Fruits of the Cross - Robert L. Kendrick

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(discussed in chapter 4) shows.

      As for many early modern Christians, Eleonora’s devotional world was thus complex.75 Lent 1661 seems to have been a particularly busy time in her chapel, as a letter from the new Modenese ambassador suggests, partially because of her response to Pope Alexander VII’s universal Jubilee of that year to implore pardon for Christian sin along with heavenly aid in the battles against the Ottomans.76 Indeed, the foregrounding of Misericordia in the Thursday piece might have been a response to this theme in the Jubilee. The sepolcro enacts the remorse of two character pairs: Giuda and Pietro together with the Centurione and Longino (in the Viennese tradition, these latter were separate figures on Calvary). This quartet is in dialogue with the three allegorical figures: the contesting Misericordia and Giustizia, along with Disperatione. The allegorical trio parallels that of 1660’s Trionfo, and the piece’s virtuoso bass part for Giuda suggests what the music for Morte might have been like the previous year if Pierelli’s Trionfo (for which Tricarico’s score does not survive) were the text. Given that Draghi was the only bass singer employed by the empress in 1662, this part or parts might well have been meant for him; certainly the character’s unusual presence in this piece testifies to some kind of extraordinary singer. Five of eight scenes include the traitorous disciple, starting with a despairing monologue at his first appearance in scene 2.77

      In the literary environment, there were even longer treatments of Judas’s fate, such as the forty-five-page poem by Giulio Liliani printed in 1627 under Tasso’s name. Quoting Ambrose, Manni noted in his Lenten sermons that the apostle’s despair was a greater sin (because of its denial of divine mercy) than his betrayal of Christ.78 Obviously, the creation of an allegorical Despair was not original with Scarano, dating as it did to the Mystère de la Passion of the fifteenth-century Parisian organist and author Arnaul Gréban. Giuda’s presence in this piece also reflects an undated oratorio, probably from the 1660s, for the court by the castrato singer and occasional composer Filippo Vismarri, Giuda disperato (score in I-Baf).

      As the lineup of characters suggests, La Gara works around paired duets leading to trios, thus imparting an expansive dramatic macrorhythm to the scenes. Like the 1660 Il Sagrifizio, it starts in media res, here with a squabble over precedence between Misericordia and Giustizia, followed by a duet of Giuda and Pietro and then a trio of these two last and Misericordia. The pattern repeats with a duo for the Centurione and Longino, followed by Giuda and Misericordia, and another trio for these two plus Giustizia, featuring the betraying disciple’s most florid music. The final three scenes move from a trio on Giuda’s final despair, to a quartet, to a quintet of characters, as he disappears and penance is enacted by the others. The constructivism of the structure is evident, and the piece marked the first use of the “competition” trope in a sacred context, although the idea had originally been employed for a Viennese opera in January 1652 to celebrate the birth of Margherita Teresa in Spain. The same idea would return in Pierelli’s (?1663) sepolcro La Gara di pietà, which features the Virgin, an angel, and some four allegorical characters (Fede, Amor Divino, Gentilesmo, and Paganesmo), before it went on to a long career in stage works secular and sacred. The Thursday 1661 piece was followed on Friday by Draghi and Bertali’s Il Pentimento, focusing only on penance and calling for fewer (six) singers than did La Gara della misericordia.

      How Scarano might have come up with his dramatic scheme is not entirely clear. He had been born into a middle-class family in Taranto, educated in the seminary and taken orders, and at some point made his way to Vienna, where he would collaborate on other dramatic projects before returning home and dying in 1671.79 He might well have known Tricarico in Apulia before ever reaching Austria. His piece marks the first use of New Testament characters in the repertory, and the first reference to a Habsburg relic, by virtue of his inclusion of Longino and thus the Holy Lance which the soldier had wielded to pierce Christ’s side. Rather than having Penance be an actual character, as in the two pieces of the previous year and the other 1661 work—indeed, Penitenza’s “epilogue” to Il Sagrifizio d’Abramo on Good Friday 1660 had turned out as a show-grabbing solo for Vismarri—here remorse is enacted in different ways by Pietro, the Centurione, and Longino, while rejected by Giuda. Thus every nonallegorical figure is a sinner of some sort.

      The setup of the first three scenes shows the links to the past tradition of rappresentazioni, while the music is firmly rooted in midcentury styles. The two allegorical figures open by snapping at each other in versi sciolti, with their opening scene falling into the flatter regions of their G mollis tonality. Misericordia points at a Crucifix, while Giustizia places the scene temporally by noting that nothing has been the same for her since Christ’s death. In this recited dialogue, even the smallest vocal flourish stands out.

      With the entrance of two soliloquizing sinners, the literary register drops in scene 2, the verses even out into settenari, and the tonal environment shifts abruptly into durus regions around D. Giuda opens with a long, despondent monologue descending to his low E, while Pietro reiterates the depth of his betrayal, and the two squabble as to whose sin was greater, a parody of the opening dispute between the allegorical figures (example 1.1).

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      Perhaps because of the underlying popular tradition of Tomb theater, the opening of this piece, while serious, comes off as livelier than might be expected. It is certainly nothing like the outpourings of unbridled grief that would open some later sepolcri, starting with Minato’s 1670 Sette consolationi. And in its studied ignoring of the actual Sepulcher, it focuses attention from the outset on penance—just as the works of the previous year and Il Pentimento would do.80

      The first aria, cast in the two-stanza form that was normative in both sacred and secular dramatic works, is given to Pietro at the end of scene 3, cast in settenari and endecasillabi and based on E, moving to a more distant tonal center. As if to contrast all this, the two Roman soldiers arriving from Calvary frame their penance with duets in scene 4, before we return in the next scene to an increasingly desperate Giuda, who asks Giustizia to kill him with the sword of Justice. Although she lays out the path of penance culminating in hope, the former apostle refuses to take it, despite a duet plea from the two sisters. Misericordia leaves Giustizia to observe Giuda’s downfall, which begins with his aria at the end of scene 6, paralleling Pietro’s three scenes earlier. By this point, the didactic division between “good” and “bad” remorse has been made evident, and Scarano then introduces Disperatione (with Giuda’s reference to her black armor) in another “dialogue of recognition” at the beginning of scene 7. The essential identity of the two characters becomes evident (Disperatione: “[io] son quel che tu sei”), and, still in relatively sharp pitch areas, the two go off together in a bouncy triple rhythm, despite Giustizia’s offstage warning about the horror of Hell. This jocund banalization of suicide seems to come out of the rappresentazione tradition.

      Before the scene ends, Giuda becomes the target of an invocation of despair by the devils, with a repetitive sinfonia consisting of only two pitches. The remarkable moment closes with second thoughts from Giuda, and Giustizia’s vow that she will accompany him even in his suicide. To the degree that there is any contemporary model for this scene, it was probably not Liliani’s poem, a series of solo laments for Judas with minimal narration, but rather a moment in Fabio Glissanti’s guide to Hell, L’horribile e spaventevole inferno (Venice, 1617). Here a damned soul is led through infernal regions and passes a mural that depicts the dialogue between Despair and the betraying disciple. As a major creator of allegorical drama, Glissanti also served as something of a model for the early sepolcri.

      The reappearance of Misericordia at the opening of scene 8 thus marks the denouement, as she brings mercy to the three repentant sinners. This moment also marks the only recurrence of the piece’s opening pitch structure (G mollis), after most of the central scenes’ placement on A or D durus. Set in the sharp sonorities that

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