References

^[*]Tim Carter (cartert@email.unc.edu) is David G. Frey Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published widely on music in late Renaissance and early Baroque Italy.

^[1] For the reasons behind Monteverdi’s rather complex relations with the Gonzagas after his move to Venice, and his intermittent responses to their requests for music, see Tim Carter, “Monteverdi and Some Problems of Biography,” Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 18 (2012): par. 4.6, https://sscm-jscm.org/jscm-issues/volume-18-no-1/monteverdi-and-some-problems-of-biography/.

^[2] Denis Stevens, ed., The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 316; compare Claudio Monteverdi, Lettere, ed. Éva Lax, Studi e testi per la storia della musica 10 (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 151. Lax’s edition and Stevens’s translation are my sources for other Monteverdi letters cited here (with minor modifications for the sake of consistency), to which reference is made by date. I give the Italian only when it matters for my argument.

^[3] Stevens translates “mando il presente Narciso, opera del Signor Ottavio Rinuccini, non posto in istanpa, non fatto in musica da alcuno, né mai recitato in scena” as “I am sending you the enclosed Narciso, a play by Signor Ottavio Rinuccini, which has never been set to music, or actually produced.”

^[4] For the chronology, and doubts over how much, if any, of Strozzi’s libretto was actually set to music, see Gary Tomlinson, “Twice Bitten, Thrice Shy: Monteverdi’s ‘finta’ Finta pazza,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 36, no. 2 (1983): 303–11.

^[5] Armida has been known from Monteverdi’s letters; see also Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi, trans. Tim Carter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 199–205. However, new information on it is provided in Daniela Sogliani, “La Serenissima e il Ducato: arte, diplomazia e mercato nel carteggio tra Venezia e Mantova (1613–1630)” (PhD diss., University of Verona, 2017), 594. Sogliani transcribes Rapallini’s letter to Striggio of 19 February 1628 that accompanied the score, in which the singer also requests that he be considered for the role of Ubaldo given that he has already digested it very well on a previous occasion (“et se occorresse a caso … che nella Armida facesse bisogno la parte di Ubaldo, quale ho digesta benissimo in altro tempo, Vostra Signoria Illustrissima mi commandi ch’io lo riceverò per singolarissimo et segnalatissimo favore”). This would seem to mean that Rapallini had sung the role at some performance.

^[6] Both texts were included in the posthumous edition of Rinuccini’s Poesie produced by his son, Pierfrancesco (Florence: I Giunti, 1622), at pp. 55 (“Volgendo”/“Movete”) and 115–19 (“Ogni amante è guerrier”); the latter also makes direct reference to Henri IV. The dedication of this edition is dated 4 January 1622 stile fiorentino; it appeared in early 1623. Other of the Rinuccini texts in Monteverdi’s Eighth Book include Non havea Febo ancora (Poesie, 223–24; containing the central Lamento della ninfa), with other musical settings dating back at least to 1614, and the Ballo delle ingrate from 1608 but with subsequent revisions for a performance in Vienna in the mid-1630s; see Steven Saunders, “New Light on the Genesis of Monteverdi’s Eighth Book of Madrigals,” Music and Letters 77, no. 2 (1996): 183–93. Monteverdi’s later publications also include the poet’s Zefiro torna, e di soavi accenti (“soavi ordori” in Rinuccini’s sonnet) in the 1632 Scherzi musicali, and the dialogue, Bel pastor dal cui bel guardo, in the posthumous Ninth Book of madrigals (1651).

^[7] My translation here probably gets closer to the meaning than the one by Denis Stevens quoted earlier (“I have had a go at it several times, and turned it over to some extent in my mind”).

^[8] See Tim Carter, “Winds, Cupids, Little Zephyrs, and Sirens: Monteverdi and Le nozze di Tetide (1616–17),” Early Music 39, no. 4 (2011): 489–502. But for a while, Monteverdi had hold of the wrong end of the stick: he was somewhat happier when he was told that Agnelli’s libretto was for a set of intermedi (in fact, a veglia).

^[9] I-Fas Mediceo del Principato 5140, fol. 11: “Se il signor Claudio Monteverde viene a farle reverenza come io penso, la prego a farli conoscere, ch’io son grato servitore di Vostra Eccellenza, e amicissimo suo, ammiratore delle sue virtù.” The letter then continues with gossip from Florence. Despite the grammatical ambiguity, the suo and sue almost certainly apply to Monteverdi. I am grateful to Francesca Fantappiè for bringing this document to my attention.

^[10] I use the term “libretto” here and below merely for convenience (to mean an extended dramatic text intended or used for music-theatrical setting). It is no less anachronistic than the term “opera.” Rinuccini would have considered himself writing favole (… in musica), tragedie, etc.

