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Place, Performance and Identity in Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2018

Antonio Cascelli
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Abstract

With its combination of gestures and music, instrumental sections, a narrator who occupies most of the composition, and two characters who sing for very short sections while acting and dancing for the rest of the piece, Monteverdi’s Combattimento defies genre definition. Starting from Tim Carter’s reading of the composition as a salon entertainment and responding to Suzanne Cusick’s call for the untangling of Combattimento’s multiplicity of meanings, this article investigates Combattimento in its ritualisation and performance of mutually defining relations that are mediated by the social and ideological implications of its immediate performance space, the salon – or portego, in Venetian dialect – the main entertainment hall of Venetian palaces. Using this as a key framework, the article explores the Combattimento’s associations with Venice itself as the broader performance space. Within that context, the choice of a particular episode from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata for Monteverdi’s composition – with its mixture of love and violence, assimilation and confrontation, personal identity and agency, history of winners and history of victims1 – proves as crucial to seventeenth-century Venice, at the crossroads between Western and Islamic civilisations, as it does for today’s culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 152 - 188
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

*

Antonio Cascelli, Maynooth University, Co. Kildare, Ireland; Antonio.Cascelli@mu.ie.

I wish to thank my friends and colleagues Alison Hood, Christopher Morris, Francesca Placanica and Laurie Stras for reading and commenting on various versions of this article. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers of Cambridge Opera Journal whose suggestions were extremely helpful, though of course I am fully responsible for the way I developed them.

1

Giovanni Careri, La fabbrica degli affetti. La Gerusalemme liberata dai Carracci a Tiepolo (Milan, 2010), 15. Original French edition, Gestes d’amour et de guerre (Paris, 2005).

References

2 Hillis, Ken, Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality (Minneapolis, 1999), 83 Google Scholar.

3 Juhani Pallasmaa talks in Merleau-Ponty’s terms of an ‘osmotic relation between the self and the world’, see The Eyes of the Skin (Chichester, 2005), 20. Pallasmaa cites Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Dreyfus, Patricia Allen, ‘Translators’ Introduction’, in Maurice Merlau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (Evanston, 1964), xii Google Scholar. See also Cataldi, Sue L. and Hamrick, William S., eds., Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy (New York, 2007), 5 Google Scholar.

4 Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, available online through the Gutenberg project: www.gutenberg.org/files/1001/1001-h/1001-h.htm (accessed 4 May 2015). If not stated otherwise, translations are by the author.

5 On the overlapping of the fight with sexual intercourse and its interpretation as a rape, see Careri, La fabbrica degli affetti, 101–26.

6 All translations of the Combattimento episode are by Avril Bardoni, from liner note to Claudio Monteverdi/Concerto Italiano-Rinaldo Alessandrini, Ottavo Libro dei Madrigali (Opus 111, 1998, OPS 30–196).

7 The Mocenigos were one of the most prominent patrician families in Venice. Their origins are not clear; the family could have come either from Aquileia or from Lombardy. It gave Venice seven doges, the first being Tommaso (1414–23) and the last Alvise IV (1763–78). Furthermore, the family provided the city with ambassadors, captains, churchmen, scholars and administrators. See http://mocenigo.visitmuve.it/en/il-museo/museum/the-mocenigo-family/ (accessed 30 May 2017).

8 I do not think it is by chance that Monteverdi’s suggestion to perform Combattimento, among other pieces, to celebrate the accession of Duke Vincenzo II in Mantua was not considered by Striggio, who had asked Monteverdi for some theatrical music to mark the celebration. See Monteverdi’s letter of 1 May 1627 to Striggio in Tim Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre (New Haven, 2002), 200.

