When Catholics could sing
McKenna, Edward J.
WHEN CATHOLICS COULD SING EDWARD. McKENNA WHO WAS GIULIO ROSPIGLIOSI? Who was Giulio Rospigliosi? My own introduction came through obscure references in musical dictionaries. He was the...
...The historic musical rivalry between the two cities ended with 16: 5 June 1992 Commonweal the complete vanquishing of the Roman Baroque opera by the adventurous Venetians...
...Yet here was the man who summoned Oliver Plunket, rector of the Irish College in Rome, to restore the primal See of Patrick, sending him to a sure death...
...Charles Burns, brought me into direct contact with a libretto by Rospigliosi, Dal Mal il Bene (From Bad to Good...
...I recently described this difference to Marilyn Horne, the renowned mezzo-soprano, saying that I didn't believe singers today would be interested in singing operas that were mostly recitative...
...Yet as pope he did not have time to become a "grand patron of the arts," not, I believe, because of his failing health, but simply because he desired to be what we who live in a post-Vatican II milieu have defined, somewhat sloppily, as "pastoral...
...It is rich in rhyme and rhythm of that extraordinarily musical language, Italian...
...The only active theater in the city had been closed...
...There was an intense rivalry in those days between the operatic styles of Rome and Venice...
...With the Jansenists perhaps permanently damaging theology in France, and the Turks disrupting much of the Mediterranean, Clemente Nono attempted to deal with them diplomatically...
...But what has survived is Rospigliosi's other identity...
...The libretto was partly in Rospigliosi's own hand (1653), written while he was papal nuncio to the Spanish court...
...With the stage decor and machinery (a necessary part of Baroque entertainments) by the master, Bernini...
...His libretti are today only vaguely known, and none has survived as repertory...
...That treasured masterpiece of the Vatican pinacoteca, Carlo Maratta's magnificent oil painting of Clement IX, shows it all...
...The Heavenly Comedy was produced to raves...
...Fifteen thousand of its 120,000 inhabitants had died...
...He abolished abuse of the Jews within the Papal States, reduced taxes on the contadini and cittadini (who flooded to hear his operas), made ten cardinals—but not his ambitious and gifted nephew—and protected the arts...
...Known for his mitezza (mild-manneredness), Pope Clement opened the first public opera house in Rome, ancestor to the famed Tor di Nona that Verdi knew by the Tiber (later torn down to make a dike...
...But the medium aids the message with the joking, unsophisticated humor of the lovers, and the common man, Biscotto...
...Yes, Bartolucci knew of Abbatini...
...The opera's theme is the religious conversion of a classical actress and comedienne...
...I had Rospigliosi (1600-69) in the back of my mind when an invitation to work with the Sistine Choir was extended to me in 1989 by Monsignor Domenico Bartolucci, the choir's director "perpetuo...
...He was what Gerard Manley Hopkins referred to in "Wreck of the Deutschland" (29) as a "Simon Peter of a soul," a pastoral pope who knew the who, the what, and the why...
...Mary Major...
...Ten years later he succeeded Alexander as pope...
...When he was just thirty-six years old...
...My delving into the Rospigliosi manuscripts uncovered an original copy of the complete score to a three-act opera, La Comica del Cielo (The Heavenly Comedy—literally, The Funny Lady of Heaven), by Pope Clement IX, then the reigning pontiff, and Abbatini, for presentation at the Roman carnival of 1668...
...Weary with the struggles of love and life, she wanders off to find peace in the desert...
...Of course, the devil is there to tempt her, and her lover begs for her return...
...Oh, Father," she responded, "you should know that the more I sing arias, the more I love recitative...
...It was the custom of even serious cardinals to engage in "travesties" during the pre-Lenten festivities...
...Prior to this, as papal nuncio to the Spanish king, Archbishop Rospigliosi had composed texts for at least eight operas...
...By comparison, the Roman opera is chaste and demure...
...It was performed eight times at Palazzo Ludovisi in February 1668, with Lenzi directing ten soloists in fourteen roles, with ballet and very small orchestra (two violins, cello, and clavicembalo/keyboard...
...and the solo singing by Pasqualini, Vittori, and Bianchi—castrati of the Sistine Choir—it was the culmination of a long history of ecclesiastical drama...
...For us who have grown up in the twentieth century, who have experienced the dichotomies presented by post-Enlightenment separation of church and state and post-Jansenist moralizing on the status of the priesthood, it is difficult to imagine the realities of seventeenth-century Rome...
