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• 02 Gen 2017

Few books can claim both the popularity and controversiality of Les Aventures de Télémaque, a novel written in 1694-8 and published in 1699 by François Pons de Salignac, Comte de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651-1715). Envisaged by its author as a sequel to Homer’s Odyssea, Télémaque offers the account of a young warrior’s quest for his long-lost father, Ulysses. Under the veil of epic myth, Fénélon transmitted models of noble behavior to the enfant terrible he was expected to instruct – the Duke of Burgundy (Louis de France, 1682-1712). Unfortunately for him, the dedicatee’s grandfather, Louis XIV, was anything but pleased by Fénelon’s pedagogical tale; instead, the Sun King perceived Télémaque as a satire of himself and took measures to prevent it from appearing in print. Even so, Télémaque was distributed in manuscript form, sold in dozens of editions and translated in many languages, thereby sparking a cult or ‘Telemacomania’ from which few enlightened spirits could escape. Within the year of its first publication, for instance, the Modenese librarian and philosopher Lodovico Antonio Muratori remarked in a letter to Count Carlo Borromeo Arese that Télémaque «È un romanzo, ma fatto con sommo giudicio, per inspirar la virtù e insegnar la vera maniera di regger popoli.» Encouraging his former patron to take a closer look at the book, and in particular at its provocative depiction of «l’ambizione di Luigi e lo stato del suo regno» Muratori furthermore reported that the Roman authorities too looked suspiciously at its author. But all in spite of the controversy surrounding Fénelon, Muratori did not hesitate to rehearse his appraisal for Télémaque in Della perfetta poesia italiana (1706), in which he described the novel in glowing terms, though wisely omitted the author’s name: “Una ben differente, ma però ingegnosissima, e misteriosa Filosofia pratica, si è a’ nostri giorni rappresentata mirabilmente in prosa da un famoso Letterato di Francia col Romanzo intitolato le Avventure di Telemaco, da cui con rara loro dilettazione possono i Lettori trarre utilissimi consigli per ben reggere se stessi, e per ben governare altrui.” Addressing his Italian colleagues, Muratori added that: “Chi perciò in somigliante maniera, ma però in versi, e in un Poema ancor continuato […] sapesse leggiadramente intessere queste vaghe Immagini di pratica Filosofia, oltre al giovare assaissimo alla Repubblica [delle lettere], e apportarle gran diletto occuperebbe ancora fra i nostri Poeti un seggio finora vacante. Muratori’s words strike a key when confronted with the flock of Italian poets who taken his advice at heart and versified the adventures of Telemachus into a peculiar kind of ‘continuous poem’ –the operatic libretto The earliest such example is the anonymous cantata Il ritorno di Telemaco in Itaca, published in Rome during the Summer of 1717. An allegorical work in any sense, this modest cantata lacks in dramatic action and provides roles for just two soloists, Mentore and Telemaco, who sing alongside a ‘Coro del Popolo d’Itaca.’The piece was performed twice in honor of James Francis Edward Stuart, the ‘Old Pretender,’ who enjoyed steady support from Pope Clement XI in his (vain) attempts at seizing the British Crown. The libretto was quite tellingly published by the Vatican printer and premiered in private at the papal summer residence of Castelgandolfo. A second performance took place at the Roman Seminar during an academy that made the link between Telemachus’s wanderings and the Jacobite cause all the more explicit – it bore the pompous title Il modello d’un’eroica virtù trà le avversità proposto in persona di Telemaco antico eroe della Grecia. The Roman opera goer had to wait no more than half a year to witness a full-scale Telemaco. In the meantime, theatrical activities in the Holy City had reached a peak with the reopening of two public theaters during the 1717 Carnival – the Teatro della Pace and Teatro Alibert More than ever Roman impresarios saw themselves enmeshed in fierce competition and rivalry. The Pace, for instance, had been inaugurated with La Circe in Italia, a remake of a Venetian spectacle given six years before. The opening scene of this opera depicted the magician Circe summoning the dark spirits to transform a mountainous seascape into an idyllic garden complete with animals. For all its fanciful simplicity, La Circe in Italia was well received and may have sparked a local trend for Homeric operas depicting enamored femmes fatales against pastoral backdrops. Unhappily, that season the management of another theatrical contender, the Capranica, had opted to stage two rather austere operas by Francesco Gasparini, Il Trace in Catena and Pirro, the first of which was dismissed by the connoisseur Pietro Ottoboni as «la più dolorosa bestialità che si sia veduta in questo povero paese». Having learnt a lesson, the new group of impresarios (Bernardo Robatti, Lorenzo Capua and Giuseppe Masini) changed course the following year by adding more variety and spectacle to the Capranica playbill. Their first offering, Berenice regina di Egitto, dedicated to Ernestina von Dietrichstein, wife to Austrian Ambassador Johann Wenzel von Gallas, featured music that was jointly composed by Domenico Scarlatti and Nicola Porpora, and a historical libretto based on Antonio Salvi’s Berenice, regina d’Egitto (Firenze, 1709). Telemaco, their second production, merits to be seen as both a counterpart to Berenice and a response to the rivaling production of the previous season, La Circe in Italia. Dedicated to Ambassador Gallas