L’Orontea, composed by Antonio Cesti to a libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, was prémiered in 1656 at the Innsbruck court of Archduke Ferdinand Karl, the grandson of Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany under whose reign the first Florentine operas were created. Second only to Cavalli’s Il Giasone (also to a libretto by Cicognini), L’Orontea became one of the most successful operas in the whole century, revived nearly twenty times over three decades, not only in a number of Italian cities but also in German and French-speaking cities: Hanover, Wolfenbüttel, Vienna and Chantilly. The secret of this success lies in two brilliant features: the comic qualities of the libretto and the charming lyricism of the score.
The libretto is a comedy of intrigue, inspired by Spanish models of the comedia nueva, casting all the archetypical characters of Venetian opera: two pairs of noble lovers whose fortunes are intermingled – Queen Orontea, the painter Alidoro, the lady-in-waiting Silandra and the courtier Corindo – and a selection of stock characters: the philosopher Creonte, the vecchia Aristea (supposed mother of Alidoro), the young paggio Tibrino, the servant Gelone and the young slave Giacinta (in male disguise as Ismero). The intrigue starts when Orontea, who initially rejects Creonte’s urge to find a noble husband, falls secretly in love with Alidoro, who has just arrived at court. The dizzy Silandra also switches her sentimental preference from Corindo to Alidoro, who also attracts the interest of Giacinta. Aristea tries to win the favours of the young Ismero, and Gelone is unable to obey his mistress because he is completely drunk. Orontea confesses her love to Alidoro but the painter seems to be attracted by Silandra. Alidoro faints when the queen finds him painting the portrait of Silandra, giving Orontea the perfect opportunity to secretly confess her love (and leave a note of declaration) in a typical Venetian dream scene. The third act further complicates the plot as Orontea’s love is revealed, intensifying the conflict between characters up to a duel challenge between Alidoro and Corindo. At the end of the opera all the quarrels are solved through recognition: Aristea tries to win Ismero’s attention by offering a gold medallion that happened to belong to the late king of Egypt Tolomeo; accused of robbery, she discloses the real identity of Alidoro as Floridano, the son and heir of the late king of Phoenicia who was given the medallion by Tolomeo when he was an infant, solving all the problems, as Alidoro’s royal ascent now allows his marriage with Orontea.
Ferdinand Karl was so passionate about Italian opera that he built the first opera house in German-speaking realms in 1654 and assembled a permanent group of Italian musicians. The only woman, the famous Anna Renzi (Ottavia in the Venetian prémiere of L’incoronazione di Poppea), left Innsbruck in 1655, and the rest were mostly castrati, up to seven singers, among them the remarkable spy Atto Melani. There were also a few natural voices, including Cesti (who was a tenor but could apparently also sing baritone), the bass Pellegrino Canner and the intriguing Giulio Cesare Donati. The casting of Orontea is one of the most controversial issues in the study of seventeenth-century opera and a key aspect in this new Frankfurt production. There is no contemporary evidence about which singer was assigned to each role, and the four surviving scores reveal two different traditions: in the three Italian manuscripts, the role of Gelone is written for a bass – usually regarded as the first basso buffo in the history of opera – while the primo uomo Alidoro is written for tenor; in the fourth manuscript, copied in Venice but now preserved in Cambridge, Alidoro is an alto (typical for a leading male role) and Gelone is written for a puzzling vocal combination: he sings baritone in the first act, shifting to alto in the second and third acts. This strange mixture has led most scholars to dismiss the English manuscript as a corrupt version copied from two different traditions, although another plausible explanation has also been proposed. Firstly, there is a dramaturgical justification for Gelone’s change of range: Orontea’s comic servant spends the whole first act in a permanent state of inebriation, praising wine and Bacchus until collapsing completely drunk at the end of the first act after one of the most comic scenes of the opera; when Gelone reappears on stage near the end of the second act, his words reveal that he has just woken up from his drunken slumber to remain sober until the end of the opera; it is at this point that his voice changes from baritone to alto. Secondly, one of the members of Cesti’s troupe, Giulio Cesare Donati, is alternately mentioned in contemporary documents as a bass and soprano singer; as surprising as this may appear, from the time of Monteverdi some Italian singers cultivated a technique known as bass alla batarda, combining chest voice and falsetto to sing up to three octaves; a few years before the Orontea prémiere, in the Venetian season of 1651-62, Donati also participated in two operas by Cavalli containing similar changes of vocal range: Calisto (the unforgettable Giove and Giove-in-Diana) and Eritrea. Thus, it would appear that Cesti took advantage of Donati’s vocal skills to write a character singing baritone while he is drunk, and shifting to alto when sober.
The rest of the roles fit quite nicely the members of the Innsbruck Kammermusik we know from payrolls and from the cast of the previous opera L’Argia: the two noble couples plus Giacinta and Tibrino – four sopranos and two altos – were surely performed by castrati; most likely Aristea was sung by the tenor Biancucci who also sung a similar role in L’Argia, while Creonte could have been performed by Pellegrino Canner or by Cesti himself, as he also sang a similar part the previous year.
Like most operas of the period, the scores don’t give any indication of the instruments used in the production. Although the information about the Innsbruck court orchestra is fragmentary, we know that it included at times up to six violins (two also playing trumpet), two cornetti, one bassoon, one sackbut and viola da gamba, as well as two or three keyboard players. Thus, it would appear that the clear-cut sonority of the Venetian public theatres – usually consisting of two violins and continuo – was transformed into a rich instrumental palette when the new genre was transferred back to the court theatre.
Cesti’s score is the perfect match for Cicognini’s libretto, full of melodic inventiveness fitting the personality of each character. It includes a number of memorable arias, such as Orontea’s “Intorno all’idol mio” during Alidoro’s slumbering, or her final pledge “Inocente mio tesoro”, Giacinta’s declaration of unrequited love to Alidoro in “Mie pene” or Gelone’s comic tribute to Bacchus in “Qui non beve”. It also gives the opportunity for remarkable duets such as the love scenes between Silandra and the two leading male roles. But perhaps the most notable feature is the perfect integration of all the melodic highlights with a very fluid score where recitative expresses the changing circumstances of the plot, never allowing for tedium or routine.
Álvaro Torrente
(from [t]akte 1/2015)