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Fruits of the Cross. Robert L. Kendrick
Читать онлайн.Название Fruits of the Cross
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isbn 9780520969872
Автор произведения Robert L. Kendrick
Издательство Ingram
Indeed, some of the deictic textual indications suggest a basic visual environment, at least some kind of Crucifix, such as the famed one of Ferdinand II kept on the high altar of the Hofburgkapelle.58 The first presence of a constructed stage design can be deduced from the Friday 1670 work by Minato and Sances, and the opening indication for such a scene is in the following year’s libretto for the same Day, Il Trionfo della Croce. Of course, after the rites earlier on Thursday, all statues and altarpieces in the royal chapels would have been draped for the Triduum; thus the Tomb and, after 1670, the set design were the only representational objects visible.59
One example of such interplay is the very last sepolcro for Eleonora, La Sorte sopra la veste di Christo of 1686 (Minato, with music by G. B. Pederzoli). The libretto gives Jonah’s ship with the whale as the set design, and there survives a likely drawing (Theatermuseum, Min. 29/39b1; figure 6), which also includes the biblical motto from Jonah 1:7 (“And they cast lots [sortes], and the lot fell on Jonah”). Given the long tradition of identification of the prophet with Christ (the former’s three days in the whale ≈ Christ’s three days in the Tomb), one level of identification (whale=Tomb) would have been obvious. Still, the motto referring to “casting lots” comes before the first mention (Jon 2:1) of the fish, and the libretto works out the symbolic equivalence of Jonah’s lots with those thrown by the Roman soldiers on Calvary over Christ’s clothes. This design would have involved at least two architectonic planes with the motto on top (and no Eucharist present in either the drawing or Minato’s description), hence setting up the triangular process of meditative association.
FIGURE 6. L.O. Burnacini, Jonah Cast Overboard. (Permission by KHM-Museumsverband.)
As on many other fronts, the works of the 1670s had already raised the level of visual complexity in the single design in front of which all the psychological action plays out. The distance between image and devotional topic thus engaged the same kind of meditative association as did emblems, working out the invisible similarities that the imprese presented at any given moment over the course of an hour’s worth of text and music.
A single year’s sets (for which there are no drawings) give some idea of the emblematics. The Thursday piece for 1683—a moment at which the upcoming Ottoman threat meant curtailed stagings as early as the winter operatic works—was La Sete di Christo. Minato’s indication gives the set background as Calvary with Christ crucified, and the text opens with the entire cast onstage, an unusual quintet of biblical lamenters: the Virgin, the Magdalen, John the Baptist, Joseph, and Nicodemus.60 This text was later reworked by an anonymous author and set to music by Bernardo Pasquini, probably for his Borghese patrons in Rome, with this version then performed in Modena in 1689.61 Its Friday pendant, L’Eternità soggetta al tempo (another case of Minato’s upending an early modern commonplace), featured a set with Ahaz’s sundial (Is 38:8, the story of Ezechias’s recovery from sickness and the divine reversal of ten degrees on the dial to give the king a longer life) as its apparato, and some twelve completely allegorical figures singing: a Penitent, Time and Eternity, the Four Seasons, Day and Night, and the Three Hours of Darkness.
Thus the intellectual material differed; on Thursday, listeners would have had to place John the Baptist at the Tomb with Calvary in the background, even though the Precursor had died before Christ. Friday’s message was more encoded, and it is again helpful to turn to Lapide’s exegesis of the verse from Isaiah 38.62 After a long disquisition on the astronomical implications of the reversal (whether the sun or just its shadow retroceded, whether the ten degrees meant ten hours, how long the actual day was, etc.), the Jesuit had given his characteristic four meanings for the passage beyond the literal sense, of which the tropological and allegorical ones are most relevant. In terms of the spiritual, souls undergoing conversio like Ezechias were indeed restored to their earlier merit and perfection; allegorically, Christ in His Passion and Harrowing of Hell descended ten levels (~degrees) below the choirs of angels and humans, then to rise again in the Ascension.
This sepolcro’s concern with astronomy and measuring time also echoed Leopold’s own scientific interests, typical of the libretti around 1680. Finally, the royal listeners on Friday would also have thought of the following verses of the book, Ezechias’s song of recovery (Is 38:10ff.), “In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of Hell; … I shall not see the Lord God in the land of the living,” as a direct reference to Christ’s entombment and the Harrowing. To complete the hermeneutic circle, Lapide had referred to this biblical song as a “carmen eucharisticum,” whether the text was written by Ezechias or by Isaiah himself. The presence of the Santissimo in the set design had reflections in the textual allusions of biblical passages.
Still, the unfolding of the emblematics was a dramatic process, beyond the initial visual impact. In working out the Thursday piece, Minato would also have had in mind Marino’s second Diceria sacra, “La musica,” whose theme is the Seven Words of Christ. Minato’s preface works around the ideas of “fountains of eloquence,” along with various meanings of “thirst,” and ends by wishing the reader to be “thirsty for divine grace.” La Sete begins with a long paraphrase of the Improperia, reproaching the Chosen People for its “ingratitude,” and moving on to a consideration of Christ’s suffering.63
This is interrupted by one of the Words (in Latin), “Sitio” (I thirst), sung by the offstage Voice of Christ (this device is normally used for choruses or for God the Father), which leads the five characters to a sacra conversazione. Since the Word’s enunciation had happened before the Entombment, this is a representation of meditative memory. In the discussion, the Baptist’s presence is justified, as he had baptized Christ with water at the beginning of His mission, as a sign of His humanity; the Magdalen’s tears represent the later presence of water in salvational history; and the simple opposition of water/fire swings the discourse around to “ardor.” Along the way, Minato played on a characteristically diverse set of authorities: Drogo of Laon/Ostia, Johannes Tauler, and Seneca. The three non-hidden followers of Christ (Mary, the Magdalen, the Baptist) then begin a series of metrically differentiated choral interjections. These continue with other trios involving Giuseppe and Nicodemo, until the Baptist recognizes Christ’s real need: “Yes, my crucified one, I believe that Your thirst is [really] Your desire that sinners may enjoy the fruits of the Blood that You shed.”
After Nicodemo invokes the Hypostatic Union, the Baptist moves the meditative progression one level further by concluding that “thirst holds a profound mystery”; the Magdalen then echoes Minato’s preface, “Yes, incarnate and crucified God, for You am I thirsty”; and all five characters then come around to their thirst for the Cross. The Magdalen and the Baptist, as human followers, have the last word, and the final madrigale is addressed to sinners, royal and other: “When Christ thirsts, he is thirsty for your weeping.” Thus the seemingly simple set of the Cross, perhaps ultimately dictated by the constraints of the military situation, turns out to reveal liquid associations.
In Friday’s L’Eternità, the one-plane (and hence relatively easy to construct, given the logistics in 1683) set, however obscure it might have seemed at first view, also played out sequentially. Beyond the despairing Penitent with whom the libretto begins, the other eleven allegorical figures are all related to time, and they are introduced