Metastasio's Angelica serenata and the Light of Empire

Metastasio's Angelica serenata and the Light of Empire
   Karen Raizen

   MLN, Volume 134, Number 1, January 2019 (Italian Issue), pp. 119-142 (Article)

   Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2019.0006

       For additional information about this article
       https://muse.jhu.edu/article/722569

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]

Metastasio’s Angelica serenata
         and the Light of Empire1
                                           ❦

                                Karen Raizen

Pietro Metastasio’s Angelica (1720) is a strange composition. A serenata
rather than a full-scale operatic production, it consists of two acts
and only six characters—three pastoral archetypes (Licori, Titiro,
and Tirsi) and three worldly foreigners (Orlando, Angelica, and
Medoro).2 It is a pastoral drama, but one assaulted by outsiders who
impose artifice on the natural order. It is the story of Orlando’s love
madness, adapted from Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516), but
one that relegates Orlando—the titular hero and problematic center
of the source text—to the margins, championing instead Angelica and
Medoro as the episode’s protagonists. It is a presentation of Ariosto’s
material that reads more like Tasso than anything else.3 And, perhaps

   1
    This paper is based on the fifth chapter of my dissertation: the dissertation as a
whole explores the phenomenon of operatic Orlando in the eighteenth century, and
specifically how and why members of the Arcadian Academy were invested in reviving
a Renaissance madman on the eighteenth-century stage. I also presented a version
of this paper at the conference Witches and Fairies before and after Ariosto (Philadelphia
April 13–14, 2017).
   2
    The eighteenth-century serenata was, as Stefanie Tcharos argues, a theatrical genre
unto its own: while it often included striking visuals and larger instrumental accom-
paniment, the serenata focused on smaller vocal ensembles and intimate dialogue. See
Tcharos, Opera’s Orbit Chapter 3. As Rosy Candiani notes, Metastasio refers to his short
compositions like the Angelica as feste teatrali, although only in epistolary exchanges
later in his life. See Candiani, Pietro Metastasio 30. On the dating of the Angelica see
Candiani, Pietro Metastasio 49–50.
   3
    Metastasio himself expressed a closer affinity with Tasso than with Ariosto: see for
example his letter from April 7, 1737, to Domenico Diodati, in Metastasio, Tutte le opere
III 153–54. See also Beniscelli, Felicità sognate 18–19, 26; Binni, L’Arcadia 324.

        MLN 134 (2019): 119–142 © 2019 by Johns Hopkins University Press

120                                KAREN RAIZEN

most jarringly, it is a story of madness that leaves the madman mad,
offering him no solace or resolution, providing him neither magic
potions nor verisimilar turns to the righteous path of reason.
   Metastasio’s thematic choice for his serenata was not unique—indeed,
Orlando furioso was a popular source for operatic and theatrical
transformations in the early eighteenth century. Adaptations of the
Renaissance epic abounded, from popular stages in Venice to private
salons in Rome, and traveled widely, to Austrian courts, English opera
houses, and beyond.4 The flurry of Furioso adaptations in the early part
of the century was propagated primarily by members of the Arcadian
Academy, a classicizing institution founded in Rome in 1690 whose
central concern was to reinstate good literary taste and reason, purged
of Baroque excess. Arcadians sought, above all else, the establishment
of an Italian literary paradigm, ancient in its roots but vibrant and
modern in its flowering. While not all Arcadians were in agreement
as to the nature of such a paradigm, pastoral poetry emerged as the
dominant mode of Arcadia—lyrical compositions that channeled a
lost golden age, and shunned florid excesses, and boasted morally
outstanding characters doing morally outstanding things.5 Giovan
Mario Crescimbeni, the Academy’s first custode generale, upheld the
favola pastorale as an exemplary genre, citing Tasso’s Aminta as a per-
fect such specimen—one to be emulated in the new, tasteful poetic
order of the eighteenth century. Crescimbeni’s mission to reinstate
pastoral poetry fell short, but other, broader goals of the Academy
did have lasting effect on the poetic landscape of Europe. The poetic
mission of the Arcadians resonated widely with other contemporary
trends, and spread in influence through so-called “colonies” in every
major Italian city, as well as in a number of cities throughout Europe.
   Arcadians, particularly in the early years of the Academy, sought to
invest theatrical symbols with didacticism or real-life meaning—thus
the shepherd of the new favola pastorale stood for the noble shepherd-
poet of the new Arcadian order, and the pastoral setting itself was the
civilizing locus of the new, tasteful theater.6 Orlando, for Arcadian

  4
   As Ellen Rosand discusses, the prevalence of Furioso-themed operas in the early
eighteenth century was truly a boom, as the seventeenth century was nearly devoid of
operatic adaptations of the text. See Rosand’s chapter “Orlando in Seicento Venice.”
  5
   The Academy was rocked by a schism in 1711, instigated by theorist and writer Gian
Vincenzo Gravina: Gravina, who was more attracted by Greek tragedy and epic than
by pastoral poetry, pulled away from the Arcadians and founded his own academy, the
Accademia dei Quirini. On the schism see Guaita, Per una nuova estetica 25–31; Quon-
dam, Cultura 275ff; Robertson, Studies 31–3. On the development of Arcadian drama,
particularly in the early years of the Academy, see Accorsi, “Il teatro nella prima Arcadia.”
  6
   Accorsi “Il teatro nella prima Arcadia” 44–5.

