Chapter 6

The Performance of "Orfeo"

The "Orfeo" was performed in a hall of the castle. The lyric dramas of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were all presented in private. There were no opera houses, and the theater, though revived in Italy in the fifteenth century, had no permanency till Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara, at the suggestion of Ariosto built in his capital a real play house. There is nevertheless no reason to think that the performance of Poliziano's "Orfeo" lacked admirable scenic and histrionic features. We have already seen how skilful the Italian managers and mechanicians of spectacular sacred plays were in preparing brilliant scenic effects for their productions. Since the form and general apparatus of the sacred play were seized by Poliziano for the fashioning of his "Orfeo," it is altogether probable that he accepted from the earlier creation pregnant suggestions as to the manner of presentation.

However, as the "Orfeo" was to be given indoors the manner of exhibiting it had to differ somewhat from that of the open air spectacle. The scale of the picture had to be reduced and the use of large movement relinquished. A temporary stage was erected in the great hall of the Palazzo Gonzaga. A single setting sufficed for the pictorial investiture of the action. The stage was divided into two parts. One side represented the Thracian country, with its streams and mountains and its browsing flocks. The other represented the inferno with Pluto, Proserpine, and the other personages made familiar by classic literature. Between the two was a partition and at the rear of the inferno were the iron gates.[17]

[Footnote 17: "Florentia: Uomini e cose del Quattrocento," by Isidore del Lungo.]

One easily realizes the vivid potency of the picture when Baccio Ugolino, as Orpheus, clad in a flowing robe of white, with a fillet around his head, a "golden" lyre in one hand and the "plectrum" in the other, appeared at the iron gates, and, striking the strings of the sweet sounding instrument, assailed the stony hearts of the infernals with song as chaste and yet as persuasive as that of Gluck himself. It is no difficult task to conjure up the scene, to see the gorgeously clad courtiers and ladies bending forward in their seats and hanging upon the accents of this gifted and accomplished performer of their day.

Of the history of Baccio Ugolino little, if anything, is known. There was a Ugolino of Orvieto, who flourished about the beginning of the fifteenth century. He was archpriest of Ferrara, and appears to have written a theoretical work on music in which he set forth a great deal of the fundamental matter afterward utilized in the writings of Tinctoris. But whether this learned man was a member of the same family as Baccio Ugolino is not known. The fact that he was located at Ferrara makes it seem likely that he was related to Poliziano's interpreter, who might thus have belonged to a musical family.

At any rate Baccio Ugolino possessed some skill in improvisation, and was also accomplished in the art of singing and accompanying himself upon the lute or viol. We shall in another place in this work examine the methods of the lutenists and singers of the fifteenth century in adapting polyphonic compositions to delivery by a single voice with accompaniment of an instrument. It was in this manner of singing that Baccio Ugolino was an expert. Symonds goes so far in one passage as to hint that Ugolino composed the music for Poliziano's "Orfeo," but there seems to be no ground whatever for such a conclusion.

Baccio Ugolino was without doubt one of those performers who appeared in the dramatic scenes and processional representations of the outdoor spectacles already reviewed. His pleasing voice, his picturesque appearance, grace of bearing and elegance of gesture, together with his ability to play his own accompaniments, marked him as the ideal impersonator of the Greek poet, and accordingly Poliziano secured his services for this important part.

For the other rôles and for the chorus the numerous singers of the court were sufficient. That there was an organized orchestra must be doubted, yet there may have been instrumental accompaniments in certain passages. This also is a matter into which we shall further inquire when we take up a detailed examination of the musical means at the command of Poliziano and his musical associates. The study of this entire matter calls for care and judgment, for it is involved in a mass of misinformation, lack of any information and ill grounded conclusions. For example, we read in a foot-note of Rolland's excellent work [18] that in March, 1518, the "Suppositi" of Ariosto was performed at the Vatican before Pope Leo with musical intermezzi. The author quotes from a letter of Pauluzo, envoy of the Duke of Ferrara, written on March 8. He wrote: "The comedy was recited and well acted, and at the end of each act there was an intermezzo with fifes, bag-pipes, two cornets, some viols, some lutes and a small organ with a variety of tone. There was at the same time a flute and a voice which pleased much. There was also a concert of voices which did not come off quite so well, in my opinion, as other parts of the music."

[Footnote 18: "Histoire de l'Opera en Europe avant Lully et Scarlatti," par Romain Rolland. Paris, 1895.]

Upon this passage Rolland makes the following comment: "This is the type of piece performed in Italy up to Vecchi, as the 'Orfeo' of Poliziano (1475), The Conversion of Saint Paul (Rome, 1484-92, music by Beverini), Cephale et Aurore (music by Nicolo de Coreggio) 1487, Ferrara, etc."

