UN’ERESIA DISSIMULATA: LETTURA VALDESIANA DELL’ORFEO DI STRIGGIO E MONTEVERDI

The aim of this article is to interpret Monteverdi and Striggio’s Orfeo as a work inspired by Reformed rather than Catholic, post-Tridentine religious thinking. To this end, the libretto is read in the light of the teaching of one of the most prominent leaders of the Italian reformed church, Juan de Valdés. In this way, Orpheus’s voyage to the netherworld becomes a metaphor for man’s journey in the dark, moral desolation caused by original sin. It is the journey of a blind traveler guided by earthly affections and misplaced faith in his own strength: the more powerful human capabilities may appear, the more bankrupt they reveal themselves to be. This is what happens to Orpheus: his prodigious invocation to Charon, «Possente spirto e formidabil nume» (Act III), leads him to disastrous defeat. In Valdesian terms, only the acceptance of failure, total renunciation of earthly affections and surrender to God can bring one to salvation; Orpheus reaches this goal by repudiating earthly cares, along with love for womankind, and entrusting himself to the god Apollo. According to this interpretation, the contents of the opera were dissembled because openly professing evangelical faith in the context of the Counter-Reformation was impossible. This was carried out, on the one hand, by choosing the recipients: the first performance took place not in the court theater but in a room of the Ducal Palace and the audience was exclusively composed of members of the Accademici Invaghiti. On the other hand, a different finale was planned for the printed libretto compared to the Apollinean one which was in fact staged (and printed in the score). The Bacchic finale of the libretto, which clearly follows the model of Poliziano’s Orfeo (Mantua 1480), brings the drama back within the framework of the myth and makes it less connected to Valdesian teaching. In this form, the libretto passed the scrutiny of the censors; but even the cuts evident in the score published in Venice in 1609 could be explained in the same way. Both the libretto and the score are incomplete because of the need to dissemble. Only by putting them together do we have the complete text that the Accademici Invaghiti saw performed on February 24th 1607.