9 See the preface to the Eighth Book of Madrigals, translated in Strunk, Oliver, Source Readings in Music History: The Baroque Era (New York and London, 1965), 53–55 Google Scholar. For a list of stanzas from the Gerusalemme liberata set to music, see Vassalli, Antonio, ‘Il Tasso in musica e la trasmissione dei testi: alcuni esempi’, in Tasso, la musica, i musicisti, ed. Maria Antonella Balsano and Thomas Walker (Firenze, 1988), 45–84 Google Scholar. The central section of the episode with Clorinda’s baptism and death was set to music as five-voice madrigals by Tiburtio Massaino in 1587 and Antonio Il Verso in 1619; Sigismondo d’India composed a solo-voice setting in 1621. See also Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 181, and tassomusic.org.

10 Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 188.

11 Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi (Torino, 1985), 248–52; Whenham, John, ‘The Later Madrigals and Madrigal-books’, in The New Monteverdi Companion, ed. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (London, 1985), 243–245 Google Scholar.

12 Chafe, Eric, Monteverdi’s Tonal Language (New York, 1992), 234–245 Google Scholar.

13 Via, Stefano La, ‘Le Combat retrouvé: les “passions contraires” du “divin Tasse” dans la représentation musicale de Monteverdi’, in La ‘Jérusalem délivrée’ du Tasse: poésie, peinture, musique, ballet; actes du colloque, musée du Louvre, 1996 , ed. Giovanni Careri (Paris, 1999), 111–112 Google Scholar.

14 Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 193–4. Carter also provides an extensive review of different scholars’ opinions about Combattimento, 172–3.

15 Cusick, Suzanne, ‘“Indarno chiedi”: Clorinda and the Interpretation of Monteverdi’s Combattimento ’, in Word, Image, and Song. Volume 1: Essays on Early Modern Italy, ed. Rebecca Cypess, Beth L. Glixon and Nathan Link (Rochester, NY, 2013), 117–144 Google Scholar. For a discussion of Combattimento in the context of the relationship between Venice and the Ottoman World, see also Clemens Risi, ‘Claudio Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624 or 1625). A Christian-Muslim Encounter in Music?’, in Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East. Performing Cultures, ed. Sabine Schülting et al. (Farnham, 2012), 153–66.

16 Tuan, Yi-Fu, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis, 1977), 178 Google Scholar, cited in Hillis, Digital Sensations, 84.

17 Cited in Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 170.

18 Schmitter, Monika, ‘The Quadro da Portego in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Art’, Renaissance Quarterly 64 (2011), 693–751 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 694.

20 Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 703.

21 Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 702–3. Schmitter is referring to Brown, Patricia Fortini, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (New Haven, 2004), vii, 1–21 Google Scholar.

22 Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 703. This aspect of the portego is also suggested by Francesco Sansovino in his Venetia citta nobilissima et singolare (1581). Schmitter cites him in a translation by Fortini Brown, Patricia, ‘Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites’, in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore, 2000), 295–338 Google Scholar.

23 Crouzet-Pavan, Elisabeth, ‘Sopra le acque salse’: Espaces, pouvoir et société à Venise à la fin du Moyen Âge (Rome, 1992)Google Scholar, 406, cited in Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 703.

24 Mauro Lucco states that the overall increase in the size of Venetian canvases over the course of the sixteenth century may in part be due to the growing interest in the portego paintings used as ‘a method for semipublic self-aggrandizement’. Lucco, Mauro, ‘Sacred Stories’, in Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, ed. David Alan Brown and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden (New Haven, 2006), 99–146 Google Scholar, cited in Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 700.

25 Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 712.

26 Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 715–18.

27 Schmitter, ‘The Quadro da Portego’, 713.

28 Torquato Tasso, La Gerusalemme liberata, Canto Primo, stanzas 46 and 47.

29 www.danielihotelvenice.com/en/hotel-danieli-history (accessed 19 May 2014).

30 www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/386882/Mocenigo-Family#ref158586 (accessed 19 May 2014).

31 www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/386882/Mocenigo-Family#ref158586 (accessed 19 May 2014).

32 Stevens, Denis, trans. and ed., The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, rev. edn (Oxford, 2008), 280 Google Scholar.