^[11] In “Al suon di questa cetera” in Rinuccini, Poesie (1622), 134–54, at pp. 136–37: “Dolce cantando dicole / d’un giovane ingratissimo / che dentr’un fonte limpido / prese a mirar sua imagine. // … // Poi dissi com’in albero / vidde sua beltà chiudere / Ninfa, ch’alpestre e rigida / sprez[z]ò del Sol le lagrime.” The text is in four-line stanzas.

^[12] Compare Gary A. Tomlinson, “Ancora su Ottavio Rinuccini,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 28, no. 2 (1975): 351–56, at p. 353 n. 13: Narciso “must be considered the least dramatically effective of Rinuccini’s four favole, though it outstrips the others in lyric beauty.” For Lorenzo Mattei, on the other hand, the problems of Narciso derive from its adherence to the canons of Renaissance tragedy, and from the long narrative episodes (which are indeed an issue, we shall see); “Il melodramma allo specchio: Il mito di Narciso nelle intonazioni dell’opera barocca,” in Gli incanti di Narciso: Archetipi, seduzioni, distopie; la genesi di un mito e le sue visioni contemporanee, ed. Raffaele Girardi and Rosa Affatato (Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2020), 20–42, at pp. 21–24.

^[13] This is the reading in Francesca Chiarelli, “(Dis)regarding the Practicalities: An Investigation into Monteverdi’s Response to Rinuccini’s Narciso,” in The Influence of Italian Entertainments on Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Music Theatre in France, Savoy, and England, ed. Marie-Claude Canova-Green and Francesca Chiarelli (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 37–49. Chiarelli extends the argument to Rinuccini’s somehow trying, but failing, to reconcile various conflicting aesthetic, political, and social tensions of his period.

^[14] My edition presented in Appendix 1 is the source for all my references to, and quotations from, the libretto, although line numbers in the now superseded version in Angelo Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 3 vols. (Milan: Sandron, 1904; reprint Bologna: Forni, 1976), 2: 189–239, are provided for the sake of convenience (in the format S: 00–00).

^[15] Available at https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Barb.lat.3987. For obvious pandemic reasons, I have not been able to examine in situ any of the manuscripts discussed here, but the points I make about them are clear enough from their reproductions.

^[16] Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 2: 347–53 (Vittori was “il castrato del Doni”). For Vittori in Florence and elsewhere, see Orietta Sartori, “Loreto Vittori, cantore gentiluomo: nuove acquisizioni e osservazioni sulla formazione e sui primi anni di attività,” I quaderni del San Pietro a Majella 3 (2022): 11–31.

^[17] In one case, Rinuccini’s insertions prompted the removal of one folio from V1; his expansion of the end of Episode I (with the addition of Scene 3) meant that he took out his original fol. 5, which probably included Filli’s last line prior to the final chorus (to judge by the catchword at the foot of fol. 4v).

^[18] For example, fol. 8v (II.1; V2) lacks character labels for each speech. Some were added later in the margin, but not for ll. 325–27 (S: 283–85; Elpino) or ll. 328–30 (S: 286–88; Ninfa). Line 325 (S: 283) at the top of fol. 8v has the marginal annotation to check who speaks (“vedi chi parla”)—for the page as a whole, it seems—in what appears to be a different hand also found elsewhere in similar annotations in V1. For other variations in the character assignations in this scene, see the notes in Appendix 1, pp. 15–17.

^[19] This copy of Narciso was created as a separate manuscript: original folio numbers are given for fols. 69r–90r (2–23; fol. 2r is the beginning of Episode I); however, the copyist must have known that this manuscript was intended for insertion in a larger collection given that those original folio numbers are at the top left of the page rather than the top right. The last two folios (91–92) do not have any such numbering; presumably they were somehow paired with the first two unnumbered folios containing the character-list (fol. 67r) and prologue (fol. 68r–v). There is a separate title page (now fol. 66r): “IL / NARCISO / del / Sig[no]re Ottavio Rinuccini.” At some point an addition was made to line 2: “e VARIE POESIE.” Details of that additional poetry are then given in a list below the original title. Folio 92v, the last page of Narciso, has a date/time at its foot (“Adì 12 maggio 1640 / h[ore] 15” [the “5” is a correction to “4,” or perhaps vice versa]), which one assumes is when the copying was finished.

^[20] The first section of Magl. VII.902 (fols. 1–64v) contains Jacopo Soldani’s Satire. Cavalcanti is identified as the copyist of the entire manuscript in Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, Catalogo generale dei manoscritti Magliabechiani (MS in I-Fn, available on the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/sala-mss-cat.-45-class.-vii/mode/2up, at p. 414), but this does not seem to be correct. However, Cavalcanti’s initials are certainly present on the title page that precedes Narciso in the manuscript, which lists its subsequent contents, and he may have provided the list of works following Narciso given on that page.

^[21] Danilo Boggini, “Per una edizione critica delle Poesie di Ottavio Rinuccini,” Rivista di letteratura italiana 19, nos. 2–3 (2001): 11–60, at pp. 18–19. The private collection of Principe Luigi Alberico Trivulzio was acquired by the city of Milan in 1935 and incorporated into I-Mt. It suffered badly from wartime bombing.

