Monteverdi composer biography. Treasures of early music
Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona. Only the date of his baptism is known for sure - May 15, 1567. Cremona is a North Italian city that has long been renowned as a university and musical center with an excellent church chapel and extremely high instrumental culture. In the 16th-17th centuries, whole families of famous Cremona masters - Amati, Guarneri, Stradivari - made bowed instruments, the beauty of which was unparalleled and nowhere else.
The composer's father was a physician, he himself may have received a university education and, in his youth, developed not only as a musician, skilled in singing, playing the viola, organ and composing sacred songs, madrigals and canzonetas, but also as an artist of a very broad outlook and humanistic views. He was taught to compose by the then famous composer Marc Antonio Ingeniern, who served as the conductor of the Cremona Cathedral.
In the 1580s, Monteverdi lived in Milan, from where, at the invitation of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, he, twenty-three years old, went to the Mantuan court as a singer and virtuoso on viola. Subsequently (from 1601) he became the court bandmaster at Gonzaga. Documentary materials, and, above all, the composer's own correspondence, tell us that his life was far from sweet there; he suffered from despotism and greed of his patrons, who overbearingly and pettyly took care of his work and doomed him to a forced existence. "I would rather beg for alms than be subjected to such humiliation again," he wrote later. Nevertheless, it was in these difficult conditions that Monteverdi finally emerged as a mature and outstanding master - the creator of the works that immortalized his name. The improvement of his art was facilitated by everyday work with the excellent ensembles of the court chapel and the church of St. Barbara, wandering around Europe in the Gonzaga retinue in Hungary, Flanders, communication with prominent contemporaries, among whom were such brilliant artists as, for example, Rubens. But a particularly important factor in progress was for Monteverdi his inherent modesty, tireless work and extremely strict exactingness to his own compositions. In the 1580s and 1600s, the first five books of beautiful madrigals in a five-part warehouse were written in Cremona, Milan and Mantua.
The significance of this genre in the formation of the creative method and the entire artistic personality of the master was enormous. The point is not only that in the heritage of Monteverdi the madrigal quantitatively dominates over others (there are about two hundred works on the texts of Tasso, Marina, Guarini, Strigio and other poets). It was this genre that became a creative laboratory for Monteverdi, where, in his youth, he undertook the most daring innovative undertakings. In the chromatization of the harmony, he significantly outstripped the madrigalists of the 16th century, without falling, however, into subjectivist sophistication. A huge progressive acquisition of Monteverdi was the brilliantly accomplished fusion of Renaissance polyphony and a new homophonic warehouse - a dramatically individualized melody of various types with instrumental accompaniment. This, according to the composer's own definition, "the second practice", which found full and vivid expression in the fifth book of five-part madrigals, became the path to achieving the artist's highest aesthetic goal, to the search and embodiment of truth and humanity. Therefore, unlike, say, Palestrina, with its religious and aesthetic ideals, Monteverdi, although it began its path with cult polyphony, eventually established itself in purely secular genres.
Nothing attracted him more than the exposure of the inner, mental world of a person in his dramatic collisions and conflicts with the outside world. Monteverdi is the true founder of the conflict drama of a tragic plan. He is a true singer of human souls. He persistently strove for the natural expressiveness of music. "Human speech is the ruler of harmony, and not its servant." Monteverdi is a decisive opponent of idyllic art, which does not go further than the sound painting of "cupids, marshmallows and sirens." And since his hero is a tragic hero, his “melopoetic figures” are distinguished by an acutely tense, often dissonant intonation structure. Naturally, this powerful dramatic beginning, the further, the more closely it became within the boundaries of the chamber genre. Gradually Monteverdi came to distinguish between "madrigal of gestures" and "madrigal of non-gesticulated".
But even earlier, dramatic searches led him to the path of the opera house, where he immediately performed fully armed with a “second practice” with the first Mantuan operas Orpheus (1607) and Ariadne (1608), which brought him resounding fame.
With his "Orpheus" the history of true opera begins. Designed for a typical court festivities, Orpheus is written in a libretto clearly associated with the fairytale pastoral and sumptuous decorative interludes - these are typical attributes of court aesthetics. But Monteverdi's music transforms a hedonistic fairytale pastoral into a deep psychological drama. The seeming pastoral is characterized by such an expressive, individually unique music, fanned by the poetic atmosphere of the mournful madrigal, that it still affects us to this day.
"... Ariadne touched because she was a woman, Orpheus - because he is a simple man ... Ariadne aroused true suffering in me, together with Orpheus I prayed for pity ..." his own creativity, and the main essence of the revolution he made in art. The idea of the ability of music to embody the "wealth of the inner world of man" during Monteverdi's life was not only not a hackneyed truth, but was perceived as something unheard of, new, revolutionary. For the first time in a thousand-year era, earthly human experiences were at the center of the composer's work of a truly classical level.
The music of the opera is focused on revealing the inner world of the tragic hero. His part is unusually multifaceted, various emotionally expressive currents and genre lines merge in it. He enthusiastically appeals to his native forests and coasts, or mourns the loss of his Eurydice in the artless songs of the folk style.
In recitative dialogues, Orpheus's passionate remarks are written in that agitated, in Monteverdi's later expression, “confused” style, which he deliberately contrasted with the monotonous recitative of the Florentine opera. The image of the hero, his inspired art, happy love and bereavement, his sacrificial feat and achievement of the goal, the tragic denouement and the final Olympic triumph of the singer - all this is poetically embodied against the background of contrasting musical and stage pictures.
Throughout the opera, melodious melodies are scattered with a generous hand, always in tune with the appearance of the characters and stage positions. The composer does not neglect polyphony at all and from time to time weaves his tunes into an elegant counterpoint fabric. Nevertheless, the homophonic structure predominates in Orpheus, the score of which literally sparkles with bold and most precious finds of chromatic harmonies, colorful and at the same time deeply justified by the figurative and psychological content of this or that episode of the drama.
The Orpheus Orchestra was huge at that time and even excessively diverse in composition, it reflected the transition period when many people were still playing on old instruments inherited from the Renaissance and even from the Middle Ages, but when new instruments appeared that responded to the new emotional order, warehouse, musical themes and expressive possibilities.
Orpheus's instrumentation is always aesthetically consonant with the melody, harmonic color, and stage situation. The instruments that accompany the singer's monologue in the underworld are reminiscent of his most skillful lyre playing. In the pastoral scenes of the flute, the ingenuous melodies of shepherd's tunes are intertwined. The roar of trombones thickens the atmosphere of fear that envelops the joyless and formidable Hades. Monteverdi is the true father of instrumentation, and in this sense, Orpheus is a fundamental opera. As for the second operatic work, written by Monteverdi in Mantua, "Ariadne" (libretto by O. Rinuccini, recitative by J. Peri), it has not survived. An exception is the world-famous aria of the heroine, which the composer left in two versions for singing solo with accompaniment and in a later version - in the form of a five-part madrigal. This aria is of rare beauty and is rightfully considered a masterpiece of early Italian opera.