...By today's standards, the operas of Rospigliosi are enormous in length: They run well beyond four hours, most of it recitative, with only occasional (and usually brief) arias, dances, and interludes...
...There he was introduced to Lope de Vega, a priest whose own skill in drama earned him papal interest and honor...
...This slightly effete artist who briefly occupied Peter's chair knew the reality of evil in the world: its seeming ability to distort the truth and turn individuals against one another...
...Elected pope at the age of sixty-seven and dying just short of his seventieth birthday, Rospigliosi left only a "Clementine peace" with the troublesome Jansenist bishops, a compromise that prevented yet another schism from rending the church...
...Living and working within the very arms of the choir that stretches back to the Counter-Reformation (Palestrina, Animuccia, Morales), I inquired of Bartolucci whether he knew of Antonio Maria Abbatini (1595-1680), a choir member and composer who had been involved in the opera-making of the papal court of Clement IX...
...he was a "good composer...
...He loved the world entirely and wished to configure it to Christ...
...But Baltasara remains faithful to her Christian vision and the libretto ends with her heroic death in a cavern...
...He is remembered in history as Pope Clement IX...
...He was later advanced to its vicar, and is one of the few popes who chose to be buried there...
...He was one who sought to heal all wounds...
...Now that's hardly a "comedy" except in the Christian sense...
...The devil's miracles of deceit in act 2, provided with the legerdemain of Bernini, undoubtedly were the talk of the Roman carnival...
...The stress of writing "big arias" to compete with Verdi or Puccini, or to write the elongated and convoluted leitmotiv recitatives of Wagner, has led to the demise of a lengthy list of contemporary opera composers...
...The gossip columns ("Avvisi di Roma"—even then, the paparazzi...
...Educated in the Jesuit Collegio Romano and a graduate in philosophy and jurisprudence from the University of Pisa, in 1626 Rospigliosi visited Spain with his classmate, Francesco Barberini, a nephew of the reigning Pope Urban VIII...
...A quick invitation from the Vatican archivist, Msgr...
...His tomb lies directly in front of the main altar...
...It's there that you can really act out the drama...
...Some dealt with religious allegories (Sant' Alessio), others with Crusade heroes (Erminio sul Giordano), and one was even about the eyebrow-raising moralities of Boccaccio...
...Rospigliosi as a man was fated to serve a church that would ignore his magnificence, largely because it was spiritual...
...He was the librettist to operas composed in Rome during the Baroque era (mid-seventeenth century), and was the inventor of the operatic style known in the nineteenth century as opera buffa, or simply "comic opera," raised to glory by Mozart and Rossini...
...did not disclose the authorship of the opera, except as one "Casino...
...He could not play "the patron" because he was so profoundly "the artist...
...Rospigliosi was appointed canon of the basilica of St...
...No great buildings, just a chapel at Santa Sabina and the gorgeous "Angel bridge" at Castel Sant' Angelo stand for his brick-and-mortar remembrance...
...By the time of Clemente Nono's accession (1667), Venetian opera was emphasizing the importance of music over words with the growing fioratura (ornamented recitative), expanding dissonance, and larger orchestrations of Monteverdi...
...It's all there, in the lightsome eye, and in Commonweal 5 June 1992: 17...
...Doubtless, the pope-librettist came to see the opera, but in disguise...
...I have pored over the text (adapted from the Spanish play, La Baltasara...
...De Vega is said to have praised the early works of the young Italian diplomat...
...It is perhaps also the reason why operacomposing has almost disappeared today...
...Ten years before the election of Papa Rospigliosi, Rome had been visited by a terrible plague...
...In 1657, Rospigliosi had been chosen cardinal-secretary of state under Pope Alexander VII...
...With the seamless and gently beautiful melodies of Abbatini over sometimes lush chromatic harmonies, La Comica del Cielo is a spiritual parodying of that difficult yet ever-intriguing time when the Roman Catholic church stood at the center of human action, at least in Western Europe, a time when popes could be actively involved in operamaking as well as peacemaking...
...It was simply accepted that a youthful monsignor of the papal court such as Giulio Rospigliosi could and would present operas in the fashionable salons of the city, where tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies were routinely given as entertainments by Rome's best singers and famous designers, such as Bernini, before visiting heads of state and ambassadors to the papal court...
...In Maratta's painting, the pope's hand rests lightly on the edge of a Missal and his sensitive, slightly pained smile is suffused with frailty...
Vol. 119 • June 1992 • No. 11
