The Music Scene

Alinda's and Besso's scene is the locus of yet another of the operatic conventions in Giasone , what we might call a topical convention: the topic is music. One of the most humorous exchanges in the scene consists of a series of allusions to music and to singing. They are completely gratuitous, without the slightest relevance to the plot (example 59). Although it is treated with dispatch here, in just a few lines of recitative and appropriate musical expansion, culminating in the duet "Non più guerra" (example 53 above), the topic of music—and song as song—is exploited extensively in many operas of this period.

Songs, as we know, although frequently interpolated in spoken drama, acquired a special significance within the context of opera as a kind of test of the basic premise of the genre: the distinction between speech and song. Whereas the earliest librettists and composers tended to introduce songs quite self-consciously in their operas, often specifically as excuses for formal music, their successors continued to enjoy the song as a special convention well into the second half of the century, when the standards of operatic verisimilitude had long since yielded to accommodate the formal aria as a normal means of communication. Song may have justified musical organization and expansion in

[22] The fact that the two arias share the same tonality, F major, may be coincidental; on the other hand, it may suggest a connection between tonality and affect. Also coincidentally, perhaps, the bass of Legrenzi's ritornello exactly replicates the melodic line of Sartorio's aria.

early opera, but it became an excuse later for other kinds of liberties: for more elaborate arias or for scenic extravagances involving several arias in succession. Many operas featured singers as characters and found opportunities for elaborate scenes involving musical performance in the plot itself.^[23]

Seleuco (Minato/Sartorio, 1666) contains a particularly effective music scene in which the court singer attempts to find the proper song to suit the mood of the love-sick hero Antioco. He begins two unsuitable ones, finally succeeding on the third try. The composer, of course, capitalizes on the conceit of beginnings and interruptions. And the scene reaches an appropriately self-conscious climax when Antioco literally repeats all three strophes of the song that pleases him as a sign of his approbation (example 60).^[24] Another effective exploitation of the music scene is one in Aureli's and Sartorio's Orfeo that takes place in Orfeo's music room (2.13). Here Achille explains that he is studying music and, when asked to sing, sits down at the harpsichord to accompany himself in an aria, "Cupido, fra le piante." The conceit is carried even further as Achille's audience, noticing a peculiar intensity in his song, begins to suspect that his aria is not merely a ditty about love but an expression of his actual feelings.^[25]

Songs, sung by "singers," were often different from normal arias: they could be more elaborate and more expansive, such as those sung by Chirone, Acchille's music teacher; or more repetitive, such as the one in example 60; or else they could be longer, like Miralba's song in Medoro (Aureli/Lucio, 1658) 2.5, which comprises three rather than the normal two strophes—the third, however, being quite realistically interrupted as the string on Miralba's lute breaks.^[26] Songs also tend to call for special accompanying instruments played by the singers themselves, like Miralba's lute and Acchille's harpsichord, or like the theorbo used by the nurse Nisbe to accompany her lullaby in Eliogabalo (Aureli/Boretti, 1668) 1.11. Formal irregularities, such as breaking off in the middle, often emphasize the artificiality of these songs, helping to distinguish them from "normal" arias. Indeed, most songs are conceived with a special awareness of the conventions of aria, and they are specifically constructed to extend or counteract those conventions.

[23] This topos had scenographic implications as well. It falls in Ménestrier's category of "academic" scene: "Les [Decorations] Academiques sont les Bibliotheques, les cabinets des Sçavans avec des Livres et des Instrumens de Mathematique, un cabinet d'antiques, une Ecole de peinture, etc" (Representations en musique anciennes et modernes , 173-74 [Quellentexte , ed. Becker, 87]).

[24] This scene bears a striking resemblance to those cantatas by Cesti and Barbara Strozzi that concern themselves with the appropriateness of various songs to different moods. See Rosand, "Barbara Strozzi," 271 and n. 97; Bianconi, "Il cinquecento e il seicento," 355-56; and Murata, "Singing about Singing," 374-82.

[25] See Orfeo , ed. Rosand, 95-96.

[26] The composer inexplicably fails to do justice to Aureli's text here; he sets the third strophe to new music, thereby missing the opportunity of interrupting an already established tune. See Medoro , ed. Morelli and Walker, 91-94.