In 1608, Monteverdi, long weighed down by his position at the ducal court, left Mantua. He did not bow before his power-hungry patrons and remained a proud, independent artist, carrying the banner of human art high. After a short stay in his homeland in Cremona, Rome, Florence, Milan, Monteverdi accepted an invitation to Venice in 1613, where the procurators of San Marco chose him as the conductor of this cathedral.
In Venice, Monteverdi was to perform at the head of a new opera school. She was in many ways different from her predecessors and far ahead of them. This was due to different local conditions, a different historical relationship between social forces and ideological currents.
Venice of that era - a city with a republican structure, a deposed aristocracy, with a rich, politically strong, cultured bourgeoisie and daring opposition to the papal throne. The Venetians in the Renaissance created their art, more secular, cheerful, realistic than anywhere else on Italian soil. Here, in music from the end of the 16th century, the first features and forerunners of the Baroque have grown especially widely and vividly. The first opera house of San Cassiano was opened in Venice in 1637.
It was not an "academy" for a narrow circle of enlightened humanist aristocrats, as in Florence. Here the Pope and his court had no power over art. She was replaced by the power of money. The Venetian bourgeoisie built a theater for itself in its own image and in its likeness it became a commercial enterprise. The cash register became the source of income. Following San Cassiano, other theaters grew up in Venice, more than ten in total. The inevitable competition between them also appeared, the struggle for the audience, artists, income. All this commercial and entrepreneurial side has left its mark on the opera and theatrical art. And at the same time, it first became dependent on the tastes of the general public. This was reflected in its scope, repertoire, staging part, and finally, in the style of opera music itself.
Monteverdi's work was a culmination and a powerful factor in the progress of Italian opera. True, Venice did not bring him complete freedom from addiction. He arrived there as the choir director of the vocal-instrumental chapel of San Marco. He wrote cult music - masses, vespers, sacred concerts, motets, and the church, religion inevitably influenced him. It has already been said above that, being by nature a secular artist, he accepted death in the clergy.
For a number of years before the heyday of the Venetian opera house, Monteverdi was forced to serve patrons here too, though not as powerful and omnipotent as in Milan or Mantua. The palaces of Mocenigo and Grimani, Vendramini and Foscari were luxuriously decorated not only with paintings, statues, tapestries, but also with music. The Chapel of San Marco often performed here at balls and receptions during times free from church services. Along with Plato's dialogues, Petrarch's canzons, Marina's sonnets, art lovers were fond of Monteverdi's madrigals. He did not abandon this beloved genre in the Venetian period and it was then that he achieved the highest perfection in it.
In Venice, the sixth, seventh and eighth books of madrigals were written, a genre in which Monteverdi experimented before his last operas were composed. But the Venetian madrigals also had great independent significance. In 1838, an interesting collection of "Warlike and Love Madrigals" appeared. It showed the artist's deep psychological observation; the musical and poetic dramatization of the madrigal was brought there to the last possible limit at that time. This collection also includes some of the earlier works "Ungrateful Women" - an interlude of the Mantuan period and the famous "Combat of Tancred and Clorinda" - a magnificent dramatic scene, written in 1624 on a plot from "Jerusalem Liberated" by Tasso, intended to be performed with theatrical costumes and props.
During his thirty years in Venice, Monteverdi created most of his musical and dramatic works for theatrical or chamber stage performances.
As for the operas themselves, Monteverdi has only eight of them, "Orpheus", "Ariadne", "Andromeda" (for Mantua), "The Imaginary Mad Licori" - one of the first comic operas in Italy, "The Rape of Proserpine", "The Wedding of Aeneas and Lavinia ”,“ The Return of Ulysses to the Homeland ”and“ The Crowning of Poppea ”. Of the Venetian operas, only the last two have survived.
Monteverdi's most significant work of the Venetian period was The Crowning of Poppea (1642), completed shortly before he died at the zenith of his fame as the "oracle of music" on November 29, 1643. This opera, created by the composer when he was seventy-five years old, not only crowns his own creative path, but rises immensely above everything that was created in the opera genre before Gluck. The thoughts that gave birth to her courage and inspiration are unexpected at such an old age. The gap between The Coronation of Poppea and all of Monteverdi's previous work is striking and inexplicable. This applies to a lesser extent to music itself. The origins of the musical language of "Poppea" can be traced in the searches of the entire previous, more than half a century, period. But the general artistic appearance of the opera, unusual both for the work of Monteverdi himself and for the musical theater of the 17th century in general, is decisively predetermined by the originality of the plot and dramatic concept. In terms of the completeness of the embodiment of the truth of life, the breadth and versatility of showing complex human relationships, the authenticity of psychological conflicts, the severity of posing moral problems, none of the composer's other works that have come down to us can compare with The Coronation of Poppea.
The composer and his talented librettist Francesco Busenello turned to a plot from ancient Roman history, using the chronicles of the ancient writer Tacitus, the emperor Nero, in love with the courtesan Poppea Sabina, elevates her to the throne, expelling the former empress Octavia and betraying the enemy of this philosopher, Seneca, his mentor.
This picture is written broadly, multifaceted, dynamically. On the stage - the imperial court, its nobles, sage adviser, pages, courtesans, servants, praetorians. The musical characteristics of the characters, opposed to each other, are psychologically accurate and notable. In fast and multifaceted action, in colorful and unexpected combinations, various plans and poles of life are embodied tragic monologues - and almost banal scenes from nature; rampant passions - and philosophical contemplation; aristocratic sophistication - and the artlessness of folk life and customs.
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Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona. Only the date of his baptism is known for sure - May 15, 1567. Cremona is a northern Italian city that has long been famous as a university and musical center with an excellent church chapel and extremely high instrumental culture. In the 16th-17th centuries, whole families of famous Cremona masters - Amati, Guarneri, Stradivari - made bowed instruments, which were unmatched by their beauty of sound anywhere else.
The composer's father was a physician, he himself may have received a university education and, in his youth, developed not only as a musician, skilled in singing, playing the viola, organ and composing sacred songs, madrigals and canzonetas, but also as an artist of a very broad outlook and humanistic views. He was taught to compose by the then famous composer Marc Antonio Ingeniern, who served as the conductor of the Cremona Cathedral.
