L’Orfeo – an early opera

The lasting appeal of Monteverdi’s first attempt at opera

A bust of Claudio Monteverdi in the
Pope John Paul II gardens in Cremona

L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, the earliest opera still being regularly staged, had its first performance on this day in 1607 in Mantua.

Two letters, both dated 23 February, 1607, refer to the opera due to be performed the next day in the Ducal Palace as part of the annual carnival in Mantua in Lombardy.

In one of them a palace official writes: ‘… it should be most unusual as all the actors are to sing their parts.’

Francesco Gonzaga, the brother of the Duke, wrote in a letter dated 1 March, 1607, that the performance had been to the ‘great satisfaction of all who heard it.’

L’Orfeo, or La favola d’Orfeo as it is sometimes called, is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus. It tells the story of the hero’s descent to Hades and his unsuccessful attempt to bring his dead bride, Eurydice, back to the living world.

While it is recognised that L'Orfeo is not the first opera, it is the earliest opera that is still regularly performed in theatres today and it established the basic form that European opera was to take for the next 300 years.

The composer, Claudio Monteverdi, was born in Cremona in Lombardy in 1567 and studied under the maestro di cappella at the cathedral in the city.

He managed to secure a position as a viola player at Vincenzo Gonzaga’s court in Mantua and went on to become master of music there in 1601.

In the early 17th century, the intermedio, the music played between the acts of a play, was evolving into the form of a complete musical drama or opera.

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was the first fully developed example of this. The libretto had been written by Alessandro Striggio and the singers were accompanied by an orchestra of about 40 musical instruments.

It was staged again in Mantua and then possibly in other towns in Italy before the score was published by Monteverdi in 1609. There is evidence that the opera was also performed in Salzburg, Geneva and Paris from 1614 onwards.

But after Monteverdi’s death the opera was forgotten until a 19th century revival led to other performances. Nowadays, Monteverdi is acknowledged as the first great opera composer.

A performance in Paris in 1911 gave L’Orfeo particular prominence and it has since been regularly included in the repertoire of opera houses.

In 2007, the 400th anniversary of the opera was celebrated with performances all over the world and new recordings of it were issued.

The Duomo in Cremona, where
Monteverdi studied music

Travel tip:

Cremona’s Duomo, where Monteverdi studied music, is an important example of Romanesque architecture dating from the 12th century. The facade with its large rose window was probably added in the 13th century. Linked to the cathedral by a loggia is the Torrazzo, the tallest bell tower in Italy and the third largest in the world, standing at 112.7 metres. Work began on the Torrazzo in the eighth century and the spire was completed in 1309.

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Travel tip:

Mantua is an atmospheric old city, to the south east of Milan, famous for its Renaissance Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the Gonzaga family, which has a famous room, Camera degli Sposi, decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna.  It is not known for certain, but the premiere of L’Orfeo may have taken place in the Galleria dei Fiumi, which has the dimensions to accommodate a stage and orchestra and space for a small audience.

Also on this day:

1896: The birth of restaurateur Cesare Cardini

1934: The birth of politician Bettino Craxi

1990: The death of former president Sandro Pertini

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John Keats – poet

Writer spent his final days in the Eternal City

The portrait of Keats by William Hilton, which is
housed in the National Portrait Gallery in London

English Romantic poet John Keats died on this day in Rome in 1821.

He had been a published writer for five years and had written some of his greatest work before leaving England.

Ode to a Nightingale, one of his most famous poems, was written in the spring of 1819 while he was sitting under a plum tree in an English garden.

Keats was just starting to be appreciated by the literary critics when tuberculosis took hold of him and he was advised by doctors to move to a warmer climate.

He arrived in Rome with his friend, Joseph Severn, in November 1820 after a long, gruelling journey.

Another friend had found them rooms in a house in Piazza di Spagna in the centre of Rome and they went past the Colosseum as they made their way there.

Keats slept in a room overlooking the Piazza and could hear the sound of the fountain outside, which may have inspired the words he later asked to be put on his tombstone.

To begin with he was well enough to go for walks along the Via del Corso and he enjoyed sitting on the Spanish Steps, but he was advised by his doctor against visiting the city’s main attractions.

The house in Rome where Keats lived,
at the foot of the Spanish Steps. 

Keats insisted that Severn visited the Vatican Galleries and the Colosseum and that he entertained him with descriptions of them when he returned.

At the end of November he wrote in a letter to a friend: “I have an habitual feeling of my real life being past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.”

By December his condition had worsened and the doctor treated him by taking blood from him and keeping him on a virtual starvation diet.

In early January his health improved and Keats was able to go outside again and enjoy the warmth of the sunlight.

But by February his health had deteriorated further and he was confined to bed. On Friday, February 23 he asked his friend to lift him up because he knew he was dying. For hours, the devoted Severn held him in his arms until the poet passed away. He was just 25 years of age.

On Monday, February 26 Keats was taken to the Protestant Cemetery in Rome where he was buried. The Reverend Mr Wolff conducted the service and, according to the poet’s wishes, daisies were planted over his grave.

