FROM ARIANNA’S DREAM TO CASSANDRA’S VOICE
THE FRAILTY AND POWER OF WOMEN
FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY
Cassandra is a woman, a foreigner and a prophetess.
Her voice isn’t heard and her words are not believed.
The curse put on her by an unrequited god has condemned her to foretell the truth in the middle of the desert. Cassandra is alone because nobody listens to her monitions. Cassandra thus lives two lives: one in foresight, one in reality. Apollo has spitted in her mouth in revenge for having been rejected and after having promised her the gift of divination: a simple gesture that would deprive her, once and for all, of credibility.
A Trojan priestess, the daughter of Priam and Hecuba, Cassandra does not own the gift of persuasion, yet does not give up: she keeps speaking. This, to me, defines her strength and her potent modernity.
The priestess tries to warn her people about the tragic war after having intervened more than once on family matters, immediately recognising the threat posed by her brother Paris. Not only that: after ten years of attacks by the Greek army, Cassandra warns the Trojans about the wooden horse trick, and once again is not believed.
Ignored by all, at the apex of her disgrace – when all is lost and she is enslaved, humiliated and raped – she no longer speaks human words: to the Greeks, she seems to be completely delirious. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, her appearance at the Mycenae stronghold is explosive by virtue of, indeed, her vocal onset: a long, inarticulate exclamation that I deemed perfect as the conclusion of the song by Rossella Spinosa, in the second chapter of an album series launched in the name of the myth of Ariadne. The state of abandonment of the Cretan princess on the island of Naxos is a cornerstone of the Melodrama, with a scene – Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna – accompanying us since 1608: a true manifesto of recitar cantando and the related Doctrine of the Affections. Within an aesthetics that makes the song a device to intensify the emotional result of words, the incipit represented by Arianna eventuates in Cassandra’s voice: one as mighty as it is ignored. A voice that becomes a swallow (the derogatory name given to the priestess) but that could also be a plant, a rock or another natural element unheard by humans.
Just like Arianna, Cassandra is alone. Just like Arianna, Cassandra chooses to not be quiet.
In Benedetto Marcello’s song, words are an unbridled force: music essentially plays a supporting role. The same text by renowned librettist Antonio Conti found a second musical life through Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, which pushed me to make an experiment to express the powerful modernity that the myth has always told us. The bond between the ancient and contemporary is the key to this second record: three Cassandras in a double album that represents a journey across the land of music, myth, poetry and femininity.
I thus asked Rossella Spinosa to give musical life to an extremely ancient script: Alessandra by the poet Lycophron (IV-III B.C.). And while Conti’s text – whose source is the Iliad as translated by Anton Maria Salvini – focuses, through Cassandra’s voice, on the events in the final years of the Trojan War, Lycophron’s text presents, in an epic poem written as a monologue, a kind of prophecy that is delivered orally by a servant to Priam. Segregated in a dark prison by her father, the protagonist spun a thread of enigmas, her words turning into poetry.
“Ma perché mai, infelice, abbaio alle sorde pietre, alle mute onde, alle selve cupe, emettendo dalla mia bocca un inutile canto? Ogni credibilità me l’ha tolta il dio di Lepsia, avvolgendo di menzogna le mie parole e la sapienza veridica dei vaticini, per essere stato respinto dal mio letto che desiderava. Pure, farà realizzare le profezie e qualcuno le apprenderà per suo danno, quando non ci sarà più nessun modo di aiutare la nostra patria, e allora loderanno la rondine posseduta.”
[Why, unhappy, do I call to the unheeding rocks, to the deaf wave, and to the awful glades, twanging the idle noise of my lips? For Lepsieus has taken credit from me, daubing with rumour of falsity my words and the true prophetic wisdom of my oracles, for that he was robbed of the bridal which he sought to win. Yet will he make my oracles true. And in sorrow shall many a one know it, when there is no means any more to help my fatherland and shall praise the frenzied swallow.]
I found Lycophron’s text modern and fascinating: an ancient document that has kept speaking to us to this day. It talks about war, fear and the warning by a woman.
It mentions the voice of a swallow ‘possessed’… by nothing but awareness.
Therefore, what could be a better ending to this new composition than Cassandra’s entrance in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and, in particular, that absolutely incomprehensible cry before summoning Apollo?
A liberation for the voice and for Cassandra. Perhaps because singing is never done in vain.
ototototòi popòi da
Apollo, Apollo!
