La contesa de 'numi (metastasis)
| Work data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | La contesa de 'numi |
Giovanni Paolo Pannini : Musical festival in the Teatro Argentina, Rome 1747. It was long believed to be a picture of the 1729 performance of Vinci's Serenata. |
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| Shape: | componimento drammatico |
| Original language: | Italian |
| Music: | First setting by Leonardo Vinci |
| Libretto : | Pietro Metastasio |
| Premiere: | November 25th and 26th, 1729 |
| Place of premiere: | Rome |
| Place and time of the action: | On Mount Olympus , mythical time |
| people | |
La contesa de 'numi (also La contesa dei numi , German: "The dispute of the gods") is a libretto for a componimento drammatico in two parts by Pietro Metastasio . It was performed for the first time in the setting by Leonardo Vinci on November 25 and 26, 1729 for the birth of the Dauphin Louis Ferdinand in the courtyard of the Palazzo Altemps in Rome. The only other setting is by Christoph Willibald Gluck from 1749. It was composed on the occasion of the birth of the Danish heir to the throne Christian VII .
action
The basic principle of the plot is typical for a serenata from the years 1730 to 1740. It consists of a kind of competition between different deities who present their different points of view to an arbiter, usually Jupiter. These deities are more allegorical than mythological. The mythical antiquity is not presented, but the focus is on the moral content of the conversation. The different gods each represent their most typical virtue. For example, Mars represents war, Apollon represents poetry, Minerva represents science, and Venus represents love. In addition, there are purely allegorical figures such as peace, fate, eternity, fame, virtue, time, truth or merit. After everyone has presented their point of view, it is up to Jupiter to determine the winner. In the case of metastasis, the final judgment is usually Solomonic. Here it is not a single deity that triumphs over the others, but a compromise, a general reconciliation on the occasion of the event to be celebrated. This form shows some similarities with the similarly structured sacred oratorios of the 17th century, in which, however, instead of the mythological figures, biblical figures appeared.
The task that should fall to the winner of the competition is only vaguely described. It is about the right to “look after” the Dauphin (Italian: “cura”). Metastasio's main interest is not in the education of the future king, but rather in giving each deity an opportunity to present their own merits. There is no clear separation between the two parts of the work in the form of a logical development of the content of a dramatic plot. The shorter, second part essentially consists of a repetition of the first, although the deities appear in a different order.
First part
Olympus is in turmoil. The gods Mars, Apollon and Astraea and the two allegories “Peace” and “Fate” argue violently with each other. Jupiter, who is preparing the celebration of the dauphin's birth, angrily asks about the cause of the dispute. The gods declare that they cannot agree which of them should take care of the young scion of the royal family. Jupiter lets the gods present their services to the royal family. This gives rise to homage to the king and queen in the form of differently characterized arias from Apollo, “Peace”, Mars, Astraea and “Fate”. Apollo reports that he revealed the secrets of ancient Egypt to the Gauls and raised the French theater to the level of that of the ancient Greeks. The "peace" indicates that it created the basic conditions for the fine arts and the necessary trades. Mars declares that only his military protection against the barbarians will ensure the necessary stability. In addition, the resulting events provided subjects for poetry. Astraea speaks of her retreat to heaven following the first golden age and her return for the benefit of the Bourbons to raise the royal children to be heroes in the new golden age of Louis. “Fate” did what Astraea did for the king, for the queen, as it supported the visits of the goddess of birth Lucina . After the individual speeches are over, Jupiter postpones the decision and lets all the gods proclaim their joy over the child in the final chorus of the first part.
Second act
In the second part, Mars, “Peace”, “Fate”, Astraea and Apollon demonstrate one after the other what the prince would learn from them. Mars wants to make the prince a war hero. “Peace” wants to ensure a moral and wise training in the awareness of the past. “Destiny” wants to ensure lasting success in war and in “peace”. Astraea wants to teach him a just discernment so that he can overcome evil like Heracles, take on tasks and keep order. Ultimately, Apollo wanted to instill in him the desire to follow the deeds of his ancestors so that they too could become the subject of poetry. Jupiter finally decides that everyone has to work together. Your opposing forces can thus be balanced. The prince's upbringing would be too harsh if only Mars taught him. “Peace” could soften its grimness and Astraea could curb the volatility of “fate”. They should all move to the Gallic Empire together. The second part also ends with a final choir.