Two years later, Severn supervised the placing of a tombstone on the grave bearing the words: ‘This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet who on his deathbed, in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tombstone: HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER.’

Travel tip:

Piazza di Spagna is at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in Rome. The Fontana della Barcaccia that Keats could hear in his room was sculpted by Pietro Bernini and his son Gian Lorenzo Bernini. At the bottom of the Spanish Steps to the right is the house where Keats lived, which is now a museum, the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, commemorating the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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The Colosseum bathed in evening sunlight

Travel tip:

The Colosseum, which Keats passed on the way to his lodgings, is one of the most famous sights in Rome. Forbidden by his doctor to visit the main attractions in the city, Keats sent his friend Severn to have a look round and asked him to tell him all about it when he returned. He described it as: “superb in its stupendous size and rugged grandeur of outline.” The first century arena could seat more than 50,000 bloodthirsty spectators who revelled in the spectacle of gladiators fighting to the death. These days the ruins are floodlit at night creating another magnificent spectacle in Rome.



More reading:

Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns at sea

Lord Byron in Venice

Pietro Bembo - the poet who was Lucrezia Borgia's lover

Also on this day:

1507: The death of Venetian Renaissance painter Gentile Bellini

1806: The birth of military general Manfredo Fanti

1822: The birth of Giovanni Battista de Rossi, archaeologist

1834: The birth of Sicilian banker Emanuele Notarbartolo

1910: The birth of painter Corrado Cagli

Books:

John Keats: A New Life, by Nicholas Roe

Selected Poems (Macmillan Collector's Library)

(Picture credits: Keats's House by Gabriele di Donfrancesco; Spanish Steps by Benreis at wikivoyage; Colosseum by Andreas Tille; all via Wikimedia Commons) 

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Enrico Piaggio - industrialist

Former aircraft manufacturer famed for Italy's iconic Vespa motor scooter

The Vespa is still among the most
popular scooters in the world

Enrico Piaggio, born on this day in 1905 in the Pegli area of Genoa, was destined to be an industrialist, although he cannot have envisaged the way in which his company would become a world leader.

Charged with rebuilding the family business after Allied bombers destroyed the company's major factories during World War II, Enrico Piaggio decided to switch from manufacturing aircraft to building motorcycles, an initiative from which emerged one of Italy's most famous symbols, the Vespa scooter.

The original Piaggio business, set up by his father, Rinaldo in 1884, in the Sestri Ponente district of Genoa, provided fittings for luxury ships built in the thriving port. As the business grew, Rinaldo moved into building locomotives and rolling stock for the railways, diversifying again with the outbreak of World War I, when the company began producing aircraft.

In 1917 the company bought a new plant in Pisa and in 1921 another in nearby Pontedera, which became a major centre for the production of aircraft engines and is still the headquarters of Piaggio today.   Aeroplanes remained the focus of the business, which Enrico and his brother, Armando, inherited with the death of their father in 1938, and the Pisa and Pontedera plants again became important production centres with the outbreak of World War II.

But their vital role in the manufacture of war planes made them a major target for Allied bombing and both were flattened during sustained raids on August 31, 1943.

Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn rode around Rome on
 a Vespa motor scooter in the 1953 film, Roman Holiday

Italy suffered enormous damage to its cities and the country's efforts to get back on its feet after the War ended were hampered in particular by the terrible state of the roads.  It was this that prompted Enrico, who had responsibility for rebuilding the Pisa and Pontedera factories, to take the bold decision to switch from producing aircraft to motorcycles.

He had been impressed by the agility of the tiny American-built military motorcycles that were dropped by parachute to be used by Allied troops on the ground as they fought against the Germans in Milan and Turin and asked his designers to come up with something similar for civilian use.

It was Corradino D'Ascanio, an aeronautical engineer, whose design ultimately met with his approval. As it happened, D'Ascanio was no fan of motorcycles, which he thought were dirty and difficult both to ride and to maintain, so he set about eliminating all the elements he disliked.

His prototype featured small wheels, a large, well-padded seat, a completely enclosed engine and a tall shield at the front, protecting the rider's clothes from dust and mud.  Crucially, he moved the engine from its traditional central position, which required the rider to straddle the machine when mounting, to a position alongside the rear wheel.  This created a gap between the handlebars and the seat that facilitated easy, step-through mounting even for skirt-wearing women.

D'Ascanio (left) and Piaggio with the machine
that made both their names

Enrico looked at the distinctive body shape, listened to the buzz of the engine, and immediately commented that it reminded him of una vespa, a wasp.  The name stuck, and an icon was born.

The Vespa was immediately popular.  In the first year of production, in 1946, Piaggio produced just under 2,500 machines. By June 1956, one million Vespas had rolled off the production line.

As Italy embraced the freedom and optimism that came with peace, the Vespa became a symbol of the nation, almost a fashion accessory for handsome men and beautiful girls, its image as likely to adorn the cover of a style journal as a motorcycle magazine.

Its popularity spread around the world, particularly after Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck rode around Rome on one in the 1953 film, Roman Holiday.  As well as Italy, Piaggio found another huge market for the machine in Britain, where it became the conveyance of choice for the style-conscious Mod movement in the 1960s.