Arianna Lanci © 2024
If one is on the look for tragical stories, there is no better place than Greek mythology – both in the tragedies proper, and in the epic poems. And the story of Cassandra is certainly one which fully qualifies as “tragical”. Indeed, whereas other characters merely have tragical stories, Cassandra can be described as a living tragedy, as a tragical character. Tragedy is written within her own personality, it is inseparable from her. The curse she received made tragedy an integral part of her life. No tragedy, no Cassandra.
On the surface of it, Cassandra was born in an enviable position. She was a powerful (and wise) king’s daughter; she was probably the most beautiful among her sisters. And she had received an extraordinary gift, i.e. that of prophecy. In Greek terms (different from those of the Jewish-Christian tradition), a prophet was a seer, somebody capable of insights into the future (whilst the Biblical prophet is rather a spokesperson for God, somebody animated by supernatural wisdom). Then, something went wrong. How exactly did Cassandra’s doom happen is uncertain, because different mythological sources offer different accounts; what is certain, is that she ignited the wrath of the god Apollo (very likely for having refused his love). And Apollo devised a very refined vengeance against his former beloved. She would be an infallible prophetess, but nobody would believe her prophecies. If this can seem just disappointing, the problem is that Cassandra, her family, and her city, were soon to be thrown into the (literally) “epic” war of Troy. She would be able to foresee the destructive results of her people’s initiatives, of her father’s choices, of her army’s decisions; she would cry out warnings, which, if heeded, would save the city and her loved ones; but – with tragic irony – the only result of her advice would be that the opposite course of action was invariably taken. Paradoxically, had she remained silent, the right option might have been chosen; after she foretold misfortune, misfortune would certainly be pursued. When opera was born, in the early seventeenth century, ancient Greece and Rome were at the height of fashion, due to Humanism and its brainchild, Renaissance. The “founders” of opera took inspiration from Greek tragedy, in terms of subject matters, of versification and metrics, of rhetoric, and of (presumed) style of singing, the so-called “recitar cantando”, or intoned speech. This launched a new vague, one of whose musical appendages is the cantata, which frequently shares with opera many aspects (subject matters, verses, rhetoric), while others differ (the number of singers, the kind of accompaniment and the number of performing instruments, the presence of a choir). In terms of singing style, there are common as well as different traits: “recitar cantando” inspires the inflection of most cantatas, but the different performance setting (public vs. private, theatre vs. “chamber”) implies a different kind of emission and a different approach to virtuosity and to the spectacular element.
And although Venice in the eighteenth century was doubtlessly the homeland (and the cradle) of the modernly conceived opera business, there was a great abundance of other options for listening to excellent music, and many of them were found in the aristocrats’ palaces. Normally, this implied that a music-loving nobleman (or noblewoman) would employ (occasionally or stably) musicians who performed for their circle of equally noble friends (or for the wealthy bourgeois merchants who were the “soul” of the city). But, exceptionally, the nobleman in question could also be a musician himself, and offer to his guests the fruit of his own creativity. This was certainly the case with the Marcello brothers, Alessandro and Benedetto. Owning a Palace with a Canal Grande façade, the Marcellos were destined to politics and to diplomacy. And Benedetto Marcello did not disobey the task set for him by his noble birth, serving in various capacities both in the city and in its provinces (including Pola and Brescia). But his free time was entirely devoted to music, and he wrote some magnificent church music (for which he was particularly known and appreciated), but also secular vocal works, instrumental pieces, etc.
Within his secular output, Cassandra occupies pride of place. It is a chamber cantata, but of exceptional length (approximately 50 minutes). The libretto was created, upon Marcello’s own request, by poet Antonio Conti, who had already written the lyrics for another similar work by Marcello (Il Timoteo), whose undisputed success had encouraged further cooperation between these two artists. Marcello explicitly asked Conti for a text conceived for a single singer, and this raises an interesting question about the air of Priamo. Different from the other parts of the cantata, which are noted in the alto clef, this is written in the bass clef, suggesting the age and stature of the elderly King of Troy. At Marcello’s time, in the Ospedale della Pietà where Vivaldi was chapel master, the all-female choir used to sing also the bass parts: some argue that these were systematically transposed one octave higher, whilst other believe that at least some women had developed a deep vocal register, allowing them to sing the bass parts at pitch. The hypothesis that a second singer, a bass, could have sung that one aria seems highly unlikely, given that Marcello himself had commissioned a text for a solo singer.