In the 1580s, Monteverdi lived in Milan, from where, at the invitation of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, he, twenty-three years old, went to the Mantuan court as a singer and virtuoso on viola. Subsequently (from 1601) he became the court bandmaster at Gonzaga. Documentary materials, and, above all, the composer's own correspondence, indicate that his life there was by no means sweet, he suffered from the despotism and greed of his patrons, who powerfully and pettyly took care of his work and doomed him to a forced, miserable existence. “I would rather beg for alms than be subjected to such humiliation again,” he wrote later. Nevertheless, it was in these difficult conditions that Monteverdi finally emerged as a mature and, moreover, an outstanding master - the creator of works that immortalized his name. The improvement of his art was facilitated by his daily work with the excellent ensembles of the court chapel and the church of St. Barbara, wandering around Europe in the Gonzaga retinue in Hungary, Flanders, communication with outstanding contemporaries, among whom were such brilliant artists as, for example, Rubens. But a particularly important factor in progress for Monteverdi was his inherent modesty, tireless work and extremely strict exactingness to his own writings. In the 1580s and 1600s, the first five books of beautiful madrigals in a five-part warehouse were written in Cremona, Milan and Mantua.
The significance of this genre in the formation of the creative method and the entire artistic personality of the master was enormous. The point is not only that in the heritage of Monteverdi the madrigal quantitatively dominates over others (there are about two hundred works on the texts of Tasso, Marina, Guarini, Strigio and other poets). It was this genre that became a creative laboratory for Monteverdi, where, in his youth, he undertook the most daring innovative undertakings. In the chromatization of the fret, he significantly outstripped the madrigalists of the 16th century, without falling, however, into subjectivist sophistication and arbitrariness. This, according to the composer's own definition, "the second practice", which found full and vivid expression in the fifth book of five-part madrigals, became the path to achieving the artist's highest aesthetic goal, to the search and embodiment of truth and humanity. Therefore, unlike, say, Palestrina, with its religious and aesthetic ideals, Monteverdi, although it began its path with cult polyphony, eventually established itself in purely secular genres.
Nothing attracted him more than the exposure of the inner, mental world of a person in his dramatic collisions and conflicts with the outside world. Monteverdi is the true founder of the conflict drama of a tragic plan. He is a true singer of human souls. He persistently strove for the natural expressiveness of music. "Human speech is the ruler of harmony, and not its servant." Monteverdi is a decisive opponent of idyllic art, which does not go further than the sound painting of "cupids, marshmallows and sirens." And since his hero is a tragic hero, his “melopoetic figures” are distinguished by an acutely tense, often dissonant intonation structure. It is natural that this powerful dramatic beginning, the further, the more closely it became within the boundaries of the chamber genre.
Gradually Monteverdi came to distinguish between "madrigal of gestures" and "madrigal of non-gesticulated". But even earlier, his dramatic searches led him to the path of the opera house, where he immediately performed fully armed with a “second practice” with the first Mantuan operas Orpheus (1607) and Ariadne (1608), which brought him resounding fame.
With his "Orpheus" the history of true opera begins. Designed for a typical court festivities, Orpheus is written in a libretto clearly associated with the fairytale pastoral and sumptuous decorative interludes - these are typical attributes of court aesthetics. But Monteverdi's music transforms a hedonistic fairytale pastoral into a deep psychological drama. The seeming pastoral is characterized by such an expressive, individually unique music, fanned by the poetic atmosphere of the mournful madrigal, that it still affects us to this day.
"Ariadne touched because she was a woman, Orpheus - because he is a simple man. Ariadne aroused true suffering in me, together with Orpheus I prayed for pity." This statement of Monteverdi contains both the essence of his own creativity, and the main essence of the revolution he made in art. The idea of the ability of music to embody the "wealth of the inner world of man" during Monteverdi's life was not only not a hackneyed truth, but was perceived as something unheard of, new, revolutionary. For the first time in a thousand-year era, earthly human experiences were at the center of the composer's work of a truly classical level.
The music of the opera is focused on revealing the inner world of the tragic hero. His part is unusually multifaceted, various emotionally expressive currents and genre lines merge in it. He enthusiastically appeals to his native forests and coasts, or mourns the loss of his Eurydice in the artless songs of the folk style.
In recitative dialogues, Orpheus's passionate remarks are written in that agitated, in Monteverdi's later expression, “confused” style, which he deliberately contrasted with the monotonous recitative of the Florentine opera. The image of the hero, his inspired art, happy love and bereavement, his sacrificial feat and achievement of the goal, the tragic denouement and the final Olympic triumph of the singer - all this is poetically embodied against the background of contrasting musical and stage pictures.
Throughout the opera, melodious melodies are scattered with a generous hand, always in tune with the appearance of the characters and stage positions. The composer does not neglect polyphony at all and from time to time weaves his tunes into an elegant counterpoint fabric. Nevertheless, the homophonic structure predominates in Orpheus, the score of which literally sparkles with bold and most precious finds of chromatic harmonies, colorful and at the same time deeply justified by the figurative and psychological content of this or that episode of the drama.
The Orpheus Orchestra was at that time huge and even overly diverse in composition, it reflected the transition period when many people were still playing on old instruments inherited from the Renaissance and even from the Middle Ages, but when new instruments appeared that responded to the new emotional order , warehouse, musical themes and expressive possibilities.
Orpheus's instrumentation is always aesthetically consonant with the melody, harmonic color, and stage situation. The instruments that accompany the singer's monologue in the underworld are reminiscent of his most skillful lyre playing. In the pastoral scenes of the flute, the ingenuous melodies of shepherd's tunes are intertwined. The roar of trombones thickens the atmosphere of fear that envelops the joyless and formidable Hades. Monteverdi is the true father of instrumentation, and in this sense, Orpheus is a fundamental opera.
As for the second opera work, written by Monteverdi in Mantua, Ariadne (libretto by O. Rinuccini, recitative by J. Peri), it has not survived. An exception is the world-famous aria of the heroine, which the composer left in two versions: for solo singing with accompaniment and, later, in the form of a five-part madrigal. This aria is of rare beauty and is rightfully considered a masterpiece of early Italian opera.
In 1608, Monteverdi, long weighed down by his position at the ducal court, left Mantua. He did not bow before his power-hungry patrons and remained a proud, independent folk artist, carrying the banner of human art high. After a short stay in his homeland in Cremona, Rome, Florence, Milan, Monteverdi accepted an invitation to Venice in 1613, where the procurators of San Marco chose him as the conductor of this cathedral.
In Venice, Monteverdi was to perform at the head of a new opera school. She was in many ways different from her predecessors and far ahead of them. This was due to different local conditions, a different historical relationship between social forces and ideological currents. Venice of that era - a city with a republican structure, a deposed aristocracy, with a rich, politically strong, cultured bourgeoisie and daring opposition to the papal throne. The Venetians in the Renaissance created their art, more secular, cheerful, realistic than anywhere else on Italian soil. Here, in music from the end of the 16th century, the first features and forerunners of the Baroque have grown especially widely and vividly. The first opera house of San Cassiano was opened in Venice in 1637.
