Description
Two of the major works that made Claudio Monteverdi the innovator of the musical world of his time were concentrated between 1607 and 1608 in Mantua: Orfeo, Favola in musica in 5 acts (24th February 1607, libretto by Alessandro Striggio Jr.) and Arianna, Tragedia in a single act (28th May 1608, libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini).
The disappearance of any of Arianna‘s scores remains an unsolved mystery. We do not know what the musical style of the opera was, but from Rinuccini’s libretto, we can guess that it was a development of the Florentine model of the Musiche di Iacopo Peri […] sopra l’Euridice del signor Ottavio Rinuccini (Florence, 6th October 1600).
The libretto, from the opening in which Venus and Cupid converse with each other, leads back to the style of the Ballo delle Ingrate, staged the week after L’Arianna (4th June 1608), which Monteverdi published thirty years later as the conclusion of the VIII libro di madrigali (1638).
