“Thus changed, I return…”: The Programmatic Prologue of the First Surviving Opera Euridice (1600) by Ottavio Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri. Euripidean, Senecan Poetics and Music as Representation

Abstract

Without denying the influence of Renaissance theatrical practice, especially the “tragi-comedia pastorale” on the birth and development of the opera, I argue that Rinuccini aims at a rebirth of the ancient Tragedy in his Prologue of Euridice, the first surviving Opera (1600), well aware that his production was not a historically accurate reconstruction of ancient Greek tragedy. As we see from the Prologue, on one hand La Tragedia retains in her repertoire sighs, tears, laments from a purely human point of view wanting to awake sweeter emotions of the heart, on the other hand she aims at a catharsis through a happy end of the story. I am not convinced that our poet in his prologue rejects the catharsis effect of the Greek tragedies and that his opus stands in opposition to the Aristotelian precepts for tragedy as many musicologists and music historians think. In this Prologue, that is actually a recusatio, I think that Rinuccini wants his Tragedia to illuminate the nature of the pleasure that the audience derives from the experience of tragedy. The emphasis of La Tragedia on the purely affective has more to do with features of the Euripidean dramaturgy than the Senecan tragedy, which became the greatest force in the moulding of Renaissance Tragedy.