LITMIR.BIZ

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for all that the expenses on music theater and staging might have seemed “irrational” from a monetarist perspective.³ Thus the libretti’s inclusion of payment, prices, and balance showed the presence of both the scholastic and the modern in court discourse. Becher’s own eclectic theology, drawing variously from hermeticism and from the contemporary spirituality of Cardinal Giovanni Bona, also suggests another link between the lexical fields of exchange and soteriology.⁴ In addition, the openness of Catholic anti-Machiavellian thought toward trade (particularly in the political theorist Giovanni Botero, whose ideas had framed Habsburg claims to sovereignty) added weight to this discursive use.

      The first transaction to come up in the libretti was that of sinners’ debt. In the 1661 La Gara, it was expressed in terms of how much humanity owed to justice. After Giuda’s exit to suicide, in scene 8 Misericordia addresses the three remaining figures (Pietro, Longino, and the Centurione) to induce penance. Then Giustizia, armed and furious, reappears, as pitch organization switches in a sharp direction, from G mollis to G durus, and when Misericordia attempts to claim the trio for herself, Giustizia trumps her by pointing to their status: “each one of them is a true debtor to me of tears and pain.” With a sudden lurch toward even sharper pitch regions (on E), the sinners move to comply: “The disbursement of tears from our pain will be made to you, like cash at the bank of the Earth.”⁵ Giustizia accepts this promise with another change in pitch center, moving to C durus, and essentially the contest of justice and mercy is over, resolved dialogically and tonally by the differing remorse of each sinner.

      Even before, payment had come up in the closing madrigale of the 1660 Il Sagrifizio, as Caldana put it in halting verse: “From our eyes, let us pay out the heart’s capital in coins of flowing tears, nor let any penitent greedily hold on to them; pardon can be bought only with these pearls [margarite=“tears”].”⁶ Minato’s 1678 piece for Eleonora, I Tre chiodi di Christo, begins with Redeemed Humanity joyfully shedding its chains, but then being instructed as to the price of the transaction by Catholic Piety: “How much this your fate cost Jesus: thorns, whips, nails, the Cross, and death…. Humanità Redenta: Catholic Piety, you move me to tears; I would almost say that it pains me that my Redeemer bought me back from the Devil’s eternal slavery, if the price of my salvation is so great.”

      But it was in the Friday 1685 libretto (Draghi’s score is not preserved) that Minato rang all possible changes on redemption’s value, starting with his characteristically artificial and self-abnegating preface: “Reader, yesterday [the Thursday sepolcro] you gave me a large capital of sympathy for my Bevanda di fiele; today I seek to pay you with my Prezzo dell’humana redentione…. The price that I present you is Christ’s Blood, of infinite worth.”

      This piece featured one of Burnacini’s more complex designs, which moved the garden where the Tomb was traditionally located back on to Calvary (one drawing, Vienna, Theatermuseum, Min. 29/58b2, seems partially related, but some important details differ). Above the Crucifixion’s hill was the Cherub who expelled Adam from Eden, and in the heights of Burnacini’s set, the typical glory (an earlier version of this design, without the Cherub, had been used for the 1677 L’Infinità impicciolita). Its unusual cast of characters included four symbolic figures linked to redemption (Humanità Redenta again, Amor Divino, Misericordia Eterna, and Pentimento) along with three angels past or present: the Cherub, Lucifero, and a Guardian Angel, the last of whom begins the piece by releasing Humanità from the chains in which Lucifer leads her: “Drop these chains, get out of here, rebellious spirit! Lucifero: Have I lost my spoils? I, made utterly weak?” This echoes the seemingly optimistic opening of I Tre chiodi, and the four characters continue until Amor Divino and Misericordia Eterna appear out of nowhere in the Glory, narrating the events of salvational history with jabs at Lucifer. Finally, Pentimento arrives, eventually causing the Devil to flee entirely and offering the material means of a penitent life—namely and obviously, the Cross—to Humanità.