M LN                                        121

adapters, became emblematic of their time. As madman he was a
metonym for a broad, cultural loss of good sense; his enlightenment,
then, enacted a return to the light of reason, to didactic effect. In
Venice, between 1713 and 1715, Arcadian librettist Grazio Braccioli
adapted the episode of Orlando’s madness into three separate operas,
to be set to music by Antonio Vivaldi at the Teatro Sant’Angelo dur-
ing carnival season. Each libretto wraps up nicely with a lieto fine, the
hero returned to his wits. In his Orlando furioso (1713), the libretto
that adheres most closely to the source text, Astolfo cures Orlando
by waving a torch in his face; Orlando, effectively enlightened, then
puts his armor back on and saves the day. Carlo Sigismondo Capece,
an active member of the Arcadian Academy in Rome during the
first two decades of the eighteenth century, wrote his own operatic
Furioso adaptation, Orlando ovvero la gelosa pazzia, in 1710; Capece’s
Orlando is cured of his madness by means of Angelica’s ring, and all
ends well.7 These operatic versions of Orlando’s love rampage focus,
perhaps predictably, on Orlando himself—his fall into madness and
eventual rehabilitation—and play out the true enlightenment and
redressing of a problematic Renaissance hero. Orlando, in most of his
early-eighteenth-century Arcadian depictions, is a principal character,
heroic, and emblematic of the triumph of reason over madness.8
   Metastasio, too, was an Arcadian—or rather, Metastasio was the
Arcadian. Melchiore Cesarotti, an Arcadian in the latter part of the
eighteenth century, notes that while librettist Apostolo Zeno paved
the way for the reform of the melodrama, it was Metastasio who car-
ried it to its ultimate, Arcadian iteration. He argues that none other
than Metastasio:
  …can represent our common principles [and] evidence the different effects
  of prejudice and genius, of artificial and natural tastes. A learned man from
  your order, respectable for his many titles, as noble in his prose as he was
  ungraceful in his poetry, a biased critic but imposing logician who dared
  think of himself free while his feet were in shackles, seemed to have taken
  it upon himself to waste away the spirit of the most fecund writer of the
  time through discipline. [Gravina] would have had him chained to the
  ground, a slave to the rules, when he was furnished with quills to attempt a
  flight like that of Daedalus. [Gravina] would have had him learn the rules
  of the theater from the ways of the Greeks, when he was himself inspired
  by Melpomene, the muse of tragic poetry, and learned the art from that

  7
   On these adaptations see Chapters 3 and 4, respectively, of my dissertation, “Ad-
aptations in Arcadia.” For a survey of Orlando furioso-based operas see Döring, Ariostos
“Orlando Furioso.” See also Buch, Magic Flutes Appendix C 376–77.
  8
   See Harris, “Eighteenth-Century Orlando” 105–28.

122                                KAREN RAIZEN

   which he had in his heart: luckily the principles and example of the majority
   beat out [Gravina’s] singular voice; they encouraged reason, and sparked
   his genius: what an extraordinary difference!9

   And Francesco De Sanctis, in his Storia della letteratura italiana,
discusses Metastasio not only in terms of his Arcadian formation, but
even of his inherently Arcadian character: “Metastasio, who sought out
tragedy rationally, was by his character an Arcadian, all Nice and Tirsi,
all sighs and tenderness…He possessed the same sensibility as Tasso,
an ease of tears, and still a superficial sensibility that could wrinkle
but not disturb his serene world.”10 It has been through these types
of narratives about Metastasio—about his Arcadian education, his
Arcadian ideals, and his inherently Arcadian spirit—that he came to
be recognized as the prime practitioner of Arcadian literary culture.
   Yet his Furioso adaptation does not fit the Arcadian mold. Given
the broad metonymic resonances of the Arcadian Orlando figure of
the early eighteenth century, the fact that the ending of the Angelica
leaves the madman mad is highly problematic. This lack of resolution
not only infects the characters of the drama, but also sends the whole
Arcadian mission into question: the Academy is no longer a panacea
to cultural madness, no longer the cure for all ills. Despite its veneer
as a perfect pastoral drama, the Angelica bulges with anti-pastoral
tropes, questioning the supposed purity of the Arcadian stage. It
problematizes literary reason, and good taste, and the golden ratios
of Golden-Age poetic tropes. Orlando and Angelica, two foreigners
in the pastoral grove, set into motion a poetic crisis that infects even
the most steadfast and most “natural” of characters. What begins as
a perfect Arcadian drama concludes with a world in crisis—a world
   9
    “… può giustificare i nostri comuni principi, niuno può mostrar meglio i diversi ef-
fetti della prevenzione e del genio, del gusto fattizio e di quello della natura. Un dotto
della vostra adunanza, rispettabile per molti titoli, prosator tanto nobile, quanto sgra-
ziato verseggiatore, critico prevenuto, ma ragionator imponente, e che ardiva credersi
libero coi ceppi al piede, sembrava aver preso assunto di guastar colla sua disciplina
lo spirito il più felice del secolo. Egli volea ch’ei radesse il suolo, schiavo della regola,
quand’era fornito di penne per tentar un volo da Dedalo, e che apprendesse le leggi
del teatro dall’usanze dei greci, quando per inspirazion di Melpomene ne leggeva
tutta l’arte dentro il suo cuore: fortunatamente i principi e l’esempio di tutto il corpo
parlarono più alto che l’autorità d’uno de’ suoi membri, rinvigorirono la ragione, ed
inanimarono il genio: qual prodigiosa diversità!” Cesarotti, Saggio 328. Translations are
mine unless otherwise noted.
   10
     “Metastasio, che cercava la tragedia con la testa, era per il carattere un arcade, tutto
Nice e Tirsi, tutto sospiri e tenerezze […] Aveva, come il Tasso, grande sensibilità, molta
facilità di lacrime, ma superficiale sensibilità, che poteva increspare, non turbare il suo
mondo sereno.” De Sanctis, Storia 763, cit. Lippmann, “’Semplicità’” 6. On De Sanctis’s
depiction of Metastasio, see also Sala Di Felice, Metastasio 169–70. For a discussion of
Metastasio’s Arcadian spirit see Binni, L’Arcadia 253.