^[22] Ottavio Rinuccini, Il Narciso, favola in musica … non mai prima d’ora stampata, ed. Luigi Maria Rezzi (Rome: Vincenzo Poggioli, 1829).

^[23] One exception is Chiarelli, “(Dis)regarding the Practicalities,” which takes F as its source, but without noting its differences.

^[24] Differences between F (the source for Appendix 1) and V or S are not noted in this essay unless they matter—therefore lines quoted here will sometimes differ from S—but full details are given in my edition.

^[25] For a preliminary attempt, see Boggini, “Per un’edizione critica delle Poesie di Ottavio Rinuccini.”

^[26] This is odd; in general V1 is very clean, save for the correction of obvious copying errors made at the time, or in just one case (Appendix 1, l. 872), an actual revision.

^[27] Take for example, the repeated references to cruel animals in foreign lands (di Libia o di Lerna) in ll. 502 and 704 (S: 460, 687). There are several such cases in the text where phrases are oddly repeated, or speeches incorrectly assigned. As an example of the latter, see ll. 924–26 (S: 879–99), which are given to Lidia in V, despite the instruction to her in l. 930 (S: 903). In this case, F made the necessary correction. The first printed libretto of Euridice has some similar “errors” that were corrected in Peri’s score.

^[28] Francesca Fantappiè, “Una primizia rinucciniana: la ‘Dafne’ prima della ‘miglior forma’,” Il Saggiatore musicale 24, no. 2 (2017): 189–222. Rinuccini said in the dedication to his Euridice (Florence: Cosimo Giunti, 1600) that this first version of Dafne was done “per far una semplice prova di quello, che potesse il canto dell’età nostra”; he goes on to note that he then gave it a “better form” (“e dato miglior forma alla stessa favola”) prior to subsequent performances.

^[29] These revisions, and how they probably came about, are discussed extensively in Tim Carter and Francesca Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice”: Theatre, Sets, and Music in Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), chap. 3.

^[30] The best edition of the libretto of Arianna is now in Silvia Urbani, Il teatro di Claudio Monteverdi: spettacoli di corte e di palazzo (Florence: Olschki, 2023), 31–63. I unpick some of the bibliographical problems of its early printing history, plus the revisions made to the text for the later Venice performance, in Tim Carter, “Monteverdi’s Arianna: From Mantua (1608) to Venice (1640) and Back,” Il Saggiatore musicale 30, no. 2 (2023): 159–91.

^[31] Tim Carter, “Lamenting Ariadne?” Early Music 27, no. 3 (1999): 395–405. The final shape of Arianna was also influenced by the early death of the singer intended for the title role, Caterina Martinelli, and her replacement by the renowned singer-actress Virginia Andreini (which was probably the principal reason for the addition, if it was one, of the lament).

^[32] For the terminology (“episode”) and its consequences, see Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice”, 131. None of the contemporary sources explicitly divides these librettos into numbered parts (“acts” or whatever), although the strophic choruses tend to make things clear. Solerti erred in dividing Euridice into six scenes (because of the entrance of Orfeo and Euridice in the middle of Episode V). Dafne is more complicated. Its “first” version had four episodes (plus the prologue); see Fantappiè, “Una primizia rinucciana,” 203. However, Fantappiè notes five choruses here, although the first of them is probably the equivalent of Aristotle’s “parodos” (the first entrance of the chorus after the prologue), while those ending Episodes II and III, if they are “choruses” at all, are not strophic in what would become Rinuccini’s typical manner. The 1599 version retained four episodes, but each of them ended with a strophic chorus. For Marco da Gagliano’s setting performed in 1608, additional choruses were added.

^[33] Compare the chart in Tim Carter, “Monteverdi, Early Opera and a Question of Genre: The Case of Andromeda (1620),” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 137, no. 1 (2012): 1–34, at pp. 21–23. Absent that added first scene for Venere and Amore, the strophic chorus (“Se d’Ismeno in su la riva”) at the beginning of “Scene 2” would have been another parodos. But again, Solerti’s division of Arianna into eight scenes missed the structural point.

^[34] Rinuccini realized the problem in the case of Arianna. On 20 December 1607 he wrote to Alessandro Striggio noting how the text was growing to the extent of needing great performers, and that while he would not dare to call it the most beautiful of his librettos, it was certainly longer than his others (“La Favola mi cresce di maniera che ha bisogno di gran personaggi, per esser non dico la più bella, che le mie non meritano questo titolo, ma più grande dell’altre”); see Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 1: 89–90. Rinuccini goes on to discuss possible performers and matters of staging.

