Zieg ⦁ Monteverdi’s Orfeo 48 Finally, Monteverdi drew from the pastoral drama and intermedio to create Orfeo. A pastoral drama is a play with song and music throughout.46 Burkholder, Grout and Palisca write, “In a tradition derived from ancient Greece and Rome, pastoral poems told of idyllic love in rural settings peopled by rustic youths and maidens as well as mythological figures.”47 The first pastoral drama staged was also about Orpheus, entitled Favola d’Orfeo by Angelo Poliziano.48 These became increasingly popular among courts during the Renaissance, and early opera composers took subject matter, personalities, music, and dance from these dramas. Monteverdi pulled from such plots and characters to write Orfeo. Another musical source was the intermedio, which, according to Burkholder, was a “musical interlude on a pastoral, allegorical, or mythological subject performed between acts of a play.”49 Intermedi could be very elaborate with choral music, solo songs, instrumental music, costumes, dance, and scenery. Monteverdi considered these Renaissance traditions throughout his composition of Orfeo, such as a scene depicting Orpheus entering Hades, or the joy of celebrating a wedding. The synthesis of Renaissance musical qualities with ancient GrecoRoman humanistic philosophies led to the development of the art form opera. Monteverdi utilized these ideals to create the long lasting and iconic Orfeo. This opera shaped future ones and provided a reference for future composers to use. Not only that, but Orfeo is still being reshaped and performed on the stage in modern times. In a dissertation about Monteverdi’s modernization, Gregory Louis Camp of Oxford writes, Monteverdi’s operas have continued to spread to America and the rest of Europe to the present day, when the most celebrated opera directors, conductors, and singers perform them and audiences become increasingly familiar with them. Over the past hundred years, the operas of Claudio Monteverdi have become iconic symbols of the early-music movement and have entered the canon of so-called great operas.50 46 Burkholder, 298. 47 Burkholder, 298. 48 Burkholder, 298. 49 Burkholder, 299. 50 Camp, 1.
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