Enrico Piaggio, who lost a kidney when he suffered gunshot wounds in Florence in 1943, died in 1965, aged only 60. The company had by then passed into the control of the FIAT empire and has changed hands several times since but remains a major player in the motorcycle industry, with an annual turnover in the region of €1,200 million.

Travel tip:

The seafront at Pegli, near Genoa, the largely
residential area where Enrico Piaggio was born

Pegli, where Enrico Piaggio was born, is a mainly residential area of Genoa but boasts a lively seafront promenade and a number of hotels. There are good links by road, rail and boat to the central area of Genoa, which is a city founded on its status as a busy port, but which offers many historic attractions, the most notable of which is probably the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, with its striking black slate and white marble exterior, originally built in the sixth century.

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The Piaggio Museum has examples of railway
engines and aircraft as well as the Vespa scooter

Travel tip:

The town of Pontedera in Tuscany, situated about 30km from Pisa in the direction of Florence, is home to the Piaggio Museum, which was opened in 2000 and occupies 3,000 square metres of the complex where Piaggio started production in the 1920s. Visitors can see examples of Piaggio railway engines and aircraft as well as a large area devoted to the Vespa motor scooter, which celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2016.  For more information, visit www.museopiaggio.it.

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More reading:

Corrado D'Ascanio - aeronautical genius behind unique Vespa design

The eye for style of car designer Battista 'Finin' Farina

The Italian behind the sports classic Triumph Spitfire

Also on this day:

1876: The birth of opera singer and director Giovanni Zenatello

1914: The birth of Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Renato Dulbecco

1921: The birth of actress Giulietta Masina

1990: The death of Autogrill pioneer Mario Pavesi

(Picture credits: Vespa by Yaniv Ben-Arie; Pegli seafront by Twice25; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Death of Pope Julius II

Pope who commissioned Michelangelo for Sistine Chapel

Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II, which
is housed in the National Gallery in London

Pope Julius II, who was nicknamed ‘the Warrior Pope’, died on this day in 1513 in Rome.

As well as conducting military campaigns during his papacy he was responsible for the destruction and rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica and commissioning Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

He is also remembered by students of British history as being the Pope who gave Henry VIII dispensation to marry Catherine of Aragon, his brother’s widow.

Born Giuliano della Rovere, he was the nephew of Francesco della Rovere, who became Pope Sixtus IV.

His uncle sent him to be educated by the Franciscans and he was made a Bishop soon after his Uncle became Pope.

He later became Cardinal Priest of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and was very influential in the College of Cardinals.

One of his major rivals was Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who was elected Pope Alexander VI in 1492. After accusing him of corruption, Della Rovere retreated from Rome until Alexander died in 1503.

He was succeeded by Pope Pius III who died less than a month after becoming Pope and Della Rovere was finally elected as Pope Julius II in November 1503.

Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Julius ordered all traces of the Borgias to be removed or covered up and their apartments remained sealed till the 19th century.

He fought to rid the Romagna of the Republic of Venice and freed Perugia and Bologna from the despots that were ruling them.

He also founded the Swiss Guard to provide a constant supply of soldiers to protect the Pope.

Julius joined in the Italian Wars in league with France and Spain to take territory back from Venice but his allies later switched sides and little was gained from his efforts.

Julius II remained Pope for nine years until he died of fever in 1513.

When Henry VIII later asked for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be annulled so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, he claimed that Pope Julius II should never have issued the dispensation to allow him to marry his sister in law. But the Pope at the time, Clement VII, refused to annul the marriage so Henry VIII divorced the Catholic Church instead, leading to the English Reformation.

During his time as Pope, Julius II had ordered the old St Peter’s Basilica to be demolished and commissioned the building of the new church that was to replace it. He was also a patron of Bramante, Raphael and Michelangelo.

The remains of Pope Julius II lie with those of his uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, under the floor in St Peter’s Basilica.

The chains said to have bound St Peter are on
display in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli

Travel tip:

The Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, St Peter in Chains, near the Colosseum in Rome, was the church where Julius was Cardinal. The Church is a shrine for the chains that are believed to have bound St Peter during his imprisonment. It is also the home of Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses, completed in 1515. This was originally intended to be part of a funeral monument for Pope Julius II, but his remains were interred in St Peter’s Basilica instead.


Travel tip:

The Sistine Chapel is in the Apostolic Palace, where the Pope lives, in Vatican City. The chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, the uncle of Pope Julius II, who had it restored during his papacy. Between 1508 and 1512 Michelangelo painted the ceiling at the request of Pope Julius II. His amazing masterpiece, created by the artist lying on his back, depicts scenes from Genesis in bright colours that are easily visible from the floor and cover more than 400 square metres.


More reading: 

Alexander VI, the scheming Borgia pope

The death of Michelangelo

The precocious genius of Raphael

Also on this day:

1609: The birth of military leader Raimondo Montecuccoli

1817: The birth of chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli

1868: The death of painter and revolutionary Giuseppe Abbati

(Picture credits: Michelangelo portrait painted by Jacopino del Conte; San Pietro chains by Raja Patnaik; via Wikimedia Commons)

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