UNA PRIMIZIA RINUCCINIANA: LA DAFNE PRIMA DELLA «MIGLIOR FORMA»
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Title
UNA PRIMIZIA RINUCCINIANA: LA DAFNE PRIMA DELLA «MIGLIOR FORMA»
Il Saggiatore musicale
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Abstract
The article describes an unpublished draft of Ottavio Rinuccini’s «favola di Dafne», which was the first theatrical work designed to be set to music and sung from beginning to end. This 212-line version precedes the earliest hitherto known printed editions (one undated but prior to 1600, the other dated 1600) which have 445 lines. This draft is examined both from the point of view of its poetic and formal structure and within its contextual setting.The first section of the essay focuses on the dating of the manuscript by analysing the handwriting, the format, and the watermark. The second examines the metrical structure and the formal organization of the poetic text, comparing it to contemporary models such as the madrigale, which was popular in Florence at the end of the sixteenth century, and the odi-canzonette resulting from Gabriello Chiabrera’s experiments. The third describes the extant musical fragments. Those connected until now with the 445-line Dafne are compared with this unpublished shorter draft. Hypotheses are formulated about the presumed style of the music that has not survived. The fourth section addresses the often-debated topic of the theatrical genre to which Rinuccini’s dramas are to be assigned. The compositional structure of this first favola in musica, even in this earliest of all known versions is already the one used by the poet in subsequent theatrical texts; models can best be found in the discussions held by the Accademici Alterati concerning ancient theater. The fifth and last section offers some new biographical information about Rinuccini and his friend and patron the banker Jacopo Corsi, in particular, his love life and favourite forms of entertainment, and allows us to speculate about the potential spectators of the earliest version of Dafne.The article sheds new light on the intellectual journey in both theory and practice which laid the foundations for the theatrical genre we now call melodramma – a genre of which Rinuccini, with his striking penchant for poetic and theatrical experimentation, can legitimately be considered a founder.
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short title
UNA PRIMIZIA RINUCCINIANA