M LN                                      123

in which pastoral language lies as a skeleton emptied of meaning, in
which nature cannot be distinguished from artifice, in which Arca-
dian reason is impotent against the gravity of madness. With his first
dramatic composition, Metastasio, the paradigmatic Arcadian poet,
distances himself from the very grove that birthed him, and calls into
question the very essence of the Arcadian mission.
   Arcadia may be in crisis in the Angelica, but it would not be entirely
accurate to deem the serenata unresolved: there is, in fact, resolution,
just not for Orlando, and not in the serenata itself. The licenza immedi-
ately following the play, dedicating the work to the Habsburg Empress
Elizabeth Christine on her birthday, makes a bold declaration: only
imperial grace can clear the fog of madness, and only the Empress
can quiet storms. When read back into the play, the licenza seems to
imply that Orlando is lost not because he needs an illuminating torch
or powerful ring, but rather because he has no Habsburg monarch to
steady his mind and illuminate his path. The licenza, combined with
the pastoral turbulence of the serenata itself, implicitly pits Empire
against Arcadia, political reality against literary utopia.
   This paper explores the Angelica, and uses the text to situate Metas-
tasio between the Arcadian Academy and the Habsburg court: the
play, Metastasio’s earliest composition destined for musical setting,
evidences a pull toward the Viennese court at a time when Metasta-
sio was not yet court poet, and also proffers a lingering link to the
Arcadian Academy. I aim to show how the poet’s particular breed of
pastoralism in the early 1720s problematized his ties to Crescimbeni
and other Arcadians, and how the Angelica planted the encomiastic
seeds that would serve his future role as court poet in Vienna. Orlando,
the Renaissance madman repurposed for Arcadian circles, became
for Metastasio a tool by which to seek out new, broader illuminations
in the lands of Empire.

Arcadian Poet, Against Arcadia?
Metastasio was doubly transfigured into Arcadia: born Pietro Antonio
Domenico Trapassi in Rome in 1698, he was adopted by Arcadian
theorist Gian Vincenzo Gravina and given the pseudonym Pietro
Metastasio;11 in 1718 he became an official member of the Arcadian

  11
    The name Metastasio, which means passage or transition, was a Greek translation
of his own last name, Trapassi. By substituting his Latinate surname with a Hellenic
one, Gravina rooted Metastasio in a neo-classical tradition—one that was undoubtedly
suited more to Gravina himself than to the Arcadian Academy.

124                                 KAREN RAIZEN

Academy and took the shepherd name Artino Corasio. This nominal
transformation—this trapassar from one identity to another—speaks
directly to Metastasio’s formation and to the influences that would
shape his poetry: Pietro Metastasio, as a Gravinian product, was chis-
eled into a Cartesian-inspired neoclassicist; Artino Corasio was an
Arcadian lyricist, imbued with the buon gusto of the pastoral academy.
   Three months after Gravina died, Metastasio became a member of
Arcadia, although his initiation was an uncomfortable one: as Gravina
had been the instigator of the Arcadian schism of 1711, members of
the Academy expressed discomfort at the prospect of admitting his
pupil. Metastasio exuded reverence for his teacher, and adhered in
part to a Gravinian neoclassicism that had gone out of fashion in the
Arcadian Academy. Metastasio even recited his poem La Strada della
Gloria, a tribute to the recently deceased Gravina, for an Arcadian
meeting in 1718: La Strada, written in terza rima, recounts a Dantean
dream in which Gravina, depicted as a Virgilian figure, advises and
guides his adopted pupil.12 While there are no accounts of the recep-
tion of La Strada, it is unlikely that the shepherds would have taken
kindly to a poem that elevated Gravina, an exiled schismatic, to the
level of a Virgilian guide.
   Equally troublesome to the academy members would have been
Metastasio’s admiration for the poetry of Giambattista Marino: Arca-
dians viewed Marino as the nadir of cattivo gusto of the previous cen-
tury, and accordingly dismissed any poetry that drew from Marinist
aesthetics. Metastasio’s indebtedness to the seicento poet is evident
in his early works, particularly Gli orti esperidi (1721), which depicts a
scene of Venus and Adonis in a sensuous garden.13
   Metastasio was thus flanked by two figures that problematized
Arcadia—Gravina, with his austere Hellenism, and Marino, with his
florid seicento language. In 1719, only one year after his induction
into the Academy, Metastasio left for Naples, citing the tense climate

   12
     Metastasio introduces the scene with Dantean imagery and language: “Già l’ombrosa
del giorno atra nemica / Di silenzio copriva e di timore / L’immenso volto alla gran
madre antica: / Febo agli oggetti il solito colore / Più non prestava, ed all’aratro
appresso / Riposava lo stanco agricoltore: / Moveano i sogni il vol tacito e spesso,
/ Destando de’ mortali entro il pensiere / L’immaginar dall’alta quiete oppresso. /
Sol io veglio fra cure aspre e severe, / Com’egro suol che trae l’ore inquiete, / Né
discerne ei medesmo il suo volere. / Al fin con l’ali placide e secrete / Sen venne il
Sonno, e le mie luci accese / Dello squallido asperse umor di Lete.” Metastasio, Tutte
le opere II 755–59. See also Acquaro Graziosi, “Pietro Metastasio e L’Arcadia” 55–57;
Binni, L’Arcadia 309; Beniscelli, Felicità sognate 15–17.
   13
      Metastasio’s Endimione also has clear ties to the Adone. See Beniscelli, Felicità sognate
22–25; Candiani, Pietro Metastasio 67–8; Taddeo, “Metastasio da Marino a Seneca” 491–5.

M LN                                         125

he experienced in Rome. “It has been many months since family
concerns have brought me to Naples,” he wrote in 1719 to Francesco
d’Aguirre, “and yet I find myself still dwelling on the stubborn hatred
held in Rome for both the name and teachings of Gravina, blessed
be his memory, my esteemed teacher. This hatred has transferred, at
least in part, to me, as I am his chosen disciple and heir.”14
  Considering Metastasio’s problematic position in Arcadian circles,
how is it that he came to be identified as the practitioner of Arcadian
poetry? In what ways can his poetic output speak to Arcadian ideals?
Metastasio’s name is conspicuously absent from the sprawling cata-
logues of Arcadian activities: this is likely in part because of his ties
to Gravina, but the lacuna also underscores the fact that Metastasio’s
dramas were largely incongruous with the Arcadian vision of ideal
pastoral poetry. They were too historical, too rooted in Gravinian
thought, too florid with their Marinist leanings, or simply too experi-
mental. Yet Metastasio did blend the aesthetics of the new, post-schism
Arcadia with his Gravinian teachings, particularly during his time in
Rome, as Maria Teresa Acquaro Graziosi notes:
   The first phase of Metastasio’s artistic output fits into the technical and
   poetic world of Arcadia; it still, however, shows a certain creativity born of
   the classicist and rationalist teachings of Caloprese and Gravina, through
   his clear gestures that take shape through Cartesian dialectic. Metastasio
   composed a series of sonnets for religious ceremonies and weddings in
   which he balanced scenic descriptions and harmonically constructed natu-
   ral imagery—written in a linguistically refined manner with some personal
   touches—with a balanced design of immanent and transcendental rules
   that stretched horizons toward the universal.15