33 Stevens, The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, 280.

34 Zoppelli, Luca, ‘Il rapto perfettissimo: un’inedita testimonianza sulla “Proserpina” di Monteverdi’, Rassegna Veneta di Studi Musicali 3 (1987), 343–345 Google Scholar and Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 226–36.

35 Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 227–8. Carter reminds us that the argument had been set to music by Salomone Rossi for the Mantuan intermedii in 1608 and 1622. Furthermore, Giulio Cesare Monteverdi wrote an opera on the same topic; now lost, it was performed in Casale Monferrato on 29 April 1611 under the auspices of Prince Francesco Gonzaga.

36 For example in the madrigal Al dolce mormorar, with text by Cesare Rinaldi, the first verse – ‘Al dolce mormorar’ – is repeated twice, followed by the second verse – ‘che fan d’un fonte le cadenti stille’. This structure is then repeated a second time, and so on, almost constantly until the end when the last two verses – ‘E mai non scema di baciar/per baciar la voglia estrema’ – are repeated five times (‘At the sweet murmuring, that the falling drops of a source make ... and the desire of kissing never diminishes by kissing’).

37 http://repim.muspe.unibo.it (accessed 14 June 2016). See also Le glorie degli Incogniti (Venezia, 1648), 101.

38 Muir, Edward, ‘Why Venice? Venetian Society and the Success of Early Opera’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 36 (2006), 337–338 Google Scholar.

39 Bernardo Tasso, Delle lettere di M. Bernardo Tasso, accresciute, corrette e illustrate, ed. Anton Federigo Seghezzi and Pierantonio Serassi (Padova, 1733), 2: 144. See also Litta, Pompeo, Famiglie celebri di Italia ([Milan, 1819–82]), 14 Google Scholar: table 8. Pompeo Litta published the first ten volumes (113 fascicules) from 1819 to 1852. His work was continued after his death and six extra volumes were published between 1852 and 1883, for a total of sixteen volumes (153 families distributed over 184 fascicules). The Mocenigo family is no. 134, in volume 14. See Litta, Pompeo. Famiglie Celebri d’Italia. A Finding Aid prepared by Paula B. Entin and Elizabeth Linder, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Princeton University Library 2003. http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/rbsc2/misc/Bib_968619.pdf (accessed 17 July 2017).

40 Torquato Tasso, Opere di Torquato Tasso colle controversie sulla Gerusalemme poste in miglior ordine, ricorrette sull’edizione Fiorentina, ed. illustrate Professore Gio. Rosini, vol. 15 (Pisa, 1825), 74–5; Bonora, Elena, ‘The Heresy of a Venetian Prelate: Archbishop Filippo Mocenigo’, in Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Context and Contextations, ed. Ronald K. Delph, Michelle M. Fontain and John Jeffries Martin (Kirksville, MI, 2006), 221–224 Google Scholar.

41 Fenlon, Iain, The Ceremonial City (New Haven, 2007), 189 Google Scholar.

42 Dursteler, Eric R., Renegade Women: Gender, Identity, and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore, 2011)Google Scholar.

43 Dursteler, Renegade Women, 76–104.

44 Dursteler, Renegade Women, 101. Dursteler is quoting from Senato Dispacci, Costantinopoli, b. 118, cc.648r–649v, 14 November 1637.

45 Dursteler, Renegade Women, 103.

46 Rothman, E. Natalie, ‘Becoming Venetian: Conversion and Transformation in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean’, Mediterranean Historical Review 21 (2006), 41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Rothman, ‘Becoming Venetian’, 43.

48 Rothman, ‘Becoming Venetian’, 44.

49 Dursteler, Renegade Women, 76–104.

50 Rothman, ‘Becoming Venetian’, 50. However, in vol. 14 of Litta, Famiglie celebri d’Italia, famiglia 134, no trace can be found of a Tommaso, son of Andrea Mocenigo, alive around 1620–40. Girolamo, also son of a Andrea Mocenigo, is indicated to have had three sisters, all of them nuns in various Venetian convents (Litta, table 10).