      Rather than hammering away at price, the underlying conceit of the piece, Minato held back until all the details of redemption had been sung. Then Pentimento’s two-stanza aria brought it back in: “(1) Weep, weep, never cease your weeping at Christ’s Feet; in giving your tears, you give little to Him Who gave His Blood for you. (2) Jesus shed His Blood from the five rivers [a gesture to the Five Wounds devotion], but for weeping you have only two eyes, miserable one, and nothing else. Cherubino: Redeemed Humanity, you cost so much to your Lord, and yet you are subject to only a small tax. a4: Penance and sorrow cost you nothing.” After Pentimento departs and returns with a crucifix, the final madrigale returns to the metaphor, leaving the Cross behind: “O human, you are earth, but you cost so much to Heaven.” This battle over just payment had an uncanny echo in Leopold’s fiscal policy for the imperial estates, subjected to levies that Vienna deemed necessary and which the nobility rejected as excessive.

      Even in the more hermetic libretti of the 1690s, the trope continued to function: the Apocalyptic Il Libro con sette sigilli of 1694, a piece set in remarkably sharp tonal areas, opens with a duet between Il Dolore del Cuore Più Appassionato di Tutti i Cuori and L’Amor di Christo (“The Pain of the Most Passionate Heart of All” and “Christ’s Love”), an opening like that of the 1697 La Virtù della Croce discussed in this study’s introduction.⁷ Then three other unusual symbolic characters appear: La Pietà di Chi Diede il Velo per Coprire la Nudità di Christo in Croce; Lo Sguardo Pietoso di Christo a Pietro; and L’Aiuto del Cireneo (respectively “The Piousness of Him Who Gave the Sheet to Cover Christ’s Nudity on the Cross”; “Christ’s Merciful Glance at Peter”; and “The Help of [Simon] the Cyrenian”); these are all “second-order” figures of allegory discussed presently. For all their unusual conceptualist nature, Pietà and Sguardo open with a commonplace of mercantilist discourse: “The immortal descended to redeem the mortal; / Such a great price was paid for humans, who are worth nothing.”⁸

      THE PERSONAE OF ALLEGORY

      The presence of such symbolic figures throughout the repertory is no surprise, coming as it does from the rappresentazione tradition. As noted, they also crop up, much more briefly, in the prologues of the Viennese opera and serenata repertory. That such roles elsewhere could have convincing musical depictions even later is evident in Alessandro Scarlatti’s output, for instance, the five allegorical figures found in his 1715 Oratorio della Santissima Trinità.

      But the Viennese novelty consisted of innovative choices for allegorical personages in both Sbarra’s and Minato’s libretti, and the use of second-order allegory in the latter’s. I have coined this latter term for characters that embody only one aspect of a human or biblical personage, for instance, Il Merito di Christo and Il Peccato d’Adamo//The Merit of Christ and Adam’s Sin, both found in the 1686 Friday piece Il Dono della vita eterna, or the just-mentioned trio from the 1694 Il Libro. Minato began to use them in the Thursday 1671 Epitaffi sopra il sepolcro (e.g., “L’Humanità di Christo”), then in 1672’s Il Paradiso aperto (“L’Humiltà della Beata Vergine,” who presents herself at the Father’s feet for intercession). Strikingly, the latter piece thus features both Mary and her Humility among its characters, a remarkable externalization of inner personality.⁹

      In 1682’s Il Terremoto, this abstraction is extended to features of allegorical characters, in this case Il Lume della Scienza and Il Lume della Fede (“The Light of Knowledge/Faith”). The 1696 La Passione di Christo features four straight allegorical roles (mentioned earlier: Contemplatione, Memoria, Intelletto, and Voluntà), plus Il Giubilo degli Angeli, Lo Stupore degli Huomini, and Il Terror dell’Inferno, the last three—The Angels’ Rejoicing; The Amazement of Humans; The Terror of Hell—here all figures of affect. The practice returned in Cupeda’s 1701 Song of Songs sepolcro, Il Fascietto di mirra, combining biblical roles with symbolic ones, although it is entirely absent from the post-Leopold works, a testimony to the waning power of allegory in the new century and new regime.

      In Cupeda’s libretto (M.A. Ziani’s score does not survive), two different allegorical traditions for the canticle’s Sponsa combine, and it is striking that neither is Marian. The cast list gives the female spouse

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