history
Metastasio had already written four serenatas for Naples between 1720 and 1723 : Angelica , Endimione , Gli orti esperidi and La Galatea . In the following years she turned away from this genre to write opera libretti. During this time he wrote Didone abbandonata (Naples 1724), Siroe (Venice 1726) and Catone in Utica (Rome 1728) , among others . It was not until 1729 that another commission for a “componimento drammatico” came about: La contesa de 'numi . This work was commissioned by the French ambassador in Rome, Cardinal Melchior de Polignac , to mark the long-awaited birth of the French dauphin Louis Ferdinand , the son of Louis XV. and his wife Maria Leszczyńska to celebrate. Polignac was notified of the birth in mid-September 1729 and received instructions for the desired celebrations. However, these were rescheduled to the end of November to await the return of the cardinals, prelates and the nobility from their estates. Another reason for the delay is likely to have been the available opera staff, almost identical to that of the Teatro delle Dame for the 1730 carnival season. The commissioned composer Leonardo Vinci was one of the two impresarios of the theater and had also composed the two carnival operas for this season. The production was therefore probably made in collaboration with the theater.
The setting by Leonardo Vinci
The celebrations for the birth of the Dauphin included various lights, a solemn mass with Te Deum in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi , horse races and fireworks in Piazza Navona . Vinci's Serenata was played three times in the courtyard of the Palazzo Altemps north of Piazza Navona. After a costume rehearsal on November 18, the open-air performance originally planned for November 21 had to be postponed due to heavy rain. The performances finally took place on November 25th and 26th. The singers were Giovanni Carestini , Giacinto Fontana known as " Farfallino ", Raffaele Signorini, Domenico Ricci, Giuseppe Appiani and Francesco Tolve. Reports can be found in Francesco Valerio's Diario di Roma (entries between November 18 and 30, 1729), in the Diario Ordinario del Chracas (No. 1920 of November 26 and No. 1924 of December 3, 1729) and in the Mercure de France . The latter reported in detail in December 1729 in the article entitled Rejouissances faites à Rome, par le Cardinal de Polignac (pp. 3125-43). The stage design was also described in detail. This came from Pier Leone Ghezzi , a favorite of Polignac. It is shown in an engraving by Filippo Vasconi based on a model by Salvatore Colonelli Sciarra . A painting by Giovanni Paolo Pannini , which was created 18 years later on the occasion of the wedding of the Dauphin to Maria Josepha of Saxony and depicts a serenata performed by Francesco Scarselli and Niccolò Jommelli , gives an idea of the splendor of the performance . The picture is entitled Fête musicale donnée sur les ordres du cardinal de La Rochefoucauld au théâtre Argentina de Rome le 15 Juilliet 1747 à l'occasion du second mariage de Louis, Dauphin de France et fils de Louis XV, avec Marie-Josèphe de Saxe . Due to incorrect dating and the great similarities with the description in the Mercure, it was long mistaken for a picture of the performance of Vinci's Serenata in 1729 and entitled Concert, donné à Rome le 26 novembre 1729, à l'occasion de la naissance du Dauphin, fils de Louis XV provided. The main differences between the two performances consisted in the fact that the later one took place in a theater and not in the open air, that there were only four instead of six roles of gods, and that the attendees' clothing corresponded to later tastes. The great similarities in the furnishings and the stage design suggest that the decorations and costumes from 1729 were used here again. Pannini had most likely already attended the 1729 performance, since he was also a favorite of Cardinal Polignac at the time.
Vinci uses a larger orchestral line-up than most of his other works. Wind instruments are used in more than half of the movements, and the full orchestra with oboes, trumpets and horns is used in three arias, the introductory sinfonia and the final chorus. One reason for this may have been the outdoor performance. Apart from Artaserse , more manuscripts have survived from the score than from any other work by Vinci.
The setting by Christoph Willibald Gluck
In 1748, Gluck was on a trip through Europe as a member of a traveling opera company. At the end of November they arrived in Copenhagen at the invitation of the Danish court, where Gluck worked as a conductor and concert artist. Here, on the occasion of the birth of the future Danish King Christian VII , he composed his festa teatrale La contesa de 'numi (Wq. 14) based on the text Metastasios, which was slightly adapted for this by the poet Thomas Clitau, with references to the "Gauls" to replace Denmark and the House of Oldenburg . Rehearsals began in February 1749, and the work was performed on April 9 at Charlottenborg Palace at the Queen's first public appearance after the birth. Jupiter and Mars were sung by tenors, Apollon by a male and the other three roles by female sopranos.