himself, Telemaco boasted a spectacular mythological libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capeci,16 stunning decorations by Antonio Canevari, and a luscious score by Scarlatti senior, Alessandro. The synopsis learns that Telemaco is partly based on Homer’s Odyssea partly invented. Papal censorship or personal ambitions must have prevented Capeci from quoting Fénelon as his real source of inspiration. To be sure, a quick glance at the list of interlocutors creates the impression that the plot pays greater tribute to the stock conventions of Baroque opera than to Fénelon’s Télémaque. Rather than following the novel in detail, Capeci recombined elements from various chapters «per lasciar maggior campo all’intreccio,» that is, to accommodate a staggering fifty-three arias and ensembles. No coincidence, then, the divergences between novel and opera are considerable. The title-character does for instance not become infatuated with a nymph called Eucharis, as happens in Book VII of Télémaque but instead starts a relationship with Idomeneus’s daughter Antiope. Thus an episode located in Salante and told in Books XXII and XXIII of Fénelon’s novel was made to complement adventures situated on Ogygia and related in Books I, IV and VII, with two additional differences, namely that Antiope happens to live as a slave under the name Erifile, and that Telemaco does actually marry her (instead of eloping her). Calipso’s love for Telemaco is furthermore envied by a certain Adrasto, who reminds us of the ill-fated Daunian King Adraste from Books XVI to XX (he is killed by Télémaque), though is here presented as a Corinthian prince promised to Calipso. Finally, there is a newly-invented brother for Calipso, Sicoreo, whose love for Antiope creates a second love triangle that is wholly absent from Fénelon’s account. On scrutinizing the operatic afterlife of Télémaque, I was able to identify an additional,hereto-unknown model for Telemaco – Pellegrin’s tragédie en musique Télémaque, premiered at Paris in 1714 with music by Destouches. Capeci seems to have either attended a performance of this opera or bought a copy of its libretto during his French sojourn with dowager-Queen Maria Casimira (1714-6). Conspicious similarities between both libretti bear out enough evidence to assume that it was indeed Pellegrin’s example which provided the Roman poet with the clues necessary to dramatize an epic novel. As regards the cast, for instance, both operas are provided with a role for a high priest of Neptune, called Nicandro in Capeci’s version. The scenery of both productions is greatly similar, not to mention the divertissements with machinery and ballets, rare features of early opera seria. Various intertextualities, finally, confirm the kinship between Pellegrin’s tragédie en musique and Capeci’s dramma per musica. Yet, to state that Capeci merely translated or adapted an extant libretto would do wrong to his sensitivity to Fénelon’s novel. Some of his textual interventions in effect reveal a closer adherence to Les Aventures de Télémaque than to Pellegrin’s operatic rendering. Whereas the latter gave far more scope to the events around Calypso, Eucharis and Adraste, unnecessarily delaying Telemachus’s first appearance until the second act, Capeci focused on the novel’smain plot, introducing Telemaco in Act I scene 3. All the more important from this respect is Capeci’s restoration of the essential part of Mentor, Télémaque’s philosophical counselor, who in Pellegrin’s version is downgraded to a generic confident named Idas. Speaking in numbers, Capeci’s intervention is astonishing – whereas Idas has a mere seventeen lines of recitative to sing, Mentore is heard in sixty-three lines of recitative plus five arias. A last, all the more remarkable difference testifying to Capeci’s acquaintance with Fénelon’s novel consists in his treatment of the opening scene. Whereas Pellegrin’s prologue trumpets the peace and flourishing of the arts under the King’s patronship – the chorus exclaims such clichés as «Dans nos jeux, / Mêlons la tendresse» and «Amours, faites voler vos traits, /Plaisirs, faites briller vos charmes, / Triomphez, regnez à jamais» – it is Fénelon’s critical stance toward luxury and voluptuousness which Capeci seeked to confirm through a depiction of a quarrel between Minerva and Nettuno over the merits of rationality versus sensuality, which concludes with a duet: «Torni dunque il Ciel sereno, / Torni in calma questo Mar.» Poetic conceits relating to the sea and alluding to both the Odyssea and amorous desire, most notably shipwrecks and tempests, constitute a basic tenet of Fénelon’s novel and its operatic adaptations. Calypso is introduced in Fénelon’s account as a passionate woman torn by grief and melancholy, lamenting her abandonment by Ulysses near the seaside and sharing her tears with the waves. An all too meticulous imitation of Fénelon’s text would have resulted in silence, for the latter tells that «Sa grotte ne resonnoit plus de son chant.» Act I scene 3 of Pellegrin’s Télémaque by contrast takes a more positively ‘operatic’ direction in that it has Calypso perform an aria in which she invokes the pity of Neptune, whose cruel waves have robbed her of Ulysses and, as the spectator knows, are about to bring her a new object of affection. The scene is set in a post-diluvial landscape with material reflections of Calypso’s inner brokenness and nostalgia – ruins. Capeci in his turn retained part of the new tableau, while at the same time omitted the two preceding, redundant scenes starring Eucharis and her confidente, Cleone, thus creating a plot that is more in keeping with the novel.