51 Fabbri, Paolo, ‘Tasso e la sua fortuna musicale a Venezia’, in Formazione e fortuna del Tasso nella cultura della Serenissima, ed. Luciana Borsetto and Bianca Maria da Rif (Venezia, 1997), 252 Google Scholar.

52 Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (Berkeley, 1968), 340 Google Scholar.

53 On the distinction between old and young families in Venice, see David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds., Venice. A Documentary History 1450–1630 (Oxford, 1992; reprint Toronto, 2009), 26–7, fn. 42.

54 Po-Chia Hsia, R., The Worlds of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge, 1998), 108 Google Scholar.

55 Benzoni, Gino, Venezia nell’età della controriforma (Milan, 1973), 76–78 Google Scholar.

56 Biferali, Fabrizio, Paolo Veronese tra Riforma e Controriforma (Roma, 2013), 92–93 Google Scholar. Biferali reminds us that the apostolic visit was solicited by the Archbishop of Milan Carlo Borromeo, who stayed in the Venetian territories in 1580.

57 Muir, ‘Why Venice?’, 337 and 348.

58 Muir, ‘Why Venice?’, 332.

59 Benzoni, Venezia nell’età della controriforma, 67.

60 In addition to this, Archbishop Filippo Mocenigo’s uncle, Andrea, was Girolamo’s own great-grandfather. See Litta, Famiglie celebri d’Italia, tables 9, 10 and 11.

61 Bonora, ‘The Heresy of a Venetian Prelate’, 215–16.

62 Bonora, ‘The Heresy of a Venetian Prelate’, 225.

63 Indeed Venetian’s anti-papal politics was not anti-Catholic.

64 Muir, ‘Why Venice?’, 348. It was only towards the end of the seventeenth century that Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata would become a much more popular subject in opera librettos when the libertine ethos and tones of the genre softened with the Accademia degli Imperturbabili in 1657 (see Muir, ‘Why Venice?’, 350) and the operatic genre stabilised its rules and conventions. In this context, composers and librettists focus on comic and heroic/martial aspects, particularly after the failed siege of Vienna in 1683; these episodes are enriched with further love intrigues, sometime unknown to the original story, and with the most important of all the conventions, the happy ending. See Fabbri, ‘Tasso e la sua fortuna musicale a Venezia’, 251–8.

65 Mackenney, Richard, ‘“A Plot Discover’d?” Myth, Legend, and the “Spanish” Conspiracy against Venice in 1618’, in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore, 2000), 197 Google Scholar. See also Martin, John Jeffries, ‘The Venetian Territorial State: Constructing Boundaries in the Shadow of Spain’, in Spain in Italy. Politics, Society, and Religion. 1500–1700, ed. Thomas James Dandelet and John A. Marino (Leiden, 2007), 227–248 Google Scholar.

