La Dafne (Peri)

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Work data
Title: Dafne
Original title: La Dafne
Title page of the libretto, Florence 1600

Title page of the libretto, Florence 1600

Shape: Opera in a prologue and six scenes
Original language: Italian
Music: Jacopo Peri , Jacopo Corsi
Libretto : Ottavio Rinuccini
Literary source: Daphnesage from Greek mythology
Premiere: Probably 1598
Place of premiere: Florence, Palazzo Corsi-Tornabuoni
Place and time of the action: Greek mythology
people
  • Ovidio , author of the Metamorphoses
  • Apollo , god of arts and also archers
  • Venere , goddess of love
  • Dafne , a mountain nymph
  • Amore , son of Venus
  • Tirsi (a messenger)
  • Nymphs and Shepherds ( choir and ballet )

La Dafne is an opera in a prologue and six scenes. The music is by Jacopo Peri , some parts also by Jacopo Corsi , the libretto was written by Ottavio Rinuccini . The first performance took place in 1598 in the Palazzo Corsi-Tornabuoni in Florence . The work, which has only survived in fragments, is now often referred to as the first opera.

Creation of a "first opera"

The question of which work is the first opera cannot be answered clearly due to the diverse origins of this musical genre. Jacopo Peri himself, who today is mostly considered the first opera composer, said that two pastorals by Emilio de 'Cavalieri (probably II Satiro and La disperazione di Fileno ) were the first such works. Stylistically, however, these still had little resemblance to the works later called “opera”. An essential feature for the development of the opera is the use of simple vocal lines that can clearly convey the narrated plot (cf. recitative ). The complex polyphony of Renaissance music gives way to simple monody . These principles are used in La Dafne , but there are older works (such as the intermedia for La pellegrina ) with similar stylistic features.

La Dafne could not have been created in one go. Jacopo Corsi seems to have written arias for the opera before 1595, and Jacopo Peri also states that he had been working on the work since the end of 1594. At the time of the first performance, which probably took place in 1598 in the (now so-called) Palazzo Corsi-Tornabuoni, Peri took on the role of the composer and Corsi that of the patron and planner. Corsi also mentions the libretto as a kind of patron. The premiere was a great success, so that La Dafne was performed several times until 1600. The libretto preserved today belongs to a performance that took place in the Palazzo Pitti in 1600 . Further performances took place in 1604 and 1610, and in 1608 Marco da Gagliano's libretto was set to music for La Dafne , which premiered in Mantua .

In addition to La Dafne , other works can claim the title of the first opera in a certain way : Euridice, also by Jacopo Peri (the oldest surviving opera, first performed in 1600), as well as another Euridice by Peri's competitor Giulio Caccini , which is the oldest in the Print is published opera. All three operas mentioned were created as a joint effort by the artists' circle of the Florentine Camerata . This is a loose group of artists from various disciplines who were under the auspices of a common patron . Giovanni de 'Bardi originally held this role, and after his departure from Florence Jacopo Corsi took over his position. The librettist Ottavio Rinuccini was part of the Camerata, as was the composer Jacopo Peri and most of the musicians involved. Until 1599, the aforementioned Emilio de 'Cavalieri was also active in Florence. His sacred work Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo (premiered in Rome in 1600 ) is sometimes referred to as the oldest surviving and published opera, but is sometimes classified as an oratorio .

action

Unlike the music, Dafne's libretto has been preserved in full, which is why the plot (consisting of a prologue and six scenes ) can be fully understood. With only 445 verses, the text is quite short, even for the circumstances at the time. For comparison, Jacopo Peris has Euridice, which premiered 790 verses two years later . The plot is based on the ancient legend of Daphne from Ovid's Metamorphoses .

  • Prologue: Ovid appears and reports on Daphne's transformation into a laurel tree and the power of love that Apollo succumbed to despite his divinity.
  • Scene I: The dragon python pursues the nymphs and shepherds . They ask for help from Apollo, who kills the dragon.
  • Scene II: Venus and her son Cupid appear and meet Apollo. He is proud to have killed the dragon and mocks little Cupid as a bad marksman. He swears revenge for the insult.
  • Scene III: Daphne meets the shepherds and asks what happened to the dragon. These report on Apollo's work. When he appears, Cupid shoots a silver arrow at him, so that he falls in love with the beautiful Daphne. However, Daphne is hit by a leaden arrow, which has the opposite effect, so that she invokes her chastity.
  • Scene IV: Cupid triumphs over the desperate weeping Apollo.
  • Scene V: The messenger Tirsi reports how Daphne was turned into a laurel tree while fleeing from Apollo , so that she remains forever inaccessible to the god.
  • Scene VI: The shepherds and nymphs mourn Daphne's fate with Apollo. He consecrates the laurel wreath as a sign of both sorrow and victory.

music

La Dafne requires only a small band, consisting of a harpsichord , a lute , a viol , a Erzlaute and a Triflauto . The exact identity of the latter instrument is unclear. Perhaps it is simply a bagpipe with a drone and two chanter or a flute trio. Both bagpipes and flutes were associated with shepherd music in the 16th century and are therefore appropriate for the shepherds appearing in opera.

