Amori di Marte

And in her soul the snow, from so much love, was burning
By J. Á. Vela del Campo

The historical moment was ripe for an outpouring of the passions of the soul through the word. The novel, theatre and opera shared the same humanist aspirations. It was the age of Cervantes, Shakespeare and Monteverdi; the age of “Don Quixote”, “King Lear” and “L’Orfeo”. It was the word in its fullest form: in its most purely narrative expression, in its theatrical immediacy, in a poetry of the emotions that flowed endlessly, spurred on by music. The transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque also rests on a culture of eternity. Today, as yesterday, what truly matters is everything that concerns our inner feelings. And so the literary imagination of Miguel de Cervantes still keeps us company today and still stirs our fantasy. The great dramas of William Shakespeare still move us today with their analysis of the human condition. And Claudio Monteverdi is more modern than ever – in the warlike and amorous madrigals, in the Selva morale e spirituale, in the mythological or historical music dramas – thanks to the depth of a music that speaks directly to the human heart. It is not a question of style, at least not first and foremost. It is a question of artistic commitment to human beings and their circumstances.

Listening to the “Lamento della Ninfa” or the “Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda”, to take two examples, in the carefully crafted performances by Fahmi Alqhai and Accademia del Piacere, I have once again confirmed that sometimes, rarely, time stands still – or, as Fray Luis de León put it in his oft-quoted Ode to Salinas, “the air grows calm and clothes itself in beauty and unwonted light…” Serenity, beauty, a special light. The pain of being deprived of a loved one’s love could not be sung with greater anguish and sensitivity than Monteverdi achieves in the “Lamento della Ninfa”. With extreme musical delicacy he accompanies the lines in which the betrayed woman laments that her rival “has a serene gaze, but her breast harbours a faith less fair than mine. Nor do sweeter kisses flow from her lips than those he drank from mine – ah, hush.” It is a story of unrequited love, to which Monteverdi, drawing on a canzonetta by Ottavio Rinuccini, responds with a musical expression that combines melancholy and reflection in equal measure. “And in her soul the snow, from so much love, was burning.” Exquisite.

In “Il Combattimento” Monteverdi reaches the height of his theatricality. We must surrender unreservedly to his way of telling stories in music, to the pleasures it awakens, to that suggested light that guides us through the fog and even through darkness. Violence and war, revenge and hatred, identity and desire prefigure situations or states of mind – under the sign of the provisional, if you like. As Torquato Tasso suggests in “Jerusalem Delivered”, the work on which Monteverdi draws, what prevails is a way of being, of throbbing, of suffering or of loving. “What do you celebrate? Your triumphs will be sad; your arrogance, unhappy,” we hear; or, later, “how wretched we are”, before we reach Clorinda’s moving final words: “Friend, you have conquered me. I forgive you. Forgive my soul, not my body, which is already dying. Pray for it.” Text and music merge in an artistic expression that unravels the most contradictory passions. Everything is relative, but doubts humanise us and help to define the stile rappresentativo.

Monteverdi: the composer of the affections, of emotional closeness, of quiet and intense pleasure. Listen closely to this recording. It is an inner journey to the heart of the soul. It invites us to think, to feel, to enjoy, to live.

1. L’Orfeo: Toccata (2:04)

Claudio Monteverdi

2. Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (20:34)

Claudio Monteverdi

3. Il Ballo delle Ingrate: Entrata (2:30)

Claudio Monteverdi

4. Lamento della Ninfa (9:33)

Claudio Monteverdi

5. Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria: Sinfonia avanti il Prologo (1:05)

Claudio Monteverdi

6. Sonate Op. XXII: Passacalio (5:23)

Biagio Marini

7. Tempro la cetra (8:49)

Claudio Monteverdi

8. Non vedrò mai le stelle (5:13)

Diminutions by Fahmi Alqhai on Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigal

9. Et è pur dunque vero (6:35)

Claudio Monteverdi

10. Sonata å 6 violis (3:41)

Antonio Bertali