66 Mackenney, ‘“A Plot Discover’d?”’, 208–9.

67 Mackenney, ‘“A Plot Discover’d?”’, 187.

68 Mackenney, ‘“A Plot Discover’d?”’, 186.

69 Mackenney, ‘“A Plot Discover’d?”’, 188.

70 In a report to the state, still today attributed to Sarpi, he clearly presents the Viceroy of Naples as the main instigator of the conspiracy. In a later account, which he published anonymously, he sustained that the viceroy Ossuna had been vocal about his intention to attack the republic. But all this is based on rumours as the language used in the account indicates: ‘it was known for certain’, ‘more likely to be true’, these are in fact very common expressions used by Sarpi, indicating once more that he had no proof to corroborate his statements. But he did not have any problem in recognising as false rumours the possibility that the conspiracy might have been organised by ‘Frenchmen and Dutchmen acting as private individuals’. Mackenney, ‘“A Plot Discover’d?”’, 202–6. For Sarpi’s report to the state, see Mackenney’s reference to Levi, Eugenia, ‘Per la congiura contro Venezia nel 1618: una “relatione” di Fra Paolo Sarpi’, Nuovo Archivio Veneto 17 (1899), 5–65 Google Scholar. For Sarpi’s anonymous publication, see Sarpi, Paolo, La repubblica di Venezia, la casa d’Austria e gli Uscocchi aggionta e supplemento all’istoria degli Uscocchi, trattato di pace ed accomodamento, ed. Gaetano Cozzi and Lusia Cozzi (Bari, 1965), 139–415 Google Scholar.

71 Mackenney, ‘“A Plot Discover’d?”’, 190.

72 Mackenney, ‘“A Plot Discover’d?”’, 191.

73 It is worth noting that Sarpi’s anonymous account (see footnote 69) is also part of a text about a peace treaty with the Austrian Habsburg empire.

74 Selfridge-Field, Eleanor, Song and Season. Science, Culture, and Theatrical Time in Early Modern Venice (Stanford, 2007), 106 Google Scholar.

75 Heller, Wendy, Emblem of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley, 2003), 7 Google Scholar.

76 In 1624 the height of carnival began on Quinquagesima Sunday (18 February) and continued until Shrove Tuesday (20 February). See Stevens, The Letters of Monteverdi, 279–80.

77 Turner, Victor, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York, 1982), 55 Google Scholar.

78 Work and play are core concepts in Victor Turner’s anthropological investigations. Their difference and division are at the centre of the definition of modern societies, where rituals are relegated to decisions of the individuals. Work is the result of the social contract that keep a society together; play and leisure occupy a different time and place from work and are dominated by free choice. See Rowe, Sharon, ‘Modern Sports: Liminal Ritual or Liminoid Leisure?’, in Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance, ed. Graham St John (New York, 2008), 141 Google Scholar. ‘For “work” is held to be the realm of the rational adaptation of means to ends, of “objectivity,” while “play” is thought of as divorced from this essentially “objective” realm and, in so far as it is its inverse, it is “ subjective,” free from external constraints, where any and every combination of variable can be “played” with.’ See Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 30–4. An example of this could be the development of theatre in Western societies. The initial status of religious rituals, like the dramatisation of the passion of Christ within Easter liturgical celebration, make them an integral part of the society built around the ritual that only later will release those aspects of play and pleasure, which develop into independent forms of spectacles.

79 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 34. In his distinction between liminal and liminoid, Turner states that the latter is typical of ‘societies with “organic solidarity,” bonded reciprocally by “contractual” relations, and generated by and following the industrial revolution, though they perhaps begin to appear on the scene in city-states on their way to become empires … and in feudal societies … But they first begin to develop in Western Europe in nascent capitalists societies’ (p. 53). As such, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice is a society halfway through its trajectory towards capitalism, a society in which play and work start being differentiated. In particular the development of opera as a form of ‘mass’ entertainment points to the modern idea of play as an activity that occupies a different time and place from work.

80 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 28.

81 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 27–8.

82 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 28.

83 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 53–4.

84 Heller, Emblem of Eloquence, 7.

85 See Monteverdi’s Preface to the Eighth Book of Madrigals, cited in Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 170.