^[35] So Alessandro Guidotti noted in the preface to Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo (Rome: Nicolò Mutii, 1600), also advocating a simple style with a preference for shorter line-lengths (not just seven-syllable lines but also five- and eight-syllable ones) with occasional versi sdruccioli. Alessandro Striggio’s libretto for Monteverdi’s Orfeo has 667 lines (plus 20 lines for the prologue), and Monteverdi did not set all of them. For other comparisons of lengths of librettos, see Carter, “Monteverdi, Early Opera and a Question of Genre,” 19–20.

^[36] Those numbers (at the foot of fol. 32r) seem broken down into six segments, although they do not correlate in any obvious way with the text in V1.

^[37] As with “act,” the term “scene” is problematic as well. Both V and F separate the text by way of rubrics listing the characters present on stage, therefore noting the entrances and exits that in later dramatic works conventionally distinguish one “scene” from another. However, Solerti numbers these scenes accordingly within each of his acts (my episodes), and it makes sense to continue to do so.

^[38] In V1, the Coro di Cacciatori speaks only in Episode V, scene 1 (and there could be just two hunters). It is a silent presence briefly in its first scene of Episode II (II.2 in V2), and is also marked as present in Episode V, scene 2, although here it does not seem to speak (Rinuccini’s “Choro” assignations are ambiguous but appear to refer only to the nymphs). V2 added Episode II, scene 1, with a song for the Coro di Cacciatori as an ensemble (and precisely in the manner of the Coro di Soldati in Arianna).

^[39] Monteverdi’s wording (“me ne fece grazia dela copia”) is ambiguous in terms of whether Rinuccini gave him the copy of Narciso in person or not.

^[40] For a possible exception, with Monteverdi present in Florence for the 1600 wedding festivities, see Tim Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 38. His first opera, Orfeo (1607), owes clear debts both to the libretto of Euridice and to Jacopo Peri’s score, but probably by way of their printed sources.

^[41] Rinuccini had already used a version of this particular stanza in a prologue (delivered by La Musica) that he wrote for a performance of Dafne in Florence, probably in February 1611, although in one version of that text, he replaced the reference to Il rapimento di Cefalo (done in the 1600 wedding festivities in Florence, with a text by Gabriello Chiabrera and music by Caccini and others) with one to his own Arianna; see Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 2: 103–4. The claim that Caccini composed a setting of Dafne is troublesome, given that there is scant evidence that he in fact did so; for the problem and a possible solution, see Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice”, 45–46.

^[42] Christine retained the title of Grand Duchess after the death of her husband, Grand Duke Ferdinando I, in 1609. Maria Magdalena of Austria, the wife of his successor, Grand Duke Cosimo II, was consistently addressed as “Serenissima Arciduchessa,” while Christine was usually “Serenissima Madama.”

^[43] Rinuccini tends to use Pindo for Pindar (rather than Pindaro), presumably for metrical reasons. He also uses terms such as “royal” (and “queen,” etc.) for the Medici ruling family even if it did not quite warrant them.

^[44] The second-eldest son, Francesco (b. 1594), died in 1614, and the third, Carlo (b. 1596), was already destined for the Church (he became a cardinal in 1615). The other surviving son, Lorenzo (b. 1599), remained unmarried.

^[45] These negotiations can be tracked by way of the documents relating to Eleonora in the Medici Archive Project (https://www.medici.org/). In late 1615, both she and Caterina were also being considered as possible brides for Vittorio Amedeo of Savoy, heir to the duchy (who married Christine of France, a daughter of Henri IV and Maria de’ Medici, in February 1619), but by this time, Caterina had already been promised to Ferdinando Gonzaga (whose resignation as cardinal on the grounds of his assumption to the Mantuan throne was accepted on 16 November 1615). Previously, however, negotiations had taken place for either Eleonora or Caterina (with the latter preferred) to marry Henry, Prince of Wales, prior to his untimely death in November 1612.

^[46] Angelo Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte medicea dal 1600 al 1637: notizie tratte da un diario con appendice di testi inediti e rari (Florence, 1905; reprint New York: Broude, 1968; reprint Bologna: Forni, 1989), 112–19.

^[47] Kelley Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 282–86.

^[48] For the sequence of events, see Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 120–24.

^[49] Renée and Christine of Lorraine were fourth-generation descendants of René II, Duke of Lorraine (1451–1508), i.e., their great-grandfathers were brothers. She was also called Renée de Mayenne after her father, Charles de Guise, Duke of Mayenne, or as the Italians mangled it, Renata d’Umeno and Arnea di Loreno (hence the inconsistent names in Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 73–74). Rinuccini’s Mascherata di ninfe di Senna adapted and extended a balletto he had devised for performance in the Palazzo Pitti in early 1611.

^[50] See the summary of the Descrizione della barriera, e della mascherata, fatte in Firenze a’ XVII et a’ XIX di febbraio MDCXII (Florence: Bartolomeo Sermartelli “e fratelli,” 1613) in Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 69–72 (but Solerti identifies the wrong Cicognini, i.e., his son, Giacinto Andrea). That description was dedicated by Giovanni Villifranchi (the principal poet of the event) to Federico Della Rovere (the future husband of Claudia de’ Medici), although contrary to what some have assumed, Federico was not present.