A total of six fragments (the prologue and five parts from different scenes) of the opera have been preserved. Four of them come from an originally Florentine manuscript, which is now in the library of the Royal Conservatory in Brussels , two other numbers are preserved in a manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze . These six traditional pieces are not quite complete either, for example the middle vocal parts (which were probably identical to instrumental parts) were left out when writing down two choir numbers. For two of the pieces from Brussels, the manuscript names Jacopo Corsi as the composer. Due to similarities with the Euridice prologue , it is believed that the La Dafne prologue was composed by Jacopo Peri. A fragment that tells of Daphne's transformation into the laurel tree ( Qual 'nova meraviglia ) is also attributed to the professional composing Peri rather than the ambitious layman Corsi due to its progressive compositional technique. The allocation of the two remaining pieces is open. Four of the six fragments are solo pieces in the sense of the newly developed monody . They are kept very simple and manage without the ornamentation later used by Peri and Caccini in such compositions. Therefore, they can be considered as witnesses to the earliest stage of development of this genus.

literature

  • Domenico Pietropaolo, Mary Ann Parker: The Baroque Libretto: Italian Operas and Oratorios in the Thomas Fisher Library at the University of Toronto . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2011, ISBN 978-1-4426-4163-1 , pp. 59 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Tim Carter: Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Case of Jacopo Corsi (1561-1602) . In: I Tatti. Studies in the Italian Renaissance I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance . No. 1 . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1985, pp. 57-104 , JSTOR : 4603641 .
  • Frederick William Sternfeld: The First Printed Opera Libretto . In: Music & Letters . tape 59 , no. 2 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1978, pp. 121-138 , JSTOR : 734132 .
  • William V. Porter: Peri and Corsi's "Dafne": Some New Discoveries and Observations . In: Journal of the American Musicological Society . tape 18 , no. 2 . University of California Press, Berkeley 1965, pp. 170-196 , JSTOR : 830682 .
  • Oscar Sonneck : "Dafne", the First Opera. A Chronological Study . In: Anthologies of the International Music Society . tape 15 , no. 1 . Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1913, p. 102-110 , JSTOR : 929391 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Opera's 400th Birthday Is Celebrated in Vienna . In: The New York Times . May 3, 1998, ISSN  0362-4331 , p. 3 ( nytimes.com [accessed December 8, 2019]).
  2. ^ Oscar Sonneck : "Dafne", the First Opera. A Chronological Study . In: Anthologies of the International Music Society . tape 15 , no. 1 . Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1913, p. 102 , JSTOR : 929391 .
  3. ↑ a b Michael Stegemann: The father of the "sung tragedy". In: Deutschlandfunk. August 20, 2011, accessed December 8, 2019 .
  4. ^ William V. Porter: Peri and Corsi's "Dafne": Some New Discoveries and Observations . In: Journal of the American Musicological Society . tape 18 , no. 2 . University of California Press, Berkeley 1965, pp. 170 , JSTOR : 830682 .
  5. ^ Domenico Pietropaolo, Mary Ann Parker: The Baroque Libretto: Italian Operas and Oratorios in the Thomas Fisher Library at the University of Toronto . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2011, ISBN 978-1-4426-4163-1 , pp. 59 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ↑ Tim Carter: Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Case of Jacopo Corsi (1561-1602) . In: I Tatti. Studies in the Italian Renaissance . No. 1 . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1985, pp. 73 f ., JSTOR : 4603641 .
  7. ^ Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo | Grove Music. Retrieved December 9, 2019 .
  8. ^ Ottavio Rinuccini: La Dafne . In: www.librettidopera.it . No. 126 ( librettidopera.it ).
  9. ^ Frederick William Sternfeld: The First Printed Opera Libretto . In: Music & Letters . tape 59 , no. 2 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1978, pp. 123 , JSTOR : 734132 .
  10. ^ Joseph Otten: Musical Instruments in Church Services . In: Catholic Encyclopedia . tape 10 . Robert Appleton Company, New York 1911 ( newadvent.org ).
  11. ↑ Triflauto | Grove Music. Retrieved December 8, 2019 .
  12. ^ Ulrich Thieme: The recorder in cantata, oratorio and opera. Part 1: The 17th Century (1) . In: Tibia. Magazine for friends of old and new wind music . tape 2/1986 . Moeck Verlag, Celle 1986, p. 83 f . ( moeck.com [PDF]).
  13. ^ William V. Porter: Peri and Corsi's "Dafne": Some New Discoveries and Observations . In: Journal of the American Musicological Society . tape 18 , no. 2 . University of California Press, Berkeley 1965, pp. 173 f ., JSTOR : 830682 .
  14. ^ William V. Porter: Peri and Corsi's "Dafne": Some New Discoveries and Observations . In: Journal of the American Musicological Society . tape 18 , no. 2 . University of California Press, Berkeley 1965, pp. 194 f ., JSTOR : 830682 .
  15. ^ William V. Porter: Peri and Corsi's "Dafne": Some New Discoveries and Observations . In: Journal of the American Musicological Society . tape 18 , no. 2 . University of California Press, Berkeley 1965, pp. 196 , JSTOR : 830682 .