From Madrigal to Opera : Monteverdi's Staging of the Self

This pathbreaking study links two traditionally separate genres as their stars crossed to explore the emergence of multiple selves in early modern Italian culture and society. Mauro Calcagno focuses on the works of Claudio Monteverdi, a master of both genres, to investigate how they reflect changing ideas about performance and role-playing by singers. Calcagno traces the roots of dialogic subjectivity to Petrarch's love poetry arguing that Petrarchism exerted a powerful influence not only on late Renaissance literature and art, but also on music. Covering more than a century of music and cultural history, the book demonstrates that the birth of opera relied on an important feature of the madrigalian tradition: the role of the composer as a narrative agent enabling performers to become characters and hold a specific point of view. Read more... Content: PART ONE. LA MUSICA AND ORFEO 1. Text, Context, Performance Performing Nobility Authorizing Performance The Work of Opera 2. Liminality, Deixis, Subjectivity Prologues as Paratexts "I am Music" The Prologue of Orfeo as Performance Dialogic Subjectivity Subject-Effects 3. Performing the Dialogic Self Music's Touch Echoes PART TWO. CONSTRUCTING THE NARRATOR 4. From Petrarch to Petrarchism: A Rhetoric of Voice and Address Voi ch'ascoltate Appropriating the Self Lyric Modes Equivocality. 5. In Search of Voice: Musical Petrarchism in the Sixteenth-Century MadrigalTheatricality and Temporal Perspective Diffracting the Self Who is Speaking? From Soggetto to Dialogo The Madrigal Book as Canzoniere PART THREE. STAGING THE SELF 6. Monteverdi, Narrator From Narration to Focalization Combattimento between Page and Stage 7. The Possibility of Opera The Aesthetics of Nothing: Monteverdi, Marino, and the Incogniti Focalization in Poppea Epilogue: Subjectivity, Theatricality, Multimediality Appendix 1: Tables of Contents of the Madrigal Books. Appendix 2: Monteverdi, Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda: Text and Translation Notes Index. About the book: This pathbreaking study links two traditionally separate genres as their stars crossed to explore the emergence of multiple selves in early modern Italian culture and society. Mauro Calcagno focuses on the works of Claudio Monteverdi, a master of both genres, to investigate how they reflect changing ideas about performance and role-playing by singers. Calcagno traces the roots of dialogic subjectivity to Petrarch s love poetry arguing that Petrarchism exerted a powerful influence not only on late Renaissance literature and art, but also on music. Covering more than a century of music and cultural history, the book demonstrates that the birth of opera relied on an important feature of the madrigalian tradition: the role of the composer as a narrative agent enabling performers to become characters and hold a specific point of view Focuses on the works of Claudio Monteverdi, a master of both genres, to investigate how they reflect changing ideas about performance and role-playing by singers. This title traces the roots of dialogic subjectivity to Petrarch's love poetry arguing that Petrarchism exerted a powerful influence on late Renaissance literature art and music.