^[51] Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 119, transcribes the record of the court chronicler, Cesare Tinghi (the appointment was “per avere composto le poesie di vari balli a cavallo et altre feste fatte per i tempi adrieto”). All the entertainments for Federico Della Rovere are discussed in Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 112–19. Salvadori had already provided the texts for another balletto a cavallo, Guerra d’Amore, on 11 February 1616 (the last Thursday of Carnival; Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 102).

^[52] Two versions of this prologue are given in Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 2: 103–4. It is generally assumed that the Dafne performed here was the setting by Marco da Gagliano first done in Mantua in early 1608; certainly, a surviving copy of Gagliano’s printed score (now in I-Fn Mus. Ant. 36) has annotations indicating a specific Florentine performance in this period (given the singers named, including male ones), as noted in the edition in vol. 2 of Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma.

^[53] Rinuccini was born on 20 January 1562 stile fiorentino (so 1563 stile moderno), which has led many sources to misstate the year.

^[54] Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 2: 102. There is nothing in the prologue that explicitly links it to Dafne. Solerti reads the “exalted queen” as a reference to Maria Magdalena of Austria (because of d’eccelsi Augusti), but it is more likely to be Christine of Lorraine, whom Rinuccini regularly addresses as alta Regina (for example, in the prologue to Dafne as performed in January 1599, in the Mascherata di ninfe di Senna, and in Narciso).

^[55] Given that Amore (Cupid) is a boy, it is a soprano role. The Nunzio is explicitly identified by the chorus as a shepherd; the surviving music for his narration (“Qual nova meraviglia”) is in the C3 (alto) clef. In the 1599 version of Dafne the chorus is only very rarely divided by gender (for example, with separate speeches assigned to a nymph or a shepherd); the expanded version set by Marco da Gagliano (1608) made greater use of the chorus as interlocutor, also with more speeches assigned to one or other “Pastore del Coro.” It is clear, however, that for any performance in a convent, male roles could be, and were, taken by female performers, whether or not singing in a high register.

^[56] This performance may or may not have taken place. Solerti (Gli albori del melodramma, 1: 116–17) connects it with the request to Mantua in late 1613 made by the young Prince Francesco de’ Medici (who died in 1614) for a copy of the score of Arianna; see also Fabbri, Monteverdi, trans. Carter, 144.

^[57] Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 2: 188.

^[58] There is a broader discussion in Elissa B. Weaver, Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), which, however, does not discuss these operas. Compare also Antonia Grimaldi, “Il chiostro e la scena: Michelangelo Buonarroti il giovane e il convento di S. Agata,” Studi italiani 10, no. 1 (1998): 149–98; Laurie Stras, “The Ricreationi per monache of Suor Annalena Aldobrandini,” Renaissance Studies 26, no. 1 (2012): 34–59.

^[59] It was printed in Florence in 1568, but some version of the text dates from much earlier; see F. W. Sternfeld, The Birth of Opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 217–18. There were eighteen further editions printed in Florence and Siena up to 1615 (and more thereafter). For the Narcissus and Echo intermedio, see La rappresentazione di Santa Uliva riprodotta sulle antiche stampe, ed. Alessandro d’Ancona (Pisa: Fratelli Nistri, 1863), 33–37. Only Narcissus is mentioned by name (Echo is just a “ninfa”), but the story is obvious.

^[60] Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 2: 186 (ll. 1090, 1113–14).

^[61] Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices, provides extensive evidence of this.

^[62] Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 2: 335–53. A similar impulse may lie behind the dialogue between a young Mary Magdalene and her older sister, Martha—the former seeking worldly pleasures and the latter sternly warning against them—that survives among the other texts by Rinuccini at the end of the manuscript containing F (fols. 105r–107r). According to the heading, this is from an unfinished work (“Alcune scene della S. Maria Maddalena; opera cominciata e non finita dal signor Ottavio”). Archduchess Maria Magdalena regularly sponsored devotional dramas on the saint’s feast day (22 July); see Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices, 56–61. But the fact that Rinuccini’s text was not completed may also be a sign of his failing position.

^[63] Francesco Raccamadoro-Ramelli, Ottavio Rinuccini: studio biografico e critico (Fabriano: Tipografia Gentile, 1900), 204, makes the point.

^[64] Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 1: 105–9. This “commedia” was an offering by the Florentine Accademia degli Elevati, but Marco da Gagliano said that it was dropped for lack of time and because various other (unspecified) difficulties had arisen. It is certainly true that there was a great deal of competition between rival groups in Florence around this time, and also significant resistance to the idea of an opera instead of a play with intermedi for this occasion; see Tim Carter, “A Florentine Wedding of 1608,” Acta musicologica 55, no. 1 (1983): 89–107. But Solerti’s proposal is rejected in Chiarelli, “(Dis)regarding the Practicalities,” 38 n. 3, which does not regard 1608 as a plausible date because of Rinuccini’s conflicting responsibilities for Mantua that year.