   14
     I miei domestici interessi mi trasportarono, già molti mesi, in Napoli, e mi ci ritenne
poi la considerazione del pertinace odio che ancor si conserva in Roma non meno al
nome che alla scuola tutta dell’abate Gravina, beata memoria, mio venerato Maestro.
Qual odio, se non in tutto almeno in parte, si è trasfuso, e come discepolo eletto e
come erede, sovra di me.” Metastasio, Tutte le opere III 20. On Metastasio’s move to
Naples see also Beniscelli, Felicità sognate 9–11.
   15
      “La prima fase della produzione artistica del Nostro dunque si innesta nella tecnica
e nella poetica arcadiche, evidenziando tuttavia quella creatività che è frutto fonda-
mentale della formazione classicista e razionalistica del pensiero del Caloprese e del
Gravina, espresso con figure chiare e concatenate logicamente secondo una dialettica
cartesiana. Il Metastasio quindi compone una serie di sonetti per monacazioni e per
nozze, in cui l’elaborazione di squarci paesaggistici, di immagini naturali armonicamente
strutturate, in una tecnica linguistica raffinata, di solito, quale connotazione personale,
sono rapportati in un disegno equilibrato di regole immanenti e trascendentali, che
allargano gli orizzonti in una concezione universale.” Acquaro Graziosi, “Pietro Me-
tastasio e l’Arcadia” 53.

126                               KAREN RAIZEN

Despite his problematic position between old and new Arcadia, Metas-
tasio’s poetry is invested with a sense of poetic good taste and with
the charge that literature must both speak to and engender reason.
A number of elements of theoretical Arcadian literary reform take
concrete shape in Metastasio’s works: the text is the dominant medium
in his dramas, presiding over music and the other arts;16 he purges the
comic characters and episodes that Arcadians deplored; he maintains
an elevated style, adheres to a strict notion of verisimilitude, and invests
his dramas with morally exemplary material.17 This is to say that while
Metastasio never fit comfortably in Arcadia, his works did encompass
the broad strokes of Arcadian literary reform.

Encomium and the pastoral mode
Metastasio’s other famous role, beyond the idyllic grove, was that of
court poet at the Habsburg court of Vienna. Following the tenure
of Apostolo Zeno (also a member of the Arcadian Academy) at the
beginning of the century, Metastasio reigned as poeta cesareo between
1730 and his death in 1782. In the early years of his career in Vienna,
in the 1730s, Metastasio composed eleven large-scale drammi per musica,
including a number of his most celebrated works—Adriano in Siria,
Demetrio, Olimpiade, Demofoonte, La Clemenza di Tito, Attilo Regolo, and
Achille in Sciro. These dramas, like Zeno’s Viennese works, do contain
traces of Arcadian lyricism and hints of pastoral idealism, but are
decidedly not Arcadian iterations of the favola pastorale: instead, they
focus on historical episodes.
   Metastasio’s particular blend of historicity and poetic lyricism,
particularly in these early years in Vienna, catapulted him to literary
superstar status. Opera theorist Stefano Arteaga, in his Le rivoluzioni
del teatro musicale italiano (1785), upheld Metastasio’s operatic output
as extraordinary precisely because of its historical roots: he notes
that whereas fables destabilize the operatic stage, detaching it from
the realm of the real, historical drama speaks directly to a profound,
philosophical truth.18 Pastoral aesthetics provided embellishments and
stylistic nuance to these works but did not dominate thematically: his-
tory was the preferred template, and a theatrical pulpit from which
to bend the Emperor’s ear.
  16
    See Sala Di Felice, Metastasio Ch. 1 for a more general discussion of Metastasio’s
understanding of the relationship between poetry and music.
  17
    Sala Di Felice, Metastasio 39. On Metastasio’s use of Arcadian ideals, particularly as
they speak to social structuring, see Binni, L’Arcadia 263–64.
  18
    Arteaga, Le rivoluzioni I 335ff., cit. Feldman, Opera and Sovereignty 242–43.

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   Didacticism was not beyond Metastasio’s purview during his period
at court. As Elena Sala di Felice writes, “Metastasio was clearly aware
of the function of patronized shows. The court—and especially the
patronizing sovereign who was being celebrated—saw themselves in
the dramas and enjoyed the flattering image; but such an image in its
own right sent complex and often subtly pedagogical messages to its
audiences.19 His protagonists often served as the dramatic avatars of
(or sometimes counterpoints to) his Habsburg patrons, speaking to an
ethos of enlightened leadership and nobility of spirit.20 In his Adriano
in Siria (1732), for example, the emperor Adriano is torn between
love and his imperial conquests, and ultimately chooses his duty over
personal desire.21 The drama serves to show how all men—even great
emperors—are susceptible to the sways of passion, and how the only
remedy to such passion is an adherence to duty and Cartesian reason.
His libretti, particularly in the 1730s, present idealized, exemplary
visions of the virtuous sovereign—of a leader whose rule is informed
both by his divine appointment and his personal virtue.22
   Pastoralism is of course always present in his works, even in his later,
historical dramas—and yet it serves a particular purpose. Metastasio’s
shepherds are not metaphors for Arcadian literati, but rather stand
for the political leaders of his time. Charles VI and Elizabeth Chris-
tine (and, later, their daughter Maria Theresa) were, in Metastasio’s
view, the contemporary shepherds, guiding subjects with their moral
illustriousness. His libretto Il re pastore (1751) makes this parallel-
ism explicit, but it is a theme that runs through all of his works. As