Each of the two parts begins with a one-movement overture that ends in a recitative accompanied by the orchestra. Then each deity has a solo aria, and the part ends with an ensemble choir. Max Arend described the music in his Gluck biography from 1921 as follows:
“The tonal language is quite Gluck: powerful in the recitative, always meaningful and characteristic grown out of the word, in the arias with a theme and deeply felt characteristic that is so inconspicuous and naturally thrown away that one is more likely to run the risk of them to be overlooked than to be perceived as being intentional. Astrea, the goddess of justice, has a wondrous aria in A major with muted violins in the first part, which soon turns into an expressive minor; as in a prayer, she implores the father of gods, with a humble face, to be allowed to nurture the child, she who was the royal father. The way in which the violins lift their mutes at the end of the first part and fall forte into a warm major is very effective. The goddess of peace gives a delightful picture, who can say of herself that under her protection the loving shepherdess follows her erring flock without worry. With the soft, tied eighth notes, with attractive imitations (violoncello without bass), one can involuntarily see the herd in front of you. In the first part, the goddess of luck Fortuna brings with the new text 'Perche viva felice', something that was previously not known, the mischievous aria 'Tomate, sereni', which I found again and mentioned during the discussion of the Sophonisbe, but trochaic, not iambic . The middle section is further elaborated on the occasion of the significant text ('Not accompanied by happiness, virtue sees itself without wages'). The re-instrumentation is particularly interesting: in the sophonisbe the aria for string orchestra is orchestrated with solo winds, for whose color it is evidently designed. Here, as in the rest of 'Contesa', we only find strings. In the second part this is noticeable in the first aria of Mars, the theme of which, already brought four times (!) In the preceding recitative, is a real trumpet theme. In this recitative the text almost screams for wind instruments, and Gluck imitates the primary violins with sforzati and tremolo, unison strikes of the other strings, and warlike instruments. That brings us to the fact that he probably did not voluntarily renounce wind instruments, but rather had none available. And this circumstance suddenly throws a spotlight on the fact that Gluck, whom we have just got to know as the creator of a work like the Semiramis, is content in the Danish capital with writing this serenade and none of his earlier works either to perform. Gluck was an artistic realpolitician, if that expression is allowed. He adapted to technical opportunities like a real artist with a sense of style that art history seldom shows. In fact, the Danish archives tell us that the court violinists who were available to Gluck were an orchestral troupe of ten, and that eight more players were brought in to reinforce the performances of the Mingotti troupe. Of course, that was only possible with a decent string orchestra. "
Recordings and performances in recent times
-
Christoph Willibald Gluck :
- 1998: Staged performance by the Royal Danish Opera. The singers were Jonny Van Hall (Giove), Niels Jørgen Riis (Marte), Hanne Fischer (Apollo), Karti Hamnøy (Astrea), Djina Mai-Mai (La Pace) and Henriette Bonde-Hansen (La Fortuna).
-
Leonardo Vinci :
- 1999: Performance at the Palazzo Altemps with the Concerto Italiano under the direction of Rinaldo Alessandrini .
Web links
- La contesa de 'numi di Pietro Metastasio e Leonardo Vinci on pietrometastasio.com (Italian) .
- Libretto (Italian / Danish) of the Serenata by Christoph Willibald Gluck, Copenhagen 1749 as digitized version at Europeana .
- Score of the Serenata by Christoph Willibald Gluck, Copenhagen 1749 as digitized version in the International Music Score Library Project .
Individual evidence
- ^ Don Neville: Metastasio [Trapassi], Pietro (Antonio Domenico Bonaventura). In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
- ↑ Metastasio, Pietro in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart , p. 50861 ff (cf. MGG vol. 9, p. 229 ff.) Bärenreiter-Verlag 1986 ( digital library volume 60).
- ↑ La contesa de 'numi (Leonardo Vinci) in the Corago information system of the University of Bologna , accessed on February 17, 2015.
- ↑ a b c d e f g Kurt Sven Markstrom: The Operas of Leonardo Vinci, Napoletano. Pendragon Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1576470947 , pp. 278 ff ( online at Google Books ).
- ↑ La contesa de 'numi (Christoph Willibald Gluck) in the Corago information system of the University of Bologna , accessed on February 17, 2015.
- ^ A b c Jacques Joly: Les fêtes théâtrales de Métastase à la cour de Vienne, 1731–1767. Pu Blaise Pascal, 1978, ISBN 978-2845160194 , p. 75 ff.
- ↑ a b c d e Max Arend: Gluck - A biography. Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin 1921, pp. 120 ff ( online in the Internet archive ).
- ↑ a b c d e Don Neville, Joseph Raffa: La contesa de 'numi. ( Online, PDF )
- ^ Salvatore Colonelli Sciarra: Fireworks on the Piazza Navona on the occasion of the birth of the Dauphin of France in 1729 in the Marburg image archive.
- ↑ La contesa de 'numi on pietrometastasio.com , accessed on November 9, 2015.
- ↑ Details of the 1998 performance of Gluck's opera by the Royal Danish Opera on operapassion.com , accessed February 18, 2015.