It was not an "academy" for a narrow circle of enlightened humanist aristocrats, as in Florence. Here the Pope and his court had no power over art. She was replaced by the power of money. The Venetian bourgeoisie built a theater for itself in its own image and likeness: it became a commercial enterprise. The cash register became the source of income. Following San Cassiano, other theaters grew up in Venice, more than ten in total. The inevitable competition between them also appeared, the struggle for the audience, artists, income. All this commercial and entrepreneurial side has left its mark on the opera and theatrical art. At the same time, it first became dependent on the tastes of the general public. This was reflected in its scope, repertoire, staging part, and finally, in the style of opera music itself.
Monteverdi's work was a culmination and a powerful factor in the progress of Italian opera. True, Venice did not bring him complete freedom from addiction. He arrived there as the choir director of the vocal-instrumental chapel of San Marco. He wrote cult music - masses, vespers, sacred concerts, motets, and the church, religion inevitably influenced him. It has already been said above that, being by nature a secular artist, he accepted death in the clergy.
For a number of years before the heyday of the Venetian opera house, Monteverdi was forced to serve patrons here too, though not as powerful and omnipotent as in Milan or Mantua. The palaces of Mocenigo and Grimani, Vendramini and Foscari were luxuriously decorated not only with paintings, statues, tapestries, but also with music. The Chapel of San Marco often performed here at balls and receptions during times free from church services. Along with Plato's dialogues, Petrarch's canzons, Marina's sonnets, art lovers were fond of Monteverdi's madrigals. He did not abandon this beloved genre in the Venetian period and it was then that he achieved the highest perfection in it.
In Venice, the sixth, seventh, eighth books of madrigals were written, which continued to play the role of the genre in which Monteverdi experimented, before his last operas were created. But the Venetian madrigals also had great independent significance. In 1838, an interesting collection of "Warlike and Love Madrigals" appeared. It showed the artist's deep psychological observation; the musical and poetic dramatization of the madrigal was brought there to the last possible limit at that time. This collection also includes some of the earlier works. Ungrateful Women - an interlude of the Mantuan period and the famous Martial Arts of Tancred and Clorinda - a magnificent dramatic scene, written in 1624 on a plot from Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated, intended to be performed with theatrical costumes and props.
During his thirty years in Venice, Monteverdi created most of his musical and dramatic works for theatrical or chamber stage performances.
As for the operas themselves, Monteverdi has eight of them: Orpheus, Ariadne, Andromeda (for Mantua), The Mock Mad Licori - one of the first comic operas in Italy, The Rape of Proserpine, The Wedding of Aeneas and Lavinia ”,“ The Return of Ulysses to the Homeland ”and“ The Crowning of Poppea ”. Of the Venetian operas, only the last two have survived.
Monteverdi's most significant work of the Venetian period was the Crowning of Poppea (1642), completed shortly before he died at the zenith of his fame as the "oracle of music" - November 29, 1643. This opera, created by the composer when he was seventy-five years old, not only crowns his own creative path, but rises immensely above everything that was created in the opera genre before Gluck. The thoughts that gave birth to her courage and inspiration are unexpected at such an old age.
The gap between The Coronation of Poppea and all of Monteverdi's previous work is striking and inexplicable. This applies to a lesser extent to music itself: the origins of the musical language of "Poppea" can be traced in the searches of the entire previous, more than half-century period. But the general artistic appearance of the opera, unusual both for the work of Monteverdi himself and for the musical theater of the 17th century in general, is decisively predetermined by the originality of the plot and dramatic concept. In terms of the completeness of the embodiment of the truth of life, the breadth and versatility of showing complex human relationships, the authenticity of psychological conflicts, the severity of posing moral problems, none of the composer's other works that have come down to us can compare with The Coronation of Poppea.
The composer and his talented librettist Francesco Busenello turned to a plot from ancient Roman history, using the chronicles of the ancient writer Tacitus: Emperor Nero, in love with the courtesan Poppea Sabina, elevates her to the throne, expelling the former empress Octavia and putting to death the opponent of this philosopher, Seneca his mentor.
This picture is written broadly, multifaceted, dynamically. On the stage - the imperial court, its nobles, sage adviser, pages, courtesans, servants, praetorians. The musical characteristics of the characters, opposed to each other, are psychologically accurate and notable. Various plans and poles of life, tragic monologues - and almost banal scenes from nature are embodied in fast and multifaceted action, in colorful and unexpected combinations; rampant passions - and philosophical contemplation; aristocratic sophistication - and the artlessness of folk life and customs.
Monteverdi has never been in the center of fashion, never enjoyed the same widespread popularity as that which fell to the lot of some of the more "moderate" composers of madrigals, and later composers of "light" canzonets and arias. He was so independent of the views and tastes of his contemporaries, so much broader than them in his artistic psychology, that he equally accepted the old, polyphonic and new, monodic writing.
Today it is indisputable that it is Monteverdi who is “the founder of modern music”. It was in the work of Monteverdi that the structure of artistic thinking that is characteristic of our era was formed.
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R. Rolland
The work of the Italian opera composer C. Monteverdi is one of the unique phenomena in the musical culture of the 17th century. In his interest in man, in his passions and suffering, Monteverdi is a true artist of the Renaissance. None of the composers of that time managed to express the tragic feeling of life in music in such a way, to come closer to comprehending its truth, to reveal the primordial nature of human characters in this way.
Monteverdi was born into the family of a doctor. His musical studies were directed by M. Ingenieri, an experienced musician, conductor of the Cremona Cathedral. He developed the polyphonic technique of the future composer, introduced him to the best choral works by J. Palestrina and O. Lasso. Moiteverdi began composing early. Already at the beginning of the 1580s. The first collections of polyphonic vocal works (madrigals, motets, cantatas) were published, and by the end of this decade he became a well-known composer in Italy, a member of the Cecilia Site Academy in Rome. Since 1590 Monteverdi served in the court chapel of the Duke of Mantua (first as an orchestra player and singer, and then as a conductor). Vincenzo Gonzaga's lush, wealthy courtyard attracted the best artistic forces of the time. In all likelihood, Monteverdi could meet with the great Italian poet T. Tasso, the Flemish artist P. Rubens, members of the famous Florentine Camerata, the authors of the first operas - J. Peri, O. Rinuccini. Accompanying the duke on frequent travels, military campaigns, the composer visited Prague, Vienna, Innsbruck, Antwerp. In February 1607, Monteverdi's first opera Orpheus (libretto by A. Strigio) was staged in Mantua with great success. A pastoral play intended for palace festivities, Monteverdi turned into a real drama about the suffering and tragic fate of Orpheus, about the immortal beauty of his art. (Monteverdi and Strigio retained the tragic version of the denouement of the myth - Orpheus, leaving the kingdom of the dead, violates the ban, looks back at Eurydice and loses her forever.) Orpheus is distinguished by a wealth of funds surprising for an early work. Expressive declamation and wide cantilena, choirs and ensembles, ballet, well-developed orchestral part serve as the embodiment of a deeply lyrical concept. Only one scene from Monteverdi's second opera, Ariadne (1608), has survived to this day. This is the famous "Lament of Ariadne" ("Let me die ..."), which served as the prototype for many lamento arias (arias of complaint) in Italian opera. (Ariadne's cry is known in two versions - for the solo voice and in the form of a five-part madrigal.)
