When there were such things as well-stocked classical CD shops, I often used to browse and always looked through the Monteverdi section just in case someone had found one of his lost operas and recorded it without me knowing. I love the music of Monteverdi from Orfeo to the 1610 Vespers, the eighth book of madrigals and the coronation of Poppea. And he became a priest for the last eleven years of his life! Only three of his eighteen operas survive. I have listened to operas by his contemporaries such as Cavalli and Cesti but they are not in the same league.
So I was intrigued to read on the Intermezzo music blog that Cecilia Bartoli believes that they may survive in the Vatican library. Miss Bartoli has a difficult relationship with the church in that she turned down an opportunity to sing at the Vatican because she would not divulge her views on abortion. Her latest CD, Mission, dedicated to the music of Agostino Steffani, Italian bishop and papal diplomat of the late seventeenth century, has numerous bizarre pictures in the accompanying leaflet of Miss Bartoli with shaven head dressed as a bishop!
However Intermezzo points out that Pope Francis is an opera-lover so maybe he will be sympathetic to the suggestion. Although there again he may have one or two other things to think about at the minute....
8 comments:
DidI read that all the Vatican archives are to be digitised and made available on the internet? If that is the case, I am sure it will take several years, but you might vind the missing operas.
Not opera but I wonder if good Pope Francis likes that classic from 'The Seekers' - 'The Carnival is Over'?
I agree. Pope Francis may well have other important things to think about; maybe even more important than seeking to find a lost opera!
Rubricarius, maye you have hit on the key to this papacy: the New Seekers may be setting the agenda. I must look up their other song titles. I never can follow what our view of the carnival was.
Optime Dr.B., Is not the problem summed up by New Seekers, original Seekers, Blondie, Abba, Monteverdi or whatever?
Up until a century ago what a pope did was pretty much laid and one didn't see much difference between them. Along came the twentieth century incumbents and so many saw it as their responsibility to stamp change and 'style' on their incumbencies. Now the variation between modern incumbents is such that it becomes a subject for commentary as soon as a new one gets the job. Good Pope Francis could do anything - almost literally anything - so we shall have to see what comes along. Personally, I am quite impressed by him - apart from his, hopefully former, view on the Falkland Islands.
Perhaps now that the Holy Father Emeritus has a little time on his hands ...
Rubricarius, on further study I find it is the Seekers rather than the New Seekers who sang The Carnival is Over. They also sang I`ll Never Find Another You, What Have They Done to the Rain and Georgy Girl. Sadly none of these, to me at least, offer any clue to the future direction of this papacy so I suspect that this has been a bit of a hermeneutical cul de sac
The 'Pontiff' in that picture with the transvestite diva could do with a rochet and mozzetta to cover that rather creased soutane!
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