The music to Calipso’s first aria, «Dio del mar,» with its Lento tempo, dotted rhythms in staccato, ternary meter, and numerous rests, enhances the sense of royalty combined with distress apt for the situation and character – a divine abbandonata. Ornamental display and cadential delays on «pietà» (measures 14-19) amplify Calipso’s unful fillable yearning for deliverance.
Calypso is suffering from amorous sorrow, if not for too long. On beholding Telemaco from a distance, she immediately recognizes the traits of her former lover, exclaiming: «mà quel sembiante, / E’ l’istesso, che in sogno / Di vedere in Ulisse, oh Dio! mi parve.» Her words retain snippets from Pellegrin’s version, but the context in which they are uttered has changed in favor of more scenic drama. Rather than a simple récit, the dream or memory of Ulysses has become a physical recognition in line with Fénelon’s account, which reports that, from the very first glance, it became clear to Calypso that Télémaque possessed his father’s character and build. An additional similarity between Fénelon and Capeci consists in the representation of Calipso’s experience of joy, love and unease on perceiving the younger version of her Greek idol. Calipso tries her utmost to conceal the early signs of affection, but – as Fénelon put it –«la joie de son cœur […] éclatoit malgré elle sur son visage.» The blush on her face, which is naturally difficult to render on stage, was cleverly manipulated by Capeci into an offside address to her heart.
As regards the music, Calipso’s inner shift from pathos to exaltation is exteriorized through sharply contrasting ingredients. «Mio cor, se lo sai tu» is cast in a Vivace mold featuring common time, quirky figures by the violins (measures 17-8), and numerous textual repeats. On a tonal level, there is a world of difference between its ‘amorous’ key, A Major (with three sharps), and the ‘soft’ B-flat Major (two flats) of «Dio del Mar». Again, however, the delayed cadence (measures 19-25) suggests that Calipso’s feelings are not to be reciprocated.