In 1613, Monteverdi moved to Venice and until the end of his life remained in the service of Kapellmeister at St. Mark's Cathedral. The rich musical life of Venice opened up new possibilities for the composer. Monteverdi writes operas, ballets, sideshows, madrigals, music for church and court festivities. One of the most original works of these years is the dramatic scene "The Duel of Tancred and Clorinda" based on the text from T. Tasso's poem "Jerusalem Liberated", which combines reading (Narrator's part), acting (recitative parts of Tancred and Clorinda) and an orchestra that depicts the course of the duel , reveals the emotional nature of the scene. In connection with the "Duel", Monteverdi wrote about the new style of concitato (excited, agitated), opposing it to the "soft, moderate" style prevailing at that time.
Many madrigals of Monteverdi are also distinguished by their acutely expressive, dramatic character (the last, eighth collection of madrigals was created in Venice, 1638). In this genre of polyphonic vocal music, the composer's style was formed, and the selection of expressive means took place. The harmonic language of the madrigals is especially original (bold tonal juxtapositions, chromatic, discordant chords, etc.). In the late 1630s - early 40s. The operatic creativity of Monteverdi reached its peak (The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland - 1640, Adonis - 1639, The Wedding of Aeneas and Lavinia - 1641; the last two operas have not survived).
In 1642, Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea was staged in Venice (libretto by F. Buzinello after Tacitus' Annals). The last opera of the 75-year-old composer became a true peak, the result of a creative path. Specific, real-life historical figures act in it - the Roman emperor Nero, known for his cunning and cruelty, his teacher is the philosopher Seneca. Much in the "Coronation" leads to analogies with the tragedies of the composer's brilliant contemporary - W. Shakespeare. Openness and intensity of passions, sharp, truly "Shakespearean" contrasts of sublime scenes and genre-everyday, comedic ones. So, Seneca's farewell to his students - the tragic culmination of oaera - is replaced by a cheerful interlude of a page and a servant, and then a real orgy begins - Nero and his friends mock the teacher, celebrate his death.
“His only law is life itself,” wrote R. Rolland about Monteverdi. With the boldness of discoveries, Monteverdi's work was long ahead of its time. The composer foresaw the very distant future of musical theater: the realism of the operatic drama of W. A. Mozart, G. Verdi, M. Musorgsky. Perhaps that is why the fate of his works was so surprising. For many years they remained in oblivion and came back to life only in our time.
I. Okhalova
The son of a doctor and the eldest of five brothers. Studied music under M. A. Ingenieri. At the age of fifteen he published Spiritual Chants, in 1587 - the first book of madrigals. In 1590, at the court of the Duke of Mantua, Vincenzo Gonzaga became a violist and singer, then the head of the chapel. Accompanies the Duke to Hungary (during the Turkish campaign) and Flanders. In 1595 he marries the singer Claudia Cattaneo, who will give him three sons; she will die in 1607 shortly after the triumph of Orpheus. Since 1613 - a lifelong position of the head of the chapel in the Republic of Venice; composing sacred music, the last books of madrigals, dramatic works, mostly lost. Around 1632 he took priestly dignity.
The operatic work of Monteverdi has a very solid foundation, being the fruit of previous experience in composing madrigals and sacred music, genres in which the Cremona master has achieved incomparable results. The main stages of his theatrical activity - in any case, based on what has come down to us - are two clearly distinguished periods: the Mantuan beginning of the century and the Venetian, which falls in its middle.
MONTEVERDI Claudio
(Monteverdi, Claudio)
(c. 1567-1643), Italian composer, author of madrigals, operas, church works, one of the key figures of the era when the Renaissance musical style was replaced by a new Baroque style. Born into the family of the famous physician Baldassare Monteverdi. The exact date of birth has not been established, but it is documented that Claudio Giovanni Antonio was baptized on May 15, 1567 in Cremona. Claudio, apparently, studied for some time with M.A. Ingenieri, the choir director of the Cremona cathedral. The first five collections of works published by the young composer (Spiritual tunes, Cantiunculae Sacrae, 1582; Spiritual madrigals, Madrigali Spirituali, 1583; three-part canzonetta, 1584; five-part madrigals in two volumes: First collection, 1587 and Second collection, 1587) , clearly indicate the training he received. The period of apprenticeship ended by about 1590: then Monteverdi applied for a place as a violinist in the court orchestra of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga in Mantua and was accepted into the service.
Mantuan period. The service in Mantua brought the musician a lot of disappointments. Only in 1594 Monteverdi became cantor and only on May 6, 1601, after the departure of B. Pallavicino, he received the post of maestro della musica (master of music) of the Duke of Mantua. During this period (in 1595) he married the singer Claudia Cattaneo, who bore him two sons, Francesco and Massimiliano; Claudia died early (1607), and Monteverdi remained a widower for the rest of his days. In the first decade at the Mantuan court, Monteverdi accompanied the patron on his travels to Hungary (1595) and Flanders (1599). These years brought a rich harvest of five-part madrigals (Third collection, 1592; Fourth collection, 1603; Fifth collection, 1605). Many of the madrigals became famous long before they were printed. At the same time, these works caused a fit of anger in J.M. Artusi, a canon from Bologna, who criticized Monteverdi's composing techniques in a whole stream of poisonous articles and books (1602-1612). The composer responded to the attacks in the preface to the Fifth collection of madrigals and more extensively through the mouth of his brother Giulio Cesare in Dichiarazione (Explanation), this work was published as an appendix to Monteverdi's collection of compositions Musical Jokes (Scherzi musicali, 1607). In the course of the composer's polemics with critics, the concepts of "first practice" and "second practice" were introduced, denoting the old polyphonic style and the new monodic style. Monteverdi's creative evolution in the genre of opera began later, in February 1607, when the Legend of Orpheus (La Favola d "Orfeo) to the text of A. Strigio the Younger was completed. In this work, the composer remains faithful to the past and anticipates the future: Orpheus is a half-Renaissance interlude, half monodic opera; the monodic style had already been developed by that time in the Florentine Camerata (a group of musicians led by G. Bardi and G. Corsi, who worked together in Florence in 1600). Orpheus's score was published twice (1609 and 1615). Monteverdi's works in this genre were Ariadne (L "Arianna, 1608) and the opera-ballet Ballet of the Ungrateful (Il Ballo dell" ingrate, 1608) - both works based on texts by O. Rinuccini. published the old-style Mass In illo tempore (based on the motet of Gombert); in 1610 he added the Psalms of Vespers to it. In 1612 the Duke Vincenzo died, and his successor immediately y also dismissed Monteverdi and Giulio Cesare (July 31, 1612). For a while, the composer and his sons returned to Cremona, and exactly a year later (August 19, 1613) he was appointed head of the chapel (maestro di cappella) in the Venetian Cathedral of St. Brand.
