Reception Radio: Lamento D’Arianna, by Claudio Monteverdi
A haunting fragment of music history
Lost media is endlessly fascinating to me. This should come as no surprise: so many texts and artworks from the ancient Mediterranean haven’t survived and are considered lost. We only know about them from references in texts that did make it through the sands of time.
It’s extra fitting that some later lost media is based on stories from antiquity. For example, there’s L’Arianna, a 1608 opera by composer and musical pioneer Claudio Monteverdi. This piece is a fragment: it’s the only surviving portion of a lost opera.
Monteverdi was one of the first opera composers, and, if you ask most fans of early music, the first composer to make opera listenable and entertaining. In Lamento D’Arianna, the heroine (you might know her by her Greek name, Ariadne) has just woken up alone on the island of Naxos. She’s been abandoned by her lover Theseus (Teseo in Italian, The Worst Man in Mythology in my opinion). She lets out all her loneliness, regret, and sorrow in this dramatic and haunting piece. Monteverdi fills the lament with dissonance and quick changes in tempo and rhythm that wonderfully capture Arianna/Ariadne’s fractured mental state. One minute she’s singing in long, sobbing phrases, the next she’s venting in a rapid lyrical burst.
There’s something poignant in how the only surviving fragment of this opera is a woman spilling out her feelings. So many female voices and opinions have been lost to history, or were never recorded in the first place. However, we have to remember that Lamento D’Arianna was written by men: a librettist named Ottavio Rinuccini penned the lyrics using language borrowed from Ovid, then Monteverdi set them to music. There are places in the text where you can tell men are responsible for this: if you read the words, Arianna/Ariadne comes across as something of a damsel in distress. She still loves Theseus and wishes she could die alone on Naxos. I wish I could shake her and tell her to move on. She’s way out of Theseus’ league, she can do better!
Luckily for feminists like me, plenty of singers bring a level of intensity and pathos to their performances of the lament, giving Ariadne some depth. I’ve linked the version by Montserrat Figueras above, but many sopranos over the centuries have taken a stab at this piece. Who can blame them: it’s a big, dramatic solo number that lets them show off their range, and it’s also a fascinating part of music history. Naturally, I would love to know how the rest of the opera sounded, but I’m glad we can enjoy this one little fragment.
Lamento D’Arianna also has a choral adaptation that’s quite popular among early music performers. Here’s a video version where you can follow along with the score (if you can read music and/or Italian!):
Normally I end off Reception Radio posts with lyrics, if I’m discussing a vocal piece. This time, here’s a link to Lamento D’Arianna’s lyrics, with an English translation and the original Italian side by side.