^[65] Raccamadoro-Ramelli, Ottavio Rinuccini, 204, reads this sonnet as evidence of a later dating.

^[66] Juno’s punishment was imposed because Echo had distracted her by lengthy conversations while Jove pursued various amorous dalliances.

^[67] The first Nunzio quotes Narciso (ll. 724–26 [S: 697–99]): Vivi pur, vivi a tuo talento, o mori, / ma da me lungi; ch’io / non vuo’ più ch’un mortal per te s’adori.

^[68] To cite what is regarded as the most complete edition of the period, see Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara, Le Metamorfosi di Ovidio … con le annotationi di m. Gioseppe Horologi, e gli argomenti e postille di m. Francesco Turchi (Venice: Bernardo Giunti, 1584), 81–87 (Book 3, stanzas 136–99). Unlike Ovid, Anguillara has Narcissus make some kind of acknowledgment in his final lament of his ill-treatment of Echo (by way of an “Ecco” pun). Anguillara also plays up the disembodied parallels between their fates. But he does not go further to join their stories one to the other.

^[69] Later (ll. 400–402 [S: 358–60]) a nymph warns Narciso directly about the outcome of the story of Apollo and Daphne.

^[70] This is not the only self-“quotation” in Narciso; compare also ll. 1042–43 (S:1015–16; Deh, chi d’alloro o di più nobil erba / cinge al gran vincitor l’altera chioma?) with its reference to the fourth stanza of Rinuccini’s canzonetta, “O voi ch’in pianto” (“Deh, chi d’alloro / mi fa ghirlanda al crine”), in Rinuccini’s Poesie (1622), 187–88.

^[71] This is the reading of the last line in V and F. Solerti (l. 1205), following Rezzi, gives averà gioia ’l cor e ver contento.

^[72] The endings of Episodes I and III were revised by way of inserts in V2, so there is no way to determine how they ended in V1. The texts of Episodes II and IV end toward the foot of a page in V1, and in each case the rubric “CHORO” follows (Rinuccini typically used the upper case in such situations).

^[73] Rinuccini sometimes seems to have left such choruses for later in the creative process. In the case of the setting of Dafne by Marco da Gagliano performed Mantua in 1608, he noted in a letter to Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga (11 December 1607) that the choruses would be sketched out in a manner to be refined according to the cardinal’s judgment (“Messer Marco partirà subito fatte le feste, i cori saranno imbastiti e sotto il giudizio di Vostra Eccellenza riceveranno la perfezione”; see Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, 1: 86). At least two substantial choruses were added to this version of Dafne.

^[74] Remigio Romano, ed., Seconda raccolta di canzonette musicali, bellissime per cantare et suonare sopra aria [sic] moderne (Vicenza: Angelo Salvadori, [1618]), 89–90. This is one case where F made a significant revision to V, changing ten-line stanzas to eight-line ones (ll. 540–63), although the basic argument remains the same. The text printed by Romano is in ten-line stanzas (as in V, but with some variants) and has an additional stanza between the second and third (“Vedermi afflitto e foco,” which would not fit the dramatic context); it is also switched into the male poetic voice. It is not at all clear how he could have gained hold of this text.

^[75] Compare the final choruses of Dafne and Euridice. Arianna might seem to be the exception (it ends with a speech by Bacco), but the original final chorus was probably some version of what precedes it for the Coro di Soldati di Bacco, “Spiega omai, giocondo nume.” The finale was then extended to include the appearance of Amore, Venere, Giove, and indeed Bacco consequent upon Eleonora de’ Medici’s request to enrich the text with some action (see above).

^[76] Ottavio Tronsarelli, Drammi musicali (Rome: Francesco Corbelletti, 1632), p. 55: O’ nostri orgogli vani, / o’ nostri vanti insani; / poiché tra noi mortali / i contenti son frali: / la fama è un Echo, et è la vita un Fiore. The colophon of this volume is dated 1631, as is its licenza (30 June 1631). This moral tone is probably typical for Rome. As a counterexample, in Virgilio Puccitelli’s rambling Narciso trasformato, set to music by Marco Scacchi and performed in Warsaw in 1638, Echo remains alive at least long enough to perform a full-bodied lament on Narciso’s death. Its final scene is set among the gods as Amore justifies his actions to Giove and claims that Narciso has ended up well enough given that as a flower, he will adorn fair ladies as proof of the power of love, a conclusion with which the brief final chorus (one stanza of eight-syllable lines) agrees.

^[77] There is no doubt about the use of a single set, although its type must be assumed. Rinuccini’s text is somewhat unusual in not offering much description (e.g., by way of comments by the characters) of the place in which the action takes place: Euridice is much more explicit in this regard (compare Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice”, 167). In Narciso, he offers more extensive accounts of offstage locations (by way of the messengers, etc.).