Venetian period. This position (the most brilliant among those then available in Northern Italy) immediately relieved Monteverdi of the injustices he experienced during his mature years. He served in the honorary and well-paid post of cathedral conductor for three decades, and during this time, quite naturally, he switched to church genres. However, he did not abandon his opera projects: for example, for Mantua in 1627, the realistic comic opera Imaginary Madman (La finta pazza Licori) was created. This work has not survived, like most of Monteverdi's musical and dramatic works dating back to the last thirty years of his life. But a wonderful work has come down to us, which is a cross between an opera and an oratorio: The duel of Tancred and Clorindo (Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorindo), written in 1624 in Venice (published in the Eighth collection of madrigals, 1638), based on a scene from the poem T .Tasso Liberated Jerusalem, one of the composer's favorite poetry sources. In this work, for the first time, a new dramatic style (genere concitato) appears with an expressive use of tremolo and pizzicato techniques. The fall of Mantua in 1630 caused the loss of many of Monteverdi's autographs. The political upheaval caused by the struggle for the duchy after the death of the last of the Gonzaga dynasty (Vincenzo II died childless) also left traces in the composer's life (in particular, his son Massimiliano was arrested by the Inquisition for reading illegal books). The end of the plague epidemic in Venice was celebrated in the Cathedral of St. Mark on 28 November 1631 with a solemn mass with music by Monteverdi (lost). Soon after, Monteverdi apparently became a priest, as evidenced by the title page of the edition of his Musical Jokes (Scherzi musicali cio Arie e Madrigali in stile recitativo, 1632). The book, devoted to the problems of musical theory (melody), was written in the early 1630s, but little has survived from it, as well as from the operas of this period. In 1637 the first public opera house was opened in Venice under the direction of Monteverdi's friends and students B. Ferrari and F. Manelli. This event marked the beginning of the heyday of 17th century Venetian opera. For the first four Venetian opera houses, Monteverdi, who was then already in his eighties, wrote four operas (1639-1642), of which two survived: Return of Ulysses to the Fatherland (Il ritorno d "Ulisse in patria, 1640, on libretto by G. Badoaro) and Coronation of Poppea (L "Incoronazione di Poppea, 1642, libretto by J. Busenello). Not long before this, the composer had managed to print his madrigals, chamber duets and cantatas, as well as the best of his works in church genres, in two huge collections - Madrigals about war and love (Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi, Eighth collection of madrigals, 1638) and Selva morale e spirituale (Spiritual and moral wanderings, 1640). Soon after the publication of these collections, on November 29, 1643, the composer died in Venice, having still managed to make his last trip to the places where his youth passed, i.e. to Cremona and Mantua. His funeral service took place solemnly in both of the main churches of Venice - St. Mark and Santa Maria dei Frari. The remains of the composer were buried in the second of these temples (in the chapel of St. Ambrose). For about a decade, Monteverdi's music continued to excite his contemporaries and remained relevant. In 1651, a posthumous edition of his madrigals and canzonets (The Ninth Collection) and a significant collection of church music called the Four-Part Mass and Psalms (Messa a quattro e salmi) were published, edited by the publisher Monteverdi A.Vincenti. In the same year, a new production of the Coronation of Poppea was shown in Naples, significantly different from the production of 1642. After 1651, the great Cremene and his music were forgotten. The external appearance of Monteverdi is captured in two beautiful portraits: the first was reproduced in the official obituary in the book Poetic Flowers (Fiori poetici, 1644) - the face of an old man, with an expression of sadness and disappointment; another portrait was found in the Tyrolean Ferdinandeum Museum in Innsbruck, depicting Monteverdi in his mature years, when Orpheus and Ariadne were created.
Critical Assessment. The significance of Monteverdi's work is determined by three factors: he is the last madrigalist composer of the Renaissance; he is the first author of performed operas of the kind of genre that was characteristic of the early Baroque; finally, he is one of the most important composers of church music, since in his work stile antico (old style) of Palestrina is combined with stile nuovo (new style) of Gabrieli, i.e. the style is no longer polyphonic, but monodic, in need of the support of the orchestra.
Madrigalist. Palestrina began writing madrigals in the 1580s, during the heyday of this genre, and completed work on the sixth collection of madrigals (1614), containing five-part madrigals with obligatory basso continuo, i.e. quality defining the new concept of madrigal style. Many of the texts of the madrigals of Monteverdi are taken from pastoral comedies like Aminta Tasso or the Good Shepherd Guarini, and are scenes of idyllic love or bucolic passions that anticipate operatic scenes in the earliest examples of this new genre: the experiments of Peri and Caccini appeared in Florence ca. 1600.
Opera composer. The beginning of Monteverdi's operatic creativity is, as it were, hidden in the shadow of Florentine experiences, his early operas continue the tradition of the Renaissance sideshow with its large orchestra and choirs in the madrigal style or with polyphonically animated voices. However, already in the Ballet of the Ungrateful, the predominance of solo monody and ballet numbers in the sense of the French ballet de cour (court ballet of the 17th century) is palpable. In the dramatic scene of the Duel of Tasso, the accompanying orchestra is reduced to a string quintet, and picturesque tremolo and pizzicato techniques are used to transfer the clanging of weapons in the hands of the battling Tancred and Clorinda. The composer's latest operas reduce orchestral accompaniment to a minimum and focus on the expressiveness of virtuoso singing. The vocal coloratura and the da capo aria are about to appear, and the psalmodic recitative of the Florentine Camerata changes and enriches dramatically, anticipating the achievements in this area of Gluck and Wagner.
Church music. The ecclesiastical music of Monteverdi has always been characterized by ambiguity: polyphonic pastichos are here side by side with theatrically colorful interpretations of the psalms; it is felt that many pages were written by the hand of an opera composer.