   19
     Metastasio era lucidamente consapevole del funzionamento dello spettacolo me-
cenatesco, nel quale la corte, e in particolare il sovrano committente e festeggiato, si
rispecchiavano, compiacendosi dell’immagine lusinghiera; ma questa a sua volta, rinviava
ai suoi destinatari dei complessi messaggi, talora sottilmente pedagogici […]” Sala Di
Felice, “Virtù e felicità alla corte di Vienna” 61 (italics in original). See also Beniscelli,
Felicità sognate Chapter 2.
   20
     As Elena Sala Di Felice notes, while Metastasio’s dramas were often imbued with
encomia of his monarch, he also used the licenze to explicitly state his purpose. See
Sala Di Felice, Metastasio 194–95.
   21
     Martha Feldman views Adriano in Siria as problematic in its depiction of sovereignty,
in that Adriano’s final epiphany and resolution actually figure him as a failed, corrupt
monarch. See Feldman, Opera and Sovereignty 261.
   22
     See Joly, “Metastasio e l’ideologia del sovrano virtuoso”; see also Joly, Dagli Elissi 86.
These figurations of virtuous, enlightened rulers resonated with theories of Enlighten-
ment leadership, such as the notion of enlightened absolutism, which proposed that
leaders should embrace reason and foster social progress. However, as Joly discusses,
the librettist straddled the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, engaging with “old”
ideas of the emperor as divine ruler, and with “new” notions of the empire as social
contract. On enlightened absolutism see Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism; Gershoy, From
Despotism; Scott, Enlightened Absolutism.

128                                 KAREN RAIZEN

Binni writes, “[Metastasio] believes in the progress of a better society
protected by princes—the shepherds of the people—in an ideal,
rationalist-paternalist government.”23
   And yet just as pastoralism is always present in his historical dramas,
a vision of empire is always on the horizon in his pastoral works, par-
ticularly in his early compositions. Following the Angelica—in which
praise of the Empress is offered as a reflective afterthought—Metas-
tasio began inserting Elizabeth Christine and other nobility directly
into his pastoral systems. In the three brief feste teatrali composed
in 1721 and 1722, L’Endimione (1721), Gli Orti Esperidi (1721), and
Galatea (1722), the Empress and her friends are either beneficent but
invisible presences around which the action revolves, or revelations
at the end of the play. Gli Orti Esperidi opens with a scene in which
Venus offers gifts for Elizabeth Christine’s birthday. They nymph
Egle asks Venus the purpose of the treasures, to which the goddess
replies, “Sweet, lovely Nymph, do you not know that today is the day
in which Elizabeth, descending from the most lustrous repose of the
heavens, housed her rays in mortal form?”24 Egle responds to the rhe-
torical question in the affirmative: it seems that Elizabeth’s birthday
is a national holiday in the pastoral scene. In the Endimione, Cupid
reveals at the end of the play that there is a couple even more perfect
than Diana and Endimione—Antonio and Anna Francesca Pignatelli,
who held ties to the imperial court in Vienna. Neither Antonio nor
Anna Francesca is named directly, but Cupid references “the warrior
heart of a young Spanish man,” and a “sublime woman who shines
both beautiful and virtuous on the bank of the Danube, and likely no
less for the merits of her ancestors.”25 Diana does not mind coming

   23
     “Comunque egli crede nel progresso di una convivenza migliore protetta dalle leggi
e dai príncipi, pastori di popoli, in un ideale governo razionalistico-paternalistico…”
Binni, L’Arcadia 256. See also Beniscelli, Felicità sognate 122–29.
   24
      “Bella ninfa gentile, / Non sai che questo è il giorno, / In cui scendendo Elisa /
Dal soggiorno più lucido del cielo / I suoi raggi raccolse in mortal velo?” Metastasio,
Gli Orti Esperidi, in Tutte le opere II 91. The serenata also implicitly celebrates the lineage
of Maria Livia Spinola Borghese, alongside the explicit encomium of Elizabeth Chris-
tine. See Candiani, Pietro Metastasio 37 n21. Domenico Gentile’s Scherzo festivo tra le ninfe
di Partenope (1720), which was, like the Angelica, written for the birthday of Elizabeth
Christine, contains a similar rhetorical passage: the shepherd Sebeto asks, “Joyous and
happy nymphs…do you not know that on this happy day the beauteous Elizabeth was
born into the world, noble, royal seed of the most famous heroes of whom there has
never been and never will again be equals…?” (Ninfe giojose, e liete…ah nol sapete;
/ In questo dì giocondo / Nacque la bella Elisabetta al Mondo / Nobil germe reale /
De più famosi Eroi / Cui simil non fu, ne sarà poi…). Gentile, Scherzo n.p. See again
Candiani, Pietro Metastasio 39.
   25
      “Io vinsi il cor guerriero / Del giovinetto ibero…” “Ben t’apponesti al vero; / E
l’illustre donzella, / Che il fato a lui concede, / Di saper, di bellezza a te non cede.”
Metastasio, L’Endimione, in Tutte le opere II 87–8; see also Brunelli’s notes on the refer-
ence, Tutte le opere 1313 nn. 1–4.

M LN                                        129

in second place, considering the beauty and breeding of the couple;
rather than expressing jealousy, she uses the opportunity to call for
peace and happiness, a ceasing of arms, a transformation of bloody
laurels into myrtle trees. Finally in Galatea, the ocean nymph Thetis
makes an appearance and, in a seeming non sequitur, celebrates the
birth of a child by Diego and Margherita Pignatelli (explicitly named).
   The penetration of pastoral systems by real-world characters—
whether anchored as their real-world selves or draped in pastoral
alter-egos—is not in itself remarkable. Baroque pastoral systems were
populated with idyllic (or, in the case of Tasso’s Aminta, ambiguous)
representations of real figures,26 and the Arcadians, in the eighteenth
century, consistently worked themselves and their benefactors into
pastoral scenes—indeed, as Arcadians conceived of themselves as
the new literary shepherds, it is only logical that they would stitch
themselves or versions of themselves into their works.27 Metastasio’s
Angelica, L’Endimione, Gli Orti Esperidi, and Galatea did emulate Arca-
dian practices, in in that they inserted Elizabeth Christine and friends
into the pastoral fold—and yet a different spirit guides these plays.
Metastasio’s patrons or future patrons are consistently depicted in
these works as existing beyond the pastoral, either in a world that
seduces the plays’ characters and turns them away from their own
dramas, or as figurations of glory and beauty that far exceed the pas-
toral aesthetic. The pastoral, in Metastasio’s early works, is not a place
of rest, not an idyllic locus to be emulated—rather, it emulates, it is
itself a lesser counterpoint with which to demonstrate the prepotency
of the Holy Roman Empire and its noble subjects. Thus even when
Metastasio draws directly from Arcadian sources, he spins the texts in
order to leave Arcadia behind and strive toward other, more tangible
shores. His Endimione, for example, clearly follows in the footsteps of
two Arcadian works: Francesco de Lemene’s L’Endimione (1692) and
Alessandro Guidi’s earlier, pre-Arcadian L’Endimione (1688).28 Simi-
larities abound between Metastasio’s text and those of his Arcadian
predecessors—and yet his ending distorts what both de Lemene and
Guidi leave pure. Guidi’s version concludes with Endimione’s ascent
into the heavens, and the chorus’s discourse on love; de Lemene’s
version, which is an endless series of figurations of pastoral characters,