^[78] A similar passing of time (morning to evening) is explicit in Euridice, although as Rinuccini noted in his dedication of the libretto, his forced Underworld scene broke the unity of place. Arianna takes another version of the “twelve-hour” rule: its action covers the time from dusk to the following morning.

^[79] V2 also distinguishes at times between a “Ninfa” and “Altra ninfa” (as does V1 at one point), but F does so more consistently, as also in assigning speeches to other characters. It is important to remember that when a speech is assigned to the “Coro,” only one speaker is intended save in the case of the end-of-episode choruses; see Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice”, 179. But Rinuccini could be lax in this regard in his other librettos, too. In Euridice he started out carefully enough by allocating speeches to a Pastore and a Ninfa “del Coro,” although as the libretto progressed, he resorted just to an ambiguous “Coro”; see Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice”, 153–54. This would have needed sorting out for any production, as both Peri and Caccini did in various ways in their scores for the opera. For similar problems and their eventual solutions, see Carter, “Monteverdi’s Arianna.”

^[80] However, F should have done the same for I.3, where matters remain confused.

^[81] Lidia’s position in the Coro di Ninfe, however, is clear toward the end of the inserted II.1, where speeches assigned (in V2 and F) to “Ninfa” are obviously meant to be delivered by her.

^[82] V1 had already suggested this by Filli’s comment at the end of I.1, although the speeches following the song in Scene 2 suggest that it is delivered by two (unnamed) nymphs.

^[83] In V1, the instruction (from Filli) was for Lidia to sing herself (accorda all’aurea cetra il tuo bel canto), but the sensible correction was made in V2.

^[84] The term “versi sciolti” is another tricky one, given that in Dafne and Euridice, if to a lesser degree in Arianna, Rinuccini tended to cast the speeches of his characters as free-form madrigals (or sequences thereof), carefully structured in terms of meter and rhyme; compare Fantappiè, “Una primizia rinucciniana,” 199–202. For the most part, Narciso is looser in this regard; indeed, Rinuccini’s revisions even to seemingly stable text within V1 often disrupt any such structures, particularly in terms of rhyme, to the extent that he now seems to treat them in somewhat cavalier fashion. This may or may not be the result of his having seen what composers did to his poetry.

^[85] Compare the first two end-of-episode choruses in Euridice, “Al canto, al ballo, all’ombre, al prato adorno” and “Cruda morte, ahi pur potesti,” which have just such a refrain structure.

^[86] For the broad principles, see Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, chap. 3. They continue to apply, mutatis mutandis, for Italian opera through Verdi up to Puccini.

^[87] Compare Dafne’s exhortations to Misere giovinette in ll. 513, 522, and 536 (S: 471, 480, 494), which would surely have prompted some form of musical refrain. But sometimes it is unclear whether such repetitions are deliberate (as here) or accidental: compare Filli’s repeated line in ll. 614 and 617 (S: 581, 584).

^[88] The term commonly adopted by scholars of musical theater (and film) for such “real” songs is “diegetic,” although it is a misnomer, and I use it in a different, more properly Classical, sense below.

^[89] F (ll. 182–87) also has an additional (third) stanza for this duet that brings Amore and his mortal wounds into the equation, establishing a character who will indeed create difficulties later in the action.

^[90] Compare Tim Carter, “ ‘In questo lieto e fortunato giorno’: ‘parlare’ e ‘cantare’ nell’Orfeo di Monteverdi,” in In questi ameni luoghi: intorno a “Orfeo”, ed. Liana Püschel and Luca Rossetto Casel (Turin: Associazione Arianna, 2018), 29–42; Carter, “Fa’ riflesso al mio discorso: ‘Singing’ and ‘Speaking’ in Monteverdi’s Operas,” in The Beginnings of Opera in Europe, ed. Michael Klaper and Nastasia Sophie Tietze (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, forthcoming).

^[91] Lines 309–14 (S: 267–72): Cacciator di fere belve / per le selve / non affronta ignudo arciero, / sol tra ’l vino e tra le piume, / forte nume, / arma l’arco ardito e fiero.

^[92] When he was working on theatrical music for performance during the festivities celebrating the wedding of Duke Odoardo Farnese and Margherita de’ Medici (Parma, December 1628), Monteverdi noted to Enzo Bentivoglio (25 September 1627) “le molte e variate orazioni che veggo in tali bellissimi intermedi,” although somewhat typically, he grumbled that these “many and varied” speeches would make them harder to set to music. See Tim Carter, “Intriguing Laments: Sigismondo d’India, Claudio Monteverdi, and Dido alla parmigiana (1628),” Journal of the American Musicological Society 49, no. 1 (1996): 32–69, at p. 53.

^[93] But more were added in the version performed in Venice in Carnival 1639–40; see Carter, “Monteverdi’s Arianna.”