Revival of Monteverdi's creativity. The composer's music remained in oblivion until the 19th century, when it was rediscovered by K. von Winterfeld (1834). Beginning around the 1880s, German and Italian scholars competed to revive and re-evaluate Monteverdi's personality and work; this movement culminated with the publication of the first complete collection of surviving works by Monteverdi edited by J.F. Malipiero (1926-1942), H.F. Redlich's book On the History of the Madrigal (1932) and its edition with commentary for the Vespers 1610 (1949).
LITERATURE
Konen V.D. Monteverdi. M., 1971
Collier's Encyclopedia. - Open Society. 2000 .
Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona. Only the date of his baptism is known for sure - May 15, 1567. Cremona is a North Italian city that has long been renowned as a university and musical center with an excellent church chapel and extremely high instrumental culture. In the 16th-17th centuries, whole families of famous Cremona masters - Amati, Guarneri, Stradivari - made bowed instruments, the beauty of which was unparalleled and nowhere else.
The composer's father was a physician, he himself may have received a university education and, in his youth, developed not only as a musician, skilled in singing, playing the viola, organ and composing sacred songs, madrigals and canzonetas, but also as an artist of a very broad outlook and humanistic views. He was taught to compose by the then famous composer Marc Antonio Ingeniern, who served as the conductor of the Cremona Cathedral.
In the 1580s, Monteverdi lived in Milan, from where, at the invitation of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, he, twenty-three years old, went to the Mantuan court as a singer and virtuoso on viola. Subsequently (from 1601) he became the court bandmaster at Gonzaga. Documentary materials, and, above all, the composer's own correspondence, tell us that his life was far from sweet there; he suffered from despotism and greed of his patrons, who overbearingly and pettyly took care of his work and doomed him to a forced existence. "I would rather beg for alms than be subjected to such humiliation again," he wrote later. Nevertheless, it was in these difficult conditions that Monteverdi finally emerged as a mature and outstanding master - the creator of the works that immortalized his name. The improvement of his art was facilitated by everyday work with the excellent ensembles of the court chapel and the church of St. Barbara, wandering around Europe in the Gonzaga retinue in Hungary, Flanders, communication with prominent contemporaries, among whom were such brilliant artists as, for example, Rubens. But a particularly important factor in progress was for Monteverdi his inherent modesty, tireless work and extremely strict exactingness to his own compositions. In the 1580s and 1600s, the first five books of beautiful madrigals in a five-part warehouse were written in Cremona, Milan and Mantua.
The significance of this genre in the formation of the creative method and the entire artistic personality of the master was enormous. The point is not only that in the heritage of Monteverdi the madrigal quantitatively dominates over others (there are about two hundred works on the texts of Tasso, Marina, Guarini, Strigio and other poets). It was this genre that became a creative laboratory for Monteverdi, where, in his youth, he undertook the most daring innovative undertakings. In the chromatization of the harmony, he significantly outstripped the madrigalists of the 16th century, without falling, however, into subjectivist sophistication. A huge progressive acquisition of Monteverdi was the brilliantly accomplished fusion of Renaissance polyphony and a new homophonic warehouse - a dramatically individualized melody of various types with instrumental accompaniment. This, according to the composer's own definition, "the second practice", which found full and vivid expression in the fifth book of five-part madrigals, became the path to achieving the artist's highest aesthetic goal, to the search and embodiment of truth and humanity. Therefore, unlike, say, Palestrina, with its religious and aesthetic ideals, Monteverdi, although it began its path with cult polyphony, eventually established itself in purely secular genres.
Nothing attracted him more than the exposure of the inner, mental world of a person in his dramatic collisions and conflicts with the outside world. Monteverdi is the true founder of the conflict drama of a tragic plan. He is a true singer of human souls. He persistently strove for the natural expressiveness of music. "Human speech is the ruler of harmony, and not its servant." Monteverdi is a decisive opponent of idyllic art, which does not go further than the sound painting of "cupids, marshmallows and sirens." And since his hero is a tragic hero, his “melopoetic figures” are distinguished by an acutely tense, often dissonant intonation structure. Naturally, this powerful dramatic beginning, the further, the more closely it became within the boundaries of the chamber genre. Gradually Monteverdi came to distinguish between "madrigal of gestures" and "madrigal of non-gesticulated".
But even earlier, dramatic searches led him to the path of the opera house, where he immediately performed fully armed with a “second practice” with the first Mantuan operas Orpheus (1607) and Ariadne (1608), which brought him resounding fame.
With his "Orpheus" the history of true opera begins. Designed for a typical court festivities, Orpheus is written in a libretto clearly associated with the fairytale pastoral and sumptuous decorative interludes - these are typical attributes of court aesthetics. But Monteverdi's music transforms a hedonistic fairytale pastoral into a deep psychological drama. The seeming pastoral is characterized by such an expressive, individually unique music, fanned by the poetic atmosphere of the mournful madrigal, that it still affects us to this day.
"... Ariadne touched because she was a woman, Orpheus - because he is a simple man ... Ariadne aroused true suffering in me, together with Orpheus I prayed for pity ..." his own creativity, and the main essence of the revolution he made in art. The idea of the ability of music to embody the "wealth of the inner world of man" during Monteverdi's life was not only not a hackneyed truth, but was perceived as something unheard of, new, revolutionary. For the first time in a thousand-year era, earthly human experiences were at the center of the composer's work of a truly classical level.
The music of the opera is focused on revealing the inner world of the tragic hero. His part is unusually multifaceted, various emotionally expressive currents and genre lines merge in it. He enthusiastically appeals to his native forests and coasts, or mourns the loss of his Eurydice in the artless songs of the folk style.
In recitative dialogues, Orpheus's passionate remarks are written in that agitated, in Monteverdi's later expression, “confused” style, which he deliberately contrasted with the monotonous recitative of the Florentine opera. The image of the hero, his inspired art, happy love and bereavement, his sacrificial feat and achievement of the goal, the tragic denouement and the final Olympic triumph of the singer - all this is poetically embodied against the background of contrasting musical and stage pictures.
Throughout the opera, melodious melodies are scattered with a generous hand, always in tune with the appearance of the characters and stage positions. The composer does not neglect polyphony at all and from time to time weaves his tunes into an elegant counterpoint fabric. Nevertheless, the homophonic structure predominates in Orpheus, the score of which literally sparkles with bold and most precious finds of chromatic harmonies, colorful and at the same time deeply justified by the figurative and psychological content of this or that episode of the drama.
The Orpheus Orchestra was huge at that time and even excessively diverse in composition, it reflected the transition period when many people were still playing on old instruments inherited from the Renaissance and even from the Middle Ages, but when new instruments appeared that responded to the new emotional order, warehouse, musical themes and expressive possibilities.