  26
    See Sampson, Pastoral Drama 63–7; 141–61.
  27
    As Accorsi notes, Arcadians viewed heroism in moralistic terms, tied to the purity
of pastoral systems. See “Arcadia bolognese” 96–100.
  28
    Guidi’s L’Endimione was considered by many to be the ideal Arcadian poetic speci-
men. Gravina himself wrote a discorso in favor the work. See Guidi, L’Endimione 45–93.
On Gravina’s praise of the work, see Accorsi, “Il teatro nella prima Arcadia” 45; Accorsi,
“Arcadia bolognese” 85–90, 114–16. On the years leading up to the founding of the
Arcadian Academy see Binni, L’Arcadia 47–92.

130                             KAREN RAIZEN

concludes with lavish praise of Diana. Metastasio’s pastoral, as discussed
above, directs its gaze toward his Pignatelli patrons and declares them
better, in all respects, to Diana and Endimione.
   The Angelica, too, emulates earlier pastoral tropes, as well as Arcadian
iterations of the Orlando furioso. As in Capece’s Orlando ovvero la gelosa
pazzia, Orlando’s madness in Metastasio’s adaptation is couched in
underworld terminology; like most eighteenth-century Furioso libretti,
Orlando’s discovery of Angelica’s betrayal is depicted as a reading
scene in which the hero verbalizes a paraphrased or abridged version
of Medoro’s Petrarchan poem (in the Angelica it reads: “Liete piante,
verdi erbe, e limpid’acque, / A voi rendon mercè de’ lor riposi /
Angelica, e Medoro amanti, e sposi.”).29 A critique of the pastoral
world takes place in the Angelica, just as it would in Metatstasio’s later
L’Endimione—and yet the critique here is not confined to the pastoral.
Considering the representative weight of Orlando furioso in Arcadian
circles, the way in which Metastasio throws this particular pastoral
world into crisis consequently touches the Arcadian mission. Reason
itself is under threat in the Angelica, and there is no indication in the
serenata that the erudite academians can, in Gravinian terms, “clear
up madness” (sgombrare le pazzie).30 What can do the trick, instead,
is Elizabeth herself, in all her imperial glory.

L’Angelica, serenata: Empire beyond Arcadia
Angelica, the serenata’s namesake, is the prime manipulator of the
work’s pastoral system. She opens the drama by rooting her love for
Medoro in the pastoral landscape: her speech references trees and
grass, flowers rustled by a light breeze.31 Medoro enters, and the
pastoral love fest continues; in the following scene, the secondary
pair of pastoral lovers, Licori and Tirsi (who are, unlike Angelica
and Medoro, native to their pastoral setting), mirror Angelica and
Medoro’s dialogue. But the appearance of Orlando sends the placid
pastoral love world into disorder: once Angelica hears of the knight’s
arrival, she switches gears from a pastoral lover to a master of decep-

  29
    See Canto 23 of the Furioso, 108.
  30
    Gravina, Della ragion poetica 11.
  31
    “Esci, dal chiuso tetto, / Medoro, idolo mio; fra queste frondi, / Fra quest’erbe
novelle, e questi fiori / Odi come susurra, / Dolce scherzando, una leggera auretta,
/ Che all’odorate piante, / Lieve fuggendo, i più bei spirti invola, / E nel confuso
errore / Forma da mille odori un solo odore.” Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 111. Binni
notes traces a genealogy of Metastasio’s female characters from Angelica all the way
to his Dido. See Binni, L’Arcadia 324–5.

M LN                                           131

tion. “Hide, Medoro,” she commands, “I know well how to seduce him
with glances and charms both tender and false.”32 She approaches
Orlando with amorous verses, speaking of their shared love and invit-
ing him to remove his armor. Medoro and Licori observe the scene
and, through theatrical asides, express their shock at Angelica’s skill
in manipulating Orlando. Medoro laments the spectacle with par-
enthetical asides: “Even though her speech is feigned it still makes
me suffer,” and “Angelica, my angel, your words seem too true,” and
finally, “I would rather leave than tolerate such suffering.”33 Licori com-
ments on the strangeness of Angelica’s behavior, pointing to her role
as a foreigner: “See how many lovers, even when timid and bashful,
know how to conquer the local nymphs!” and later, “What harsh but
graceful daring!” Upon Orlando’s departure from the scene, Licori
questions Angelica: “So in the city this is how one learns to trick lov-
ers?” Angelica responds, “Sweet simple Licori, you love and yet you
understand so little of the art of loving? Learn first to deceive, learn.”34
Licori closes the scene with an aria: “I know not how / one can show
graces without loving, / and cry and sigh without torment. / How
can I know / to perform a feigned love / if I first feel no love in my
breast?”35 Over the course of this brief scene, Angelica proves herself
as both a master and teacher of deception, providing the simplistic
shepherdess Licori with an education in how to feign love.
   In the scenes that follow Angelica continues to corrupt Licori,
goading her to flirt with (and therefore distract) Orlando. During the
opening scene of the second part of the serenata, Licori, still unclear
on how to entrap Orlando, beseeches Medoro, “Tell me what I should
do so that Orlando might not spurn my love, and I will try to make
myself agreeable.” Medoro responds, “Angelica taught you well enough
how to feign words and looks. Tell him that you blush and burn, that
far from him you find no peace; tell him that you long for mercy; sigh