Telemaco’s inner anguish is evoked through an Andante with dotted rhythms in staccato, spiraling ‘siciliano’ motives, cadential delay (measures 20-23), modal inflections (lowered subtonic in measure 25), and chromaticisms on « petto » (measures 21-22), as if love is musically creeping in his ‘chest.’ Inflicted by a yet unknown feeling that overrides his rational comfort and undermines his eloquence, Telemaco rehearses the discourse of Calipso’s «Dio del mar.» Tonally speaking (g minor versus B-flat Major), both arias could hardly be closer related. Scarlatti’s deployment of specific keys not only reveals a profound interest in musical rhetorics, but also helps to define gender patterns in his score. In the eighteenth century, each tonality possessed its distinct expressive range and gender. The more sharps and flats added to the signature, the more ‘genderized’ a key was believed to sound. An increasing number of flats was perceived as being less noble and more pathetic, hence as more appropriate to represent the ‘weak sex’; an increasing number of sharps was associated with brightness and vigor, hence with traits appropriate for masculine characters. Such connotations between the flat and effeminacy did not necessarily originate from psychoacoustic notions, though rather sprang from semantic connections in Latin and Romance languages, and more particularly between the ‘mollis’ or ‘bemolle’ and such concepts as ‘mollitia,’ ‘mollesse’ or ‘mollezza.’ Giovanni Maria Bononcini, for example, argued in his Musico prattico (1688) that the «B molle» was thus called «perche rende la Cantilena molle, mesta, e languida.» In keeping with this, contemporaries associated Telemaco’s key of g minor (two flats) with (very) pathetic, tender and touching affections, while at the same time believed it to suit agitated emotions like frenzy, despair, discontent and unease. Calipso’s B-flat Major, on the other hand, was described by eighteenth-century commentators as rather noble, but also as pathetic, tender, soft, sweet, effeminate, amorous and aspiring for a better world. Rationalist philosophers appropriated the concept of ‘mollezza’ so as to criticize the alleged ‘effeminacy’ of musical drama. In Italy, it was above all Muratori who in his Della perfetta poesia italiana sought to wreck the reputation of contemporary opera, contending that egli non si può negare, che la Musica Teatrale de’ nostri tempi non si sia condotta ad una smoderata effemminatezza, onde ella più tosto è atta a corrompere gli animi de gli uditori, che a purgarli, e migliorarli, come dall’antica Musica si faceva. Muratori did thereby not mention any tonal or modal principles underlying this ‘effemminatezza’ (as Plato had done in the Republic), but simply took it for granted that the ‘ariette’ of divas and castrati inspired una certa mollezza, e dolcezza, che segretamente serve a sempre piú far vile, e dedito a’ bassi amori il popolo, bevendo esso la languidezza affettata delle voci, e gustando gli affetti piú vili, conditi dalla Melodia non sana. On the basis of this, he concluded that «non si partono giammai gli Spettatori pieni di gravità, o di nobili affetti; ma solamente di una femminil tenerezza, indegna de gli animi virili, e delle savie, e valorose persone.» Muratori’s critique can be connected to the tale of Telemachus via the idea, espoused by eighteenth-century criticism, that the arias of feminine performers instilled similar, ‘mollifying’ effects in listeners as siren songs had done in Ulysses and his sailors. Thus Antonio Planelli observed in his Dell’opera in musica (1772) that the ‘abuses’ of feminine song had been anticipated by Homeric epic: Per ciò, che concerne le Cantatrici, ben si sa qual predominio abbia sul cuore umano il canto donnesco, e una funesta, e giornaliera esperienza fa vedere quanto spesso se ne abusino le donne di questa professione. Nella favola delle Sirene, che col canto faceano naufragare gl’incauti naviganti, esprimer volle l’Antichità in uno e quel predominio, e quello abuso.
Although there is no hard evidence suggesting that Fénelon envisaged Télémaque as an anti-operatic pamphlet, it may be safely assumed that his novel was read and appreciated as such by rationalists like Muratori. For Télémaque depicted a young warrior’s debasing passion for a singing (!) nymph, who leads him to passivity, loss of eloquence, vice and effeminacy, and entices him away from the path of rationality and heroism laid out by Minerva / Mentor. The latter repeatedly alerts him to the dangers of being seduced by the «paroles douces & flâteuses de Calypso, qui se glisseront comme un serpent sous les fleurs.»
Eventually, it is not Calypso but Eucharis, Calypso’s lower subject, who lures Télémaque into Cupid’s trappings and causes his masculine self to crumble – a process tellingly denoted through the verb s’amolir.
In Scarlatti’s Telemaco, similar ideas emerge scene by scene, pervading the musico-dramatic contributions of the entire cast. The focus is naturally on Telemaco’s seduction by Antiope, depicted in Book XII of Fénelon’s novel as a full-bred diva who «adoucit le travail & l’ennui par les charmes de sa voix, lorsqu’elle chante toutes les merveilleuses histoires des Dieux».
Whereas Pellegrin fused Eucharis and Antiope into one and the same person who is only discovered to be a princess near the end of the opera, Capeci invested more energy into drawing the mollifying powers of Antiope / Erifile, perhaps because this role was – like all the others in Telemaco – sung by a male vocalist, Carlo Scalzi.
The gesture is reflected in three of Antiope’s arias, which are in minor keys with flats and ternary meters.
As can be expected, Mentore stands on the other side of the bipolar gender spectrum, voicing such ‘virile’ vertues as self-control through Allegri, common time and ‘masculine’ keys with sharps, especially D Major – connoted in Scarlatti’s day with heroic, brilliant, bright, vigorous, cheerful, gay, warlike and triumphant feelings.