86 See Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 193–4. In her association of Combattimento with carnival, Cusick suggests the possibility that, by adopting Jean Toscan’s lexicon of erotic double entendres, the text might be translated in a carnivalesque way so that ‘some passages emerge perilously close to the border between the ribald and the obscene’. According to this, Clorinda’s last words would be translated as: ‘s/he seemed to say: “The vulva opens, I go the normal way”’. See Cusick, ‘“Indarno chiedi”’, 137–8. Cusick is drawing here on Jean Toscan, ‘Le carnival du language: Le lexique érotique des poètes de l’équivoque de Burchiello à Marino (XVe-XVIIe siècle)’, PhD thesis, Université de Paris III (1987). This is indeed a fascinating reading, and though I understand the possibility of turning upside down traditional interpretations of a text during carnival, the time indeed when social constraints are ridiculed and loosened, I am not fully convinced by Cusick’s interpretation. When filtered through such a specific and detailed erotic interpretative grid, like that suggested by Toscan, the reading of any text risks becoming too schematic and artificial. If we start applying it without any clear criteria, almost every text then is susceptible to an ‘obscene’ interpretation. For a discussion about what criteria should be considered when applying Toscan’s lexicon, see Federico Della Corte, ‘Ventanni dopo. Appunti in margine a “Le carnaval du langage”’, Lingua e Stile 3 (2004), 227–48; the criteria are listed on 248.

87 As Selfridge-Field observes, ‘The theme of Christian conquest – the raison d’être of the Crusades – was the fundamental one in Venetian culture. Its symbolical representation atop the Orologio justified the temporal existence of the Venetian Republic. It figured in the background of many Venetian operas.’ Selfridge-Field, Song and Season, 106. See also, in the same book, the section on civic clocks, 56–7.

88 Selfridge-Field, Song and Season, 134.

89 The war of fists was an annual event during which teams from different areas of Venice, the sestiere and the arsenale, fought with pointed canes to establish their dominance over the Ponte San Barnaba. An annually ritualized form of violence, which, in its liminal aspect, served to strengthen local identity. See Fenlon, The Ceremonial City, 38, 211–13. Though Tancredi and Clorinda fight with their swords, there is at least one moment when Tancredi grips Clorinda with his own arms and hands.

90 Selfridge-Field, Song and Season, 135–7, fn 35.

91 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 55.

92 Fenlon states that ‘the “high art” that celebrates the battle, even in the 1570s, often exploits an iconography that largely excludes the satirical caricatures of the popular woodcuts and verses’. The Ceremonial City, 188.

93 Preto, Paolo, ‘Tasso, Venezia e i Turchi’, in Formazione e fortuna del Tasso nella cultura della Serenissima, ed. Luciana Borsetto and Bianca Maria Da Rif (Venice, 1997), 249 Google Scholar.

94 Although written much later than La Gerusalemme liberata, we should not forget that Doge Nicolò Contarini in his Historie Venetiane was impressed with the relationship between the sense of state and the sense of religion in the Islamic world and viewed it with sympathy. See Benzoni, Venezia nell’età della controriforma, 135–7.

95 Cardini, Franco, ‘Torquato Tasso e la crociata’, in Torquato Tasso e la cultura estense, ed. Gianni Venturi (Firenze, 1999), 623 Google Scholar.

96 See Monteverdi’s Preface in Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 170.

97 Careri, La fabbrica degli affetti, 15.

98 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 11.

99 Ricœur, Paul, Temps et Récit, III: Le temps raconté (Paris, 1985), 340 Google Scholar.

100 Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter (New York, 1993), xxv Google Scholar.

101 For Cusick, the parts at stake here are as follows: Clorinda represents the immasculate, ingrata female and a black knight. ‘Thus the converging logics behind the narrative compulsion for Tancredi to penetrate, convert, and kill the immasculate, ingrata, female-identified Clorinda resembled the logic behind the narrative compulsion for him to penetrate, convert and kill the black knight Clorinda. In both male and female forms, “Clorinda” could figure the challenge that “sodomy” posed to the gender-sex system that many Europeans equated with a social order ordained by the Christian God’ (‘“Indarno chiedi”’, 124).

102 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 49–50.

103 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 5. On the interpretation of the fight scene as a rape, see Careri, La fabbrica degli affetti, 111.