This confusion of Poliziano's "Orfeo" with spoken drama interspersed with intermezzi is unfortunate. There were no intermezzi at the representation of this lyric drama. It was in itself an entire novelty and nothing was done to distract the attention of the audience from its poetic and musical beauties. We can hardly believe that there was any close consideration of the fact that the work was an adaptation of the apparatus of the sacra rappresentazione to the secular play. The audience was without doubt absorbed in the immediate interest of the entertainment and was not engaged in critical analysis or esthetic speculations.

The costuming of the drama presented no difficulties. The skill already shown in the preparation of the sacred representations and the festal processions could here be utilized with excellent results. From 1470 to 1520, as we have already seen, was the period of the high development of the sacred play. Only a few years earlier the civic procession, or pageant, had shown in brilliant tableaux vivants the stories of the Minotaur and Iphigenie. The study of classic art and literature had blossomed in the very streets of Italy in a new avatar of the dramatic dance. From every account we glean testimony that the costuming of these spectacles was admirable. It must follow that so simple a task as the dressing of the characters in Poliziano's "Orfeo" was easily accomplished at that time when the Arcadian spirit of the story was precious to every cultured mind.

There were no mechanical problems of stage craft to be solved. The men who designed the cloud effects and the carriages for the floating angels in the open air spectacles might have disposed of them with ready invention, had they existed, but the theater of action, with its two pictures standing side by side, was simplicity itself. But let us not fall into the error of supposing that the scenery was crude or ill painted. The painter of the scenery of the production of Ariosto's "Suppositi," described by Pauluzo, was no less a personage than the mighty Raphael. The accounts of the writers of the latter part of the fifteenth and all of the sixteenth centuries are prolific in testimony as to the splendor of the pictorial elements in the festal entertainments of courts and pontiffs.[19]

[Footnote 19: "At the end of the fifteenth century, about 1480, are cited as famous scene painters Balthasar Reuzzi at Volterra, Parigi at Florence, Bibiena at Rome."--"Les Origines de l'Opera et le Ballet de la Reine," par Ludovic Celler. Paris, 1868.]

Celler,[20] in speaking of the theater of the period of Louis XIV, says: "The simplicity of our fathers is somewhat doubtful; if they did not have as regards the theater ideas exactly like ours, the luxury which they displayed was most remarkable, and the anachronisms in local color were not so extraordinary as we have often been told." The author a little further on calls attention to the fact that the mise en scène of the old mystery plays had combined splendor with naïve poverty. But he is careful to note that the latter condition accompanied the representations given by strolling troupes in small villages or towns, while the former state was found where well paid and highly trained actors gave performances in rich municipalities. In the villages rude stage and scenery sufficed; in the cities all the resources of theatric art were employed.

[Footnote 20: "Les Décors, les Costumes et la Mise en Scène au XVIIe Siècle," par Ludovic Celler. Paris, 1869.]

Without doubt one of the most serious of all problems was that of lighting. One cannot believe that at so early a date as that of this first secular drama of Italy, the system of lighting the stage was such as to give satisfactory results. Yet it is probable that artificial lighting was provided, because it would have been extremely difficult to admit daylight in such a way as to illumine the stage without destroying much of the desirable illusion. Celler, in the first of his two volumes already quoted, tells how the "Ballet de la Reine" (1581) was lighted by torches and "lamps in the shape of little boats" so that the illumination, according to a contemporary record, was such as to shame the finest of days. But hyperbole was common then, and from Celler's second book we learn that even in the extravagant times of Louis XIV the lighting problem was an obstacle. It caused theatrical enterprises to keep chiefly to pieces which could be performed in the open air or at any rate by daylight. "The oldest representation," he says, "given in a closed hall, with artificial light and with scenery, appears to have been that of the 'Calandra,' a comedy which Balthazzar Peruzzi caused to be performed before Leo X in 1516 at the Château of St. Ange." Duruy de Noirville[21] says that Peruzzi revived the "ancient decorations" of the theater in this "Calandra" which "was one of the first Italian plays in music prepared for the theater. Italy never saw scenery more magnificent than that of Peruzzi." This is a matter in which Noirville cannot be called authoritative, but it is certain that the fame of the production of "Calandra" was well established. Noirville's authority for his statements was Bullart's "Académie des Sciences et d'Arts," Brussels, 1682. Whether the comedy had music or not we cannot now determine, and it is a matter of no grave importance. The interesting point is that the fame of the scenic attire of "Calandra" seems to have been well established among the early writers on the theater and that they also regarded as significant its indoor performance. The performance of Poliziano's "Orfeo," however, took place some forty years earlier than that of "Calandra," and it was without doubt in a closed hall and therefore most probably with artificial light of flambeaux and lamps.

[Footnote 21: "Histoire du Théâtre de l'Opéra en France depuis l'Etablissement de l'Académie Royale de Musique jusqu'à présent." (Published anonymously.) Paris, 1753.]