^[94] Rinuccini included an echo-scene in Dafne (“Ebra di sangue in questo oscuro bosco”; as Apollo responds to the chorus’s questions about his brave act against Python). This, in turn, derived from his text for the third of the intermedi accompanying Girolamo Bargagli’s La pellegrina performed during the festivities for the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine in Florence in 1589.

^[95] Compare also ll. 361–64 (S: 319–22), an exchange between Narciso and a nymph (in this case, with a rhyme).

^[96] The first messenger in Euridice, Dafne, had also appeared in the prior action as one of Euridice’s companions, albeit not in a named role (and Rinuccini could not decide in his libretto whether she was “Dafne,” “Nunzia,” or, as at her first appearance following the death of Euridice, “Dafne Nunzia”). In the case of Aminta, the role was expanded in Peri’s score compared with the printed libretto by way of adding lines and reassigning others, which in part was because of the relatively late opportunity to use the virtuoso tenor Francesco Rasi for the role; see Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice”, 151, 174.

^[97] Rinuccini seems to be harking back to Arianna, where the chorus also refers to Nunzio Secondo as Tirsi gentil (l. 945), even though no Tirsi has previously appeared. Tirsi is also a character in Marco da Gagliano’s setting of Rinuccini’s revised Dafne (1608), who then becomes the messenger relating Dafne’s metamorphosis.

^[98] Respectively S: 621–722 (Nunzio Primo), 828–88 (Filli), 1109–86 (Nunzio Secondo).

^[99] However, one problem in the second Nunzio’s narration (ll. 1141–51 [S: 1114–22]) is caused by Rezzi (followed by Solerti) making a hash of things by misreading Rinuccini’s instruction for an insertion; for further details, see Appendix 1, p. 52 n. 166.

^[100] In Arianna, Nunzio Primo’s narrative, beginning at l. 664, divides as follows in terms of numbers of lines (with interjections from the chorus in parentheses): 16+(5)+2+(5)+33+(3)+19+(3)+10. Nunzio Secondo (from l. 939) has at most 45 lines without interruption, and most of his speeches are shorter. In Narciso, the beginning of the first Nunzio’s narration (starting at l. 653 [S: 621]) lasts for 59 lines (65 in V2). Monteverdi noted a similar problem in the case of Scipione Agnelli’s Le nozze di Tetide (1616), to which Striggio responded by having the author refashion one scene with more frequent exchanges for the sake of musical variety (Agnelli “ha con più repliche intessata la scena di Theti, et di Proteo, poiché così con la spessa mutatione del canto, si farà men noiosa”); see Carter, “Winds, Cupids, Little Zephyrs, and Sirens,” 494–95.

^[101] For negative comments on early recitative, see Tim Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 9 (2003): par. 2.6, https://sscm-jscm.org/v9/no1/carter.html. Attempts to solve the problems in the 1620s are discussed in Carolyn Gianturco, “Nuove considerazioni su il tedio del recitativo delle prime opere romane,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 17, no. 2 (1982): 212–39.

^[102] I am grateful to Federico Della Corte for this idea.

^[103] Compare Ariosto, Orlando furioso, 1.4 (Voi sentirete fra i più degni eroi …), and Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, 1.5 (… intanto ascolta, e t’apparecchia a l’armi).

^[104] Tim Carter, “Epyllia and Epithalamia: Some Narrative Frames for Early Opera,” The Italianist 40, no. 3 (2020): 382–99, at p. 397.

^[105] For this more proper use of the terms “diegesis” and “mimesis,” see Stefano Castelvecchi, “On ‘Diegesis’ and ‘Diegetic’: Words and Concepts,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 73, no. 1 (2020): 149–171. As Plato put it, Homer’s Odyssey mixes diegesis (Homer speaks as Homer) with mimesis (Homer puts words in the mouths of his characters, such as when Ulysses “speaks”).

^[106] One might wonder how Rinuccini managed to recall it. For this line (12.96, l. 3) in an early source of Gerusalemme liberata, see Iain Fenlon, “Cardinal Scipione Gonzaga (1542–93): ‘Quel padrone confidentissimo’,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 113, no. 2 (1988): 223–49, at pp. 246–47. The authorized printed version reads pallido, freddo, muto, e quasi privo. However, di color, di calor, di moto privo is adopted in some musical settings of this stanza (“Giunto alla tomba ove al suo spirto vivo”), such as by Giaches de Wert (1581) and Luca Marenzio (1584). For another example of the tendency even in the 1620s to “borrow” memorable lines from Gerusalemme liberata and to use them in a different dramatic context, see Carter, “Intriguing Laments,” 52–53.

^[107] Compare the discussion (of a slightly later period and to a somewhat different purpose) in Hendrik Schulze, “Drama, not Epic: Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and the Aesthetic Discourse in Subsequent Librettos,” in Performing Homer: The Voyage of Ulysses from Epic to Opera, ed. Wendy Heller and Eleonora Stoppino (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 67–80.