Marcello’s Cassandra has been preserved in a proportionally very high number of manuscript copies (nearly thirty), whilst – as happened to the majority of Marcello’s works – it did not appear in print during its composer’s lifetime. The music is enthralling, full of pathos, and compelling in the powerful expressivity of its writing; it is also exceptionally demanding, in terms of vocal range, odd intervals, virtuosity, and emotional palette. The same libretto was later employed by one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty children. Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (JCF for the sake of brevity) was one of the four sons of the Leipzig composer who dedicated their lives to music, but he is the less known of them. This is possibly due to the remarkable stability of his career, which took place practically in a single place, the court of Bückeburg, where he was employed before his eighteenth birthday, and where he remained until his death. The terms of his employ required him to write music in a variety of genres; the taste of his employer (who was an enthusiast of Italian opera) imposed him a style entirely different from that of JCF’s father, Johann Sebastian (who had been JCF’s teacher). However, JCF had also a very regular life; his duties were not too heavy, and he had the time and opportunity to write beautiful music at an acceptable pace. Different from Marcello’s version, Bach’s employs a richer instrumental accompaniment and features some da capo arias. In most cases, the cantata’s elements combine the “exclamation” of an intense recitative style with the more lyrical and expansive moments of ariosos and arias. One of the unforgettable moments of this score is the (very unusual) ending in recitativo, where Cassandra announces the vision of her city, Troy, “in dust”. And, if Marcello was setting up a dialogue with Homer and other Greek poets, and if JCF Bach was establishing a discourse with Marcello’s version, this Da Vinci Classics production establishes in turn a dialogue with both the poetry of the ancient Classicism and the musical versions it received in the Baroque and Classical era with Marcello and Bach. Contemporary composer Rossella Spinosa was commissioned her own Cassandra by singer Arianna Lanci and harpsichordist Chiara Cattani. The lyrics are by a poet who lived in the fourth century BC, i.e. Lycophron from Chalcis, in Euboea, and who (allegedly) wrote a poem called Alexandra. Being deeply schooled in Classical mythology, Lycophron portrayed Cassandra (AKA Alexandra) in a fashion which is both faithful to tradition and highly original. His style is surprisingly modern, frequently obscure, and he memorably likens Cassandra to a “possessed swallow”. In the words of composer Rossella Spinosa, Cassandra was “that very special woman, daughter of Priam, who managed to save herself from the fire of Troy seeking asylum by the altar of Athena” (Spinosa tells us also that her own daughter is called Atena, as a token of her mother’s fascination for ancient mythology). “Cassandra is a humiliated and wounded woman, but one who does not surrender – she rather fights. Still, she exists, she knows, but it seems that she does not exist for the others. Even though nobody listens to her, she is titanic, very strong, and never gives up. That power, that determination, required to be listened to. And music was the best way for giving voice to Lycophron and to Cassandra”. This also explains the unusual choice to employ the voice of a Baroque singer and the tone of a harpsichord for a contemporary work: “Ancient instruments such as the harpsichord and the human voice, who are unchanged in their elegance, force, empathy, could express that antiquity and transmit it fully to today’s world. I therefore chose to give antiquity the value it preserves in itself and for itself, bringing it to our times with the shining patina of contemporary music”. The harpsichord part thus comprises ancient embellishments, contoured by the twentieth-century rhythmic fragmentation in the string parts; the harpsichord is treated – unidiomatically – as a percussion instrument, whilst the strings are entrusted long phrasings. “The human voice thus counters, with its icy and obscure tone, the seeming dances, in a final yearning, almost ideally solitary, toward ideality”. The setting includes a powerful finale, “with a decided conclusive accelerando, almost crazy, expressing the fury engendered by Cassandra’s being constantly unheard, whilst never renouncing her fight and her speech. It is a kind of a dis-human, but deeply empathetic invocation; it is a song of force, of desperation, but also of great hope”. Spinosa’s style emphasizes the dark aspect of Cassandra’s story and character, marked by such elements as “war, fear, advice”. Her writing “seeks dissonance, which is necessary as a texture to a powerful and scourging text as this; but one which also seeks a dialogue with antiquity. After all, this is what swallows do: they always come back, even though they go far away in search of new horizons. But then they come back, to narrate themselves, to narrate ourselves”.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024