104 The harmonic fluidity and fragmentation of this section has indeed been considered by several scholars; in my analysis, however, I aim to connect more fully the text, harmonic details, melodic writing and vocal registers in Clorinda’s part. See Massimo Ossi, Divining the Oracle: Monteverdi’s Seconda Prattica (Chicago, 2003), 222; La Via, ‘Le Combat retrouvé’, 123; Chafe, Monteverdi’s Tonal Language, 244–5; Cusick, ‘“Indarno chiedi”’, 132.

105 On the difficulty of assigning modes to the entire Combattimento, see Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 167–96. With regards to the transposition of the second mode a fourth up, Aaron already writes about this practice in his Trattato della natura et cognitione di tutti gli tuoni di canto figurato non da altrui più scritti (Venezia, 1521, ch. IV). See Meier, Bernhard, The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony: Described According to the Source (New York, 1988)Google Scholar. I consulted the Italian translation, I modi della polifonia vocale classica. Descritti secondo le fonti (Lucca, 2015), 32, fn. 11. If we consider the entire composition in terms of D tonal-type, this allows Monteverdi to move with extreme flexibility from D Dorian in the durus system to Hypodorian in G in the mollis system and eventually back to D in the durus system at the end.

106 See Wiering, Frans, The Language of the Modes. Studies in the History of Polyphonic Modality (New York, 2001), 24 Google Scholar.

107 Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1573) 4: 18.

108 See Chafe, Monteverdi’s Tonal Language, 244.

109 McClary, Susan, Modal Subjectivities: Self-fashioning in the Italian Madrigal (Berkeley, 2004), 205–206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 181–2. D’India published his setting of Combattimento in 1621 with Alessandro Vincenti, later the same publisher of Monteverdi’s Eighth Book of Madrigals. In 1626 Monteverdi and d’India competed for the commission of the music for the wedding festivities for Odoardo Farnese and Margherita de’ Medici (1628).

111 Lorenzo Bianconi, ‘Madrigali per la “Gerusalemme’”, in Antonio Il Verso, Madrigali a tre (libro II, 1605) e a cinque voci (libro XV – opera XXXVI, 1619), transcrib. and ed. Lorenzo Bianconi, Musiche Rinascimentali Siciliane (Firenze, 1978), xvi.

112 Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 182–3.

113 Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 185.

114 In the introduction to his First book of Musiche published in 1609, Sigismondo d’India writes that ‘I discovered it was possible to compose in the true manner with non ordinary intervals, moving with as many novelties as possible from one consonance to another, according to the variety of the meaning of the words.’ Le Musiche di Sigismondo d’India (Milano, 1609).

115 Although not exactly a quotation, these bars seem a strong reminder of the opening gestures of Monteverdi’s ‘Lamento di Arianna’, where two ascending patterns in stepwise motions are followed respectively by a descending fourth and a descending major sixth.

116 In editing the composition, it would be possible to maintain the a flat, which of course would clash quite strongly against the d in the bass.

117 Il Verso set to music the last four stanzas of Combattimento – from ‘Amico hai vinto’ to ‘S’apre il cielo’ – each stanza forming one madrigal.

118 Il Verso, Madrigali a tre (Libro II, 1605) e a cinque voci (libro XV – opera XXXVI, 1619), 42–3.

119 See Monteverdi’s Preface to Combattimento, cited in Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 170.

120 In order to understand the role of the final words assigned to Clorinda, one might ask whether Monteverdi could have done something else here. Certainly, assigning the concluding words to Clorinda is at first a consequence of the distribution of characters to different singers as opposed to have one singer for the entire composition, like in d’India’s version or a mixed choir as in Il Verso’s version. But then, this decision was taken already with theatrical effects in mind; that is, Monteverdi knew from the very beginning that this choice would create a revealing incoherence between text and performance. If he had wanted to avoid it, one could speculate that two options were available to him: to let the narrator sing the final words or to change the words. Considering Monteverdi’s attitude to text-editing in coordination with his dramatic viewpoint, this last option does not seem too improbable. An alternative solution to ‘dir parea: “S’apre il ciel; io vado in pace”’ could be: ‘disse: “S’Apre il cielo; io vado in pace”’. The use of the straightforward past tense ‘disse’ would make it clear that these are Clorinda’s words; furthermore, the addition of the vowel ‘o’ to the word ‘cielo’, just before the semicolon, which neutralises the sinalepha in the act of performance, would contribute to maintain the integrity of the hendecasyllable in the performance. These are of course only suggestions to indicate the possibility that Monteverdi might have been aware of the incongruity between text and performance and that he probably wanted to maintain it. With regards to Monteverdi’s attitude to text-editing, particularly in relation to the dramatic impact of a given text, see Rosand, Ellen, Monteverdi’s Last Operas. A Venetian Trilogy (Berkeley, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in particular chapters 5, 6 and 7.