Mentore’s key aria, «Alma Dea figlia di Giove» (Act I scene 8), is furthermore inscribed in the passion-sea framework which informed the opening scene as well as Calipso’s and Telemaco’s laments.
In it, however, Minerva, not Neptune, is summoned to Rendi à noi placato il Ciel; Doppo turbini, e procelle, Scopri chiare à noi le Stelle, Fa che il Mar sia men crudel. Cast in a style characterized by rapid scales, coloraturas, large intervals and a tempestuous drum bass, Mentore’s ‘virtuoso’ discourse is miles removed from the laments of Calypso, Antiope and Telemaco.
All in spite of Mentore’s warnings and his own intentions, Telemaco will – like his French equivalents – undergo the tempests of passion and lose his masculinity, be it temporarily.
In Act II scene 12, he can only admit to himself: Cede al Vento, cede al Mare Combattuta Navicella, Ne la regge più il Nocchier.
The phrase, a commonplace of opera seria, recalls Fénelon’s description «Son cœur étoit comme la mer qui est le jouet de tous les vents contraires.» By escaping Calypso’s isle, Fénelon’s Télémaque will in the end regain his male virtuousness and rehearse the main theme: «Je ne crains plus ni mer, ni vents, ni tempête; je ne crains plus que mes passions. L’Amour est lui seul plus à craindre que tous les naufrages.»
Operatic convention, on the other hand, must have forced Pellegrin and Capeci to alter Fénelon’s scenario through the invention of a marriage supported by Minerva. Even so, this lieto fine ensures Télémaque’s / Telemaco’s love for Eucharis / Antiope-Erifile to be transformed from a sensual, effeminate desire into the kind of rationalized partnership which Fénelon advocated when describing Télémaque’s love for Antiope: Non, mon cher Mentor, ce n’est pas une passion aveugle comme celle dont vous m’avez guéri dans l’isle de Calypso […] pour Antiope, ce que je ressens n’a rien de semblable; ce n’est point amour passionné, c’est goût, c’est estime, c’est persuasion: que je serois heureux si je passois ma vie avec elle!
Although Muratori is likely to have deplored the compromising dénouement of Telemaco, he must have championed the re-elaboration – in Italian verse and in a continuous poem – of a plot which represented the vicious effects of ‘effeminate sensuality’ on masculine heroism. Twelve years earlier on, he had still found reason to complain: E perché non possono rappresentarsi li Eroi, e le nobili persone operanti per altre macchine, che per quelle di Cupido? Non ci son’eglino tanti altri Amori, quel della Virtú, della Gloria, del regnare, e somiglianti, che furono, e saran sempre una feconda miniera di Tragici argomenti? Perché ristringersi cosí sovente al solo amore del senso?
Abstract: Few books can claim both the popularity and controversiality of Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque (1699), a novel translated into several languages and repeatedly praised for containing «delightful images of practical philosophy» (Muratori, 1706). But Télémaque had more to offer than just reading matter. The dramatic episodes punctuating its epic framework have invited numerous theatrical adaptations. Fénelon’s recasting of Telemachus’s adventures on Calypso’s isle (Books I, IV and VII) bore such conspicuously ‘operatic’ qualities that it became a favorite opera scenario. Clues as to the reception of this particular episode in settecento opera can be found in Muratori’s widely-read Della perfetta poesia italiana (1706). In fact, the story of a young prince experiencing difficulties in abandoning «the charms of an idle and effeminate life» chimes with Muratori’s rationalist stance on opera and gender. The seducing ‘siren songs’ of Calypso and her nymphs can be seen as representing the debasing effects of music on contemporary audiences, and the discursive persuasion of Telemachus’s counselor Mentor (Minerva in male disguise) as the voice of rationality. As a result, Telemachus’s rejection of effeminacy and sensuality must have provided reformist poets with a powerful tool to redefine operatic virtue. Alessandro Scarlatti’s Telemaco (Rome, 1718), the first full-scale Italian opera to elaborate on Fénelon’s novel, confirms such reading. Intertextual analysis indicates that Carlo Sigismondo Capeci drew his libretto from a hereto-unknown source, Pellegrin’s Télémaque (Paris, 1714). Yet, while copying Pellegrin’s scenic lay-out, Capeci at the same time restored elements from the novel that were absent from the French opera, most notably the character of Mentor and the semantic devices with which Fénelon had stressed the ‘poisoning’ effect of feminine eros on masculine eloquence. A closer look at Scarlatti’s score reveals how the restoration of Fénelon’s gender ideology has helped to differentiate characters exclusively performed by male singers.