli, Spettacoli di corte a Mantova tra Cinque e Seicento, 122. The 1625–6 exchange was connected with, among other things, Monteverdi trying to resolve legal problems in Mantua over the estate of his father-in-law, Giacomo Cattaneo.

⁵⁸AG 1022, unnumbered, Rasi to Marliani, Good Friday (9 April) 1621 (Herla C-2955): Ippolita Recupito is ‘bella assai e garbatissima et io ho certo che se la sentissi cantare il vostro lamento di Andromoda [sic] e fornito ha'l corso aprile e molti miei madrigali che vi stupireste’. This letter is transcribed with some errors in Parisi, ‘Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua’, 646–7, n. 530. ‘Fornito ha'l corso aprile’ is presumably the incipit of another song.

⁵⁹Or at least, from the end of January: a letter from him to an unknown recipient written in Florence, 26 January 1620, survives in AG 1130, fasc. 5, doc. 394. In a letter to the Duke of Mantua of 28 May 1620 (Herla C-3334), Rasi noted that affairs had kept him away from Mantua for four and a bit more months.

⁶⁰Parisi, ‘Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua’, 641–2, n. 527 (Herla P-776).