Fruits of the Cross. Robert L. Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ a crucifix, the final madrigale returns to the metaphor, leaving the Cross behind: “O human, you are earth, but you cost so much to Heaven.” This battle over just payment had an uncanny echo in Leopold’s fiscal policy for the imperial estates, subjected to levies that Vienna deemed necessary and which the nobility rejected as excessive.

      Even in the more hermetic libretti of the 1690s, the trope continued to function: the Apocalyptic Il Libro con sette sigilli of 1694, a piece set in remarkably sharp tonal areas, opens with a duet between Il Dolore del Cuore Più Appassionato di Tutti i Cuori and L’Amor di Christo (“The Pain of the Most Passionate Heart of All” and “Christ’s Love”), an opening like that of the 1697 La Virtù della Croce discussed in this study’s introduction.⁷ Then three other unusual symbolic characters appear: La Pietà di Chi Diede il Velo per Coprire la Nudità di Christo in Croce; Lo Sguardo Pietoso di Christo a Pietro; and L’Aiuto del Cireneo (respectively “The Piousness of Him Who Gave the Sheet to Cover Christ’s Nudity on the Cross”; “Christ’s Merciful Glance at Peter”; and “The Help of [Simon] the Cyrenian”); these are all “second-order” figures of allegory discussed presently. For all their unusual conceptualist nature, Pietà and Sguardo open with a commonplace of mercantilist discourse: “The immortal descended to redeem the mortal; / Such a great price was paid for humans, who are worth nothing.”⁸

      THE PERSONAE OF ALLEGORY

      The presence of such symbolic figures throughout the repertory is no surprise, coming as it does from the rappresentazione tradition. As noted, they also crop up, much more briefly, in the prologues of the Viennese opera and serenata repertory. That such roles elsewhere could have convincing musical depictions even later is evident in Alessandro Scarlatti’s output, for instance, the five allegorical figures found in his 1715 Oratorio della Santissima Trinità.

      But the Viennese novelty consisted of innovative choices for allegorical personages in both Sbarra’s and Minato’s libretti, and the use of second-order allegory in the latter’s. I have coined this latter term for characters that embody only one aspect of a human or biblical personage, for instance, Il Merito di Christo and Il Peccato d’Adamo//The Merit of Christ and Adam’s Sin, both found in the 1686 Friday piece Il Dono della vita eterna, or the just-mentioned trio from the 1694 Il Libro. Minato began to use them in the Thursday 1671 Epitaffi sopra il sepolcro (e.g., “L’Humanità di Christo”), then in 1672’s Il Paradiso aperto (“L’Humiltà della Beata Vergine,” who presents herself at the Father’s feet for intercession). Strikingly, the latter piece thus features both Mary and her Humility among its characters, a remarkable externalization of inner personality.⁹

      In 1682’s Il Terremoto, this abstraction is extended to features of allegorical characters, in this case Il Lume della Scienza and Il Lume della Fede (“The Light of Knowledge/Faith”). The 1696 La Passione di Christo features four straight allegorical roles (mentioned earlier: Contemplatione, Memoria, Intelletto, and Voluntà), plus Il Giubilo degli Angeli, Lo Stupore degli Huomini, and Il Terror dell’Inferno, the last three—The Angels’ Rejoicing; The Amazement of Humans; The Terror of Hell—here all figures of affect. The practice returned in Cupeda’s 1701 Song of Songs sepolcro, Il Fascietto di mirra, combining biblical roles with symbolic ones, although it is entirely absent from the post-Leopold works, a testimony to the waning power of allegory in the new century and new regime.

      In Cupeda’s libretto (M.A. Ziani’s score does not survive), two different allegorical traditions for the canticle’s Sponsa combine, and it is striking that neither is Marian. The cast list gives the female spouse as representing the Church Militant, and thus in the ecclesiological tradition of interpretation, but the preface explains the title’s “bundle of myrrh,” taken from the Song, as the “figure of the Redeemer’s Passion, to be held between the breasts, that is between the soul’s two powers,” and thus in individual or tropological understanding. A devotional tract published in Rome the previous autumn, La sublime contemplazione e sicura pace in Christo Giesù crocefisso, by the Discalced Carmelite Onorio dell’Assunta (G.C. Guidetti, 1639–1716), had seized on precisely this verse (Cant 1:12) as a symbol for the believer’s own contemplation of the Crucifixion.¹⁰

      In line with Minato’s explanations of the previous decade, Cupeda also gave an ekphrastic description of the sepolcro’s staging:

      The set will represent a garden of lilies and other flowers. Midstage there will be a small hill with a myrrh tree, near which there will be the canticle’s Sponsa, who will have in her breast a myrrh bunch, the figure of Christ’s Passion, with a motto: My beloved is a myrrh bundle to me; He will remain between my breasts. [NB: Cant 1:12]. Jerusalem’s virgins will surround her, presenting her with flowers and apples, expressing the Passion. In the distance the canticle’s Sponsus will be seen, a figure of Christ, climbing a palm tree, with a motto: I shall climb a palm tree and pluck its fruit. [NB: Cant 7:8]

      The piece opens with the Sponsa, the three cardinal virtues, and a penitent sinner, all paraphrasing various Canticle verses while making the link between the palm tree and the Cross; one of Burnacini’s drawings seems related to the scene as given by Cupeda.¹¹ The female spouse then cites the parable of the vineyard (Matthew 21, etc.) in Passion context, and Carità calls her the vine planted by God the Father, using an interpretation from Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi that also contains a swipe at Jewish “guilt” via the Tenebrae Responsory Vinea mea electa. After having ignored the Tomb thus far, the Sponsa then turns to it in a deictic gesture, leading to the appearance of the second-order figures L’Amore di Giovanni, La Penitenza di Pietro, and La Disperatione di Giuda (“John’s Love”; “Peter’s Penitence”; “Judas’s Despair”). This scene recalls the interactions of Peter and Judas from the texts of the 1660s, and here their “derivative” nature seems to distill their characters for dramatic expediency (they enter only two-thirds of the way through, and without the “Chi sei tu?” dialogues of recognition typical of earlier texts).

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