Orpheus's instrumentation is always aesthetically consonant with the melody, harmonic color, and stage situation. The instruments that accompany the singer's monologue in the underworld are reminiscent of his most skillful lyre playing. In the pastoral scenes of the flute, the ingenuous melodies of shepherd's tunes are intertwined. The roar of trombones thickens the atmosphere of fear that envelops the joyless and formidable Hades. Monteverdi is the true father of instrumentation, and in this sense, Orpheus is a fundamental opera. As for the second operatic work, written by Monteverdi in Mantua, "Ariadne" (libretto by O. Rinuccini, recitative by J. Peri), it has not survived. An exception is the world-famous aria of the heroine, which the composer left in two versions for singing solo with accompaniment and in a later version - in the form of a five-part madrigal. This aria is of rare beauty and is rightfully considered a masterpiece of early Italian opera.
In 1608, Monteverdi, long weighed down by his position at the ducal court, left Mantua. He did not bow before his power-hungry patrons and remained a proud, independent artist, carrying the banner of human art high. After a short stay in his homeland in Cremona, Rome, Florence, Milan, Monteverdi accepted an invitation to Venice in 1613, where the procurators of San Marco chose him as the conductor of this cathedral.
In Venice, Monteverdi was to perform at the head of a new opera school. She was in many ways different from her predecessors and far ahead of them. This was due to different local conditions, a different historical relationship between social forces and ideological currents.
Venice of that era - a city with a republican structure, a deposed aristocracy, with a rich, politically strong, cultured bourgeoisie and daring opposition to the papal throne. The Venetians in the Renaissance created their art, more secular, cheerful, realistic than anywhere else on Italian soil. Here, in music from the end of the 16th century, the first features and forerunners of the Baroque have grown especially widely and vividly. The first opera house of San Cassiano was opened in Venice in 1637.
It was not an "academy" for a narrow circle of enlightened humanist aristocrats, as in Florence. Here the Pope and his court had no power over art. She was replaced by the power of money. The Venetian bourgeoisie built a theater for itself in its own image and in its likeness it became a commercial enterprise. The cash register became the source of income. Following San Cassiano, other theaters grew up in Venice, more than ten in total. The inevitable competition between them also appeared, the struggle for the audience, artists, income. All this commercial and entrepreneurial side has left its mark on the opera and theatrical art. And at the same time, it first became dependent on the tastes of the general public. This was reflected in its scope, repertoire, staging part, and finally, in the style of opera music itself.
Monteverdi's work was a culmination and a powerful factor in the progress of Italian opera. True, Venice did not bring him complete freedom from addiction. He arrived there as the choir director of the vocal-instrumental chapel of San Marco. He wrote cult music - masses, vespers, sacred concerts, motets, and the church, religion inevitably influenced him. It has already been said above that, being by nature a secular artist, he accepted death in the clergy.
For a number of years before the heyday of the Venetian opera house, Monteverdi was forced to serve patrons here too, though not as powerful and omnipotent as in Milan or Mantua. The palaces of Mocenigo and Grimani, Vendramini and Foscari were luxuriously decorated not only with paintings, statues, tapestries, but also with music. The Chapel of San Marco often performed here at balls and receptions during times free from church services. Along with Plato's dialogues, Petrarch's canzons, Marina's sonnets, art lovers were fond of Monteverdi's madrigals. He did not abandon this beloved genre in the Venetian period and it was then that he achieved the highest perfection in it.
In Venice, the sixth, seventh and eighth books of madrigals were written, a genre in which Monteverdi experimented before his last operas were composed. But the Venetian madrigals also had great independent significance. In 1838, an interesting collection of "Warlike and Love Madrigals" appeared. It showed the artist's deep psychological observation; the musical and poetic dramatization of the madrigal was brought there to the last possible limit at that time. This collection also includes some of the earlier works "Ungrateful Women" - an interlude of the Mantuan period and the famous "Combat of Tancred and Clorinda" - a magnificent dramatic scene, written in 1624 on a plot from "Jerusalem Liberated" by Tasso, intended to be performed with theatrical costumes and props.
During his thirty years in Venice, Monteverdi created most of his musical and dramatic works for theatrical or chamber stage performances.
As for the operas themselves, Monteverdi has only eight of them, "Orpheus", "Ariadne", "Andromeda" (for Mantua), "The Imaginary Mad Licori" - one of the first comic operas in Italy, "The Rape of Proserpine", "The Wedding of Aeneas and Lavinia ”,“ The Return of Ulysses to the Homeland ”and“ The Crowning of Poppea ”. Of the Venetian operas, only the last two have survived.
Monteverdi's most significant work of the Venetian period was The Crowning of Poppea (1642), completed shortly before he died at the zenith of his fame as the "oracle of music" on November 29, 1643. This opera, created by the composer when he was seventy-five years old, not only crowns his own creative path, but rises immensely above everything that was created in the opera genre before Gluck. The thoughts that gave birth to her courage and inspiration are unexpected at such an old age. The gap between The Coronation of Poppea and all of Monteverdi's previous work is striking and inexplicable. This applies to a lesser extent to music itself. The origins of the musical language of "Poppea" can be traced in the searches of the entire previous, more than half a century, period. But the general artistic appearance of the opera, unusual both for the work of Monteverdi himself and for the musical theater of the 17th century in general, is decisively predetermined by the originality of the plot and dramatic concept. In terms of the completeness of the embodiment of the truth of life, the breadth and versatility of showing complex human relationships, the authenticity of psychological conflicts, the severity of posing moral problems, none of the composer's other works that have come down to us can compare with The Coronation of Poppea.
The composer and his talented librettist Francesco Busenello turned to a plot from ancient Roman history, using the chronicles of the ancient writer Tacitus, the emperor Nero, in love with the courtesan Poppea Sabina, elevates her to the throne, expelling the former empress Octavia and betraying the enemy of this philosopher, Seneca, his mentor.
This picture is written broadly, multifaceted, dynamically. On the stage - the imperial court, its nobles, sage adviser, pages, courtesans, servants, praetorians. The musical characteristics of the characters, opposed to each other, are psychologically accurate and notable. In fast and multifaceted action, in colorful and unexpected combinations, various plans and poles of life are embodied tragic monologues - and almost banal scenes from nature; rampant passions - and philosophical contemplation; aristocratic sophistication - and the artlessness of folk life and customs.
Monteverdi has never been in the center of fashion, never enjoyed the same widespread popularity as that which fell to the lot of some of the more "moderate" composers of madrigals, and later composers of "light" canzonets and arias. He was so independent of the views and tastes of his contemporaries, so much broader than them in his artistic psychology, that he equally accepted the old, polyphonic and new, monodic writing.
Today it is indisputable that it is Monteverdi who is “the founder of modern music”. It was in the work of Monteverdi that the structure of artistic thinking that is characteristic of our era was formed.