121 Cusick, ‘“Indarno chiedi”’, 132.

122 The cantizans formula captures the motion 7–1.

123 Cusick, ‘“Indarno chiedi”’, 133.

124 Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 185.

125 The fact that the text does not have any closure coinciding with the cadential-like progressions E major–A major and G major–C major makes them very unstable.

126 Listen, for example, to Claudio Monteverdi/Concerto Italiano, L’Orfeo (Naïve, 2007, OP30439) and to Claudio Monteverdi/Concerto Italiano-Rinaldo Alessandrini, Ottavo Libro dei Madrigali (Opus 111, 1998, OPS 30–196).

127 Claudio Monteverdi, L’Orfeo, ed. Rinaldo Alessandrini (Bärenreiter, 2012), 65. Claudio Monteverdi/Concerto Italiano, L’Orfeo (Naïve, 2007, OP30439). Claudio Monteverdi/Concerto Italiano – Rinaldo Alessandrini, Ottavo Libro dei Madrigali (Opus 111, 1998, OPS 30–196). Another example of performers not playing the leading note in the realisation of the basso continuo is found in Claudio Monteverdi/Le Concert d’Astrêe – Emmanuelle Haïm, Combattimento (EMI Records/Virgin Classics, 2006, 0946 3 63403 2 6).

128 Claudio Monteverdi, Madrigali Guerrieri, et Amorosi, Libro Ottavo, ed. Anna Maria Vacchelli (Cremona, 2004), 51.

129 Monteverdi, Madrigali Guerrieri, 51. The original 1638 score of Combattimento is included in the Cremona edition; Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, 183; Cusick, ‘“Indarno chiedi”’, 133.

130 For the concept of trajectory of desire, see McClary, Susan, ‘Towards a History of Harmonic Tonality’, in Towards Tonality. Aspects of Baroque Music Theory, ed. Peter Dejans (Ghent, 2007), 94 Google Scholar.

131 Il Verso, Madrigali a tre (Libro II, 1605) e a cinque voci (libro XV – opera XXXVI, 1619), 48.

132 See Bertetto, Paolo, La macchina del cinema (Bari, 2010), 135–150 Google Scholar. On similar interpretation in cinematic terms, see also Calcagno, Mauro, From Madrigal to Opera. Monteverdi’s Staging of the Self (Berkeley, 2012), 228–237 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

133 Cusick, “Indarno chiedi”, 130.

134 See Bertetto, La macchina del cinema, 148.

135 Sergio Rossi, ‘Il mistero della luce glauca. Verità dell’immagine e attesa del miracolo nella pittura del Seicento’, in Scienza e miracoli nell’arte del ‘600. Alle origini della medicina moderna, ed. Rossi (Milan, 1998), 14.

136 Hillis, Digital Sensations, 81.

137 Hillis, Digital Sensations, 82–4. Hillis takes the concept of ‘inbetweenness’ from Nicholas Entrikin’s The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity (Baltimore, 1991).

138 Hillis, Digital Sensations, 84.

139 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place, 178, as quoted in Hillis, Digital Sensations, 84.

140 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 28.

141 Ricœur, Temps et Récit, III: Le temps raconté, 340.