   32
     “Nasconditi, Medor, saprò ben io / Con sguardi, e vezzi teneri, e fallaci / Lusingarlo.”
Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 119. Orlando, as Candiani notes, fulfills the role of the violent
male antagonist, much like Polyphemus in his Galatea. See Candiani, Pietro Metastasio 60.
   33
      “Ancor che finto sia, pur mi dà pena / Questo suo favellar”; “Angelica, mio nume,
/ Sembran troppo veraci i detti tuoi”; “Meglio è partir, che tollerar tal pena.” Metas-
tasio, Tutte le opere II 120.
   34
      “Ve’ quanti amanti, / Benché schive, e ritrose, / Sanno acquistar le cittadine ninfe!”;
“Che cruda, Ma leggiadra fierezza!”; “Così dunque s’impara / Nelle cittadi ad ingannar
gli amanti?”; “Semplicetta Licori, / Ami, e l’arte d’amar sì poco intendi? / Apprendi
prima ad ingannare, apprendi.” Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 119–121.
   35
      Non so come si possa / Far vezzi, e non amar, / Piangere, e sospirar / Senza
tormento. / Come saprò fallace / Narrar mentito amor, / Se pria dentro il mio cor
/ Amor non sento?” Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 121. Gli Orti Esperidi replicates similar
scenes of verbal trickery. See Candiani, Pietro Metastasio 64.

132                             KAREN RAIZEN

and mix a few little tears into your amorous words.”36 Angelica and
Medoro promote a poetics of artifice in which words can be molded
and manipulated like weapons: in the case of Orlando, Licori can
craft her speech into a discourse of poetic love and entrap him with
her feigned sighs and tears.
   The juxtaposition between Licori’s ingenuousness and Angelica and
Medoro’s verbal craftiness points to a conflict that broadly defines
the Angelica: the battle between nature and artifice. Licori and Tirsi
stand as the quintessential pastoral pair, unwaveringly natural in their
speech and mannerisms. Angelica and Medoro, to the contrary, are
the embodiment of artifice, in that they successfully shift character
and discourse to achieve their ends. Ultimately the border between the
natural and the artificial is anything but clear, as Angelica expresses
while gifting Licori a bracelet:
   Receive from me this gift,
   this golden bangle
   that adorns and circles my left arm.
   Its opulence is its least valuable feature.
   The prudent craftsman united
   jewel and gold with his masterful hand;
   thus you cannot understand
   if it was nature or art
   to join them together.37

Licori, once alone with the metallic symbol of artifice, laments her fall
from the purity of nature, invoking the legacy of her shepherd father:
   This is the unholy metal
   of which my father sometimes spoke.
   Flee, he said, such false splendors,
   oh Licori.
   Such an item was born
   along with deceptiveness and commotion;
   it takes an unworthy price of innocent sentiments;
   marriage beds
   were made tragic scenes because of it.

   36
     Dimmi che far io debba / Perché Orlando il mio amor non prenda a vile; / Ed
anch’io cercherò farmi gentile;” “Angelica abbastanza / A finger t’insegnò parole, e
sguardi. / Digli, che avvampi ed ardi, / Che lontana da lui pace non trovi: / Di’, che
brami pietà; sospira, e mesci / Di qualche lagrimetta / Quelle amorose note.” Metas-
tasio, Tutte le opere II 123.
   37
     “Da me ricevi in dono / Questo, che il manco braccio / M’adorna e cinge, aureo
legame. In lui / Il minor pregio è la ricchezza. Osserva / Con qual maestra mano /
L’artefice prudente / Le gemme all’oro attentamente unio; / Talchè non ben distingui
/ Se le congiunse o la natura, o l’arte.” Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 128.

M LN                                           133

   I do not wish to adorn your limbs,
   or cover your hand with it—
   you who are so dear to me, and happy.
   Those little clear humors,
   those little simple flowers
   that the field and stream offer me as gifts:
   they are my adornments, they are my riches.38

In the antepenultimate scene of the serenata, Tirsi departs with Angelica
and Medoro, leaving behind his grieving lover. While the pastoral duo
engages with their usual amorous pastoral tropes, the scene is littered
with doubt: Licori begs, “Oh my beloved, chide me no more with your
suspicions of my loyalty,” and Tirsi responds, “I wish not to fear, but
you are too lovely, and I am too much in love.”39 Because of Licori’s
education in poetic artifice, her words can no longer be trusted as
true: the purity of her speech, once as natural as nature itself, has
been corrupted by Angelica and Medoro’s imported linguistic craft.
Licori’s discursive fall from the pastoral grove alludes to the inevi-
table failure of any pastoral system. She proves that nature cannot be
isolated from artifice—that the idea of a hermetically sealed pastoral
grove is nothing more than a fantasy. The Arcadian ideal of a return
to a golden age of pastoral simplicity is simply impossible in the real
realm of the constructed Baroque world.
   Metastasio’s depiction of the triumph of artifice over nature draws
directly from the baroque poetics of Marino’s L’Adone: in Le Delizie,
Canto VII of the epic, Marino stages a scene in which Adonis and
Venus take respite in the garden of the ear, a sensual locus amoenus. In
a theatrical setting of sensory totality, they listen to songs and stories
told by Mercury and others. Mercury tells of a duel between a night-
ingale and a lutenist: at the beginning of the contest, he recounts,
the two blend harmoniously in lament. However the harmony quickly
descends into dissonance: the lutenist, scornful of the duel, begins to
scratch at the lute’s strings with his nail.40 The nightingale, “a relentless

   38
     “Questo è il metallo infame, / Di cui parlando il genitor talvolta / ‘Fuggi,’ disse, ‘o
Licori, / Quei fallaci splendori. / Coll’insidie, e le risse / Ei nacque a un parto solo;
egli si fece / Indegno prezzo d’innocenti affetti; / E i maritali letti / Furon per lui
talor tragiche scene. / Me beata, e felice, / Che di lui non mi curo / Ornar le membra
o riempir la mano. / Quei limpidetti umori, / Quei semplicetti fiori, / Che m’offre il
prato, e ‘l fiumicello in dono, / I fregi miei, le mie ricchezze sono.’” Metastasio, Tutte
le opere II 128–129.
   39
     “Deh non far più, ben mio, / Oltraggio co’ sospetti alla mia fede.” “Io temer non
vorrei; / Ma tu sei troppo vaga, io troppo amante.” Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 132.
   40
     Alessandro Piccinini, in his treatise Intavolatura di liuto, et di chitarrone (1623), de-
scribes precisely this technique of scratching the lute’s strings. See Coelho, “Marino’s
‘Toccata’” 400.

134                               KAREN RAIZEN

monster of nature,” repeats the sound with his beak, challenging the
lutenist’s technical artistry with his own abilities. The lutenist pushes
his artifice to its extreme: he employs a vast range of virtuosic tech-
niques, including key-changes, scales, fugal patterns, syncopations, and
trills. Finally he resorts to an execution of war-like music, challenging
natural harmonies with unnatural discord and loud sounds; the bird,
unable to repeat the bellicose sonorities, dies, exhausted and weak.
Marino interjects, through the narration of Mercury, that “Simplicity
and naturalness have no place next to such artistry and so much arti-
fice.”41 This tale of the duel between a representative of nature (the
nightingale) and a represent of human artifice (the lutenist) evidence
that man, with his technical capabilities, can surpass that very nature
from which he is derived.42
   Orlando’s madness in the Angelica sits in this problematic nexus of
nature and artifice: his rage derives from his inability to distinguish
between natural and artificial speech, between natural and artificial
love, and between natural and artificial emotion. His path toward
madness steers him through both Angelica’s and Licori’s feigned
affections, imbuing him with a crisis of hermeneutics: he responds to
Licori’s advances with, “I don’t understand your speech,” and “Perhaps
Licori likes fooling me.”43 The clouded and clouding discourses of
the Angelica seep from public to private spheres, from broad social
confusion to profound personal crisis. Orlando’s fury is a product of
his environs and the artificial discourses that surround him.
   It is only toward the end of the serenata that Orlando descends into
madness, after seeing Angelica and Medoro’s love poetry scribbled
onto a tree: the old shepherd Titiro insists on the veracity of the
written word, stating, “If you don’t believe my words, believe your
own eyes. If nothing else this trunk shows the words carved by their
own hands: ‘Oh lovely trees, oh grass so lush and green, oh limpid
stream, Angelica and Medoro, lovers, espoused, are grateful to all of
you for providing them shelter.’”44 Orlando, upon reading Angelica
and Medoro’s love poetry, delivers his first mad monologue:

   41
      “Maestria tale ed arteficio tanto / Semplice e natural non cape un canto.” Marino,
L’Adone VII 53 (7–8).
   42
     This scene resonates with Book XVI of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, in which a vocally
marvelous bird in Armida’s magical garden sings a song of love and death. The bird
not only sings beautifully, but also actually produces human speech (il sermon nostro);
he is a liminal figure between the realm of nature and the realm of man, embodying
a hybrid essence of animal physicality and human technology. See Tasso, Gerusalemme
liberata XVI 13–15.
   43
      “Io non intendo i detti tuoi.” “Forse meco scherzar piace a Licori.” Metastasio,
Tutte le opere II 124.
   44
      “Se nol credi al mio labbro, / Credilo agli occhi tuoi. Quindi d’intorno / Tronco
non v’ha che di lor man non mostri / Impresse queste note: / ‘Liete piante, verdi erbe e

M LN                                        135

   Most treacherous woman,
   faithless spirit! Now are these
   the tender sentiments
   that you just swore to me? In this guise
   you give me recompense
   of the exalted trophies
   that I left in India, in the Orient, in Tartary,
   all because of you?
   Go ahead, flee wherever you please;
   seek out the hidden caves
   in the vast sea, or limit yourself
   to the center of the Earth; wherever you go,
   you will not find anywhere so sublime or deep
   that could hide you from my fury.
   I will find you, cruel one;
   I will flay the heinous usurper of my happiness
   in front of your eyes;
   I will leave his throbbing corpse
   to the crows […]45

   This initial mad speech is not particularly mad, at least not in com-
parison to other, similar operatic depictions of his fury: his madness
should deposit him in a vision of the Underworld, or detach him
from his own body, or disorient him to the point where he no longer
understands his physical reality. In Capece’s Orlando ovvero la gelosa
pazzia, for example, Orlando details the horrors of the Underworld
scene that he sees before him, from Charon’s boat to Cerberus.
In this initial monologue of the Angelica, however, Orlando simply
declares that Angelica has deceived him, and then vows vengeance,
all while maintaining a rational understanding of past and future,
and of earthly distances. He is also firmly rooted in physical reality:
rather than plunging his future self into Underworld waters or envi-
sioning himself as a raging creature, he depicts a gruesome scene in
which he, in his function as a human warrior, flays Medoro in front
of Angelica and then leaves his pulsing cadaver to be eaten by crows.

limpid’acque, / A voi rendon mercé de’ lor riposi / Angelica, e Medor amanti e sposi.’”
Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 129. Titiro’s reading of Angelica and Medoro’s carved love
lyrics begins with a direct quotation from Orlando furioso (XXIII, 108.1). My English
translation draws in part from David R. Slavitt’s verse translation of Orlando Furioso.
   45
     Perfidissima donna, / Anima senza fede! Or questi sono / Quelli teneri sensi,
Che testé mi giurasti? In questa guisa / Il guiderdon mi rendi / Degli eccelsi trofei /
Che ho sol per tua cagione / In India, in Media e in Tartarìa lasciato? / Va pur, fuggi
ove vuoi; / Cerca del vasto mare / Le riposte caverne, o ti riduci / Nel centro della
terra; ovunque vai, / No, che non troverai / Parte così sublime o sì profonda / Che
all’ira mia, che al mio furor ti asconda. / Ti giungerò, crudele; / Ti sbranerò su gli
occhi / L’infame usurpator de’ miei contenti; / Il cadavere indegno / Lascierò palpi-
tante ai corvi in preda […]” Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 130–31.

136                         KAREN RAIZEN

Never before has the mad Orlando been so verbally capable, so aligned
with his sane self, so in touch with the realities of his world; his crisis
of hermeneutics initially leads him not to abstract realms of fury, but
rather to a realistic vision of a vengeful future.
  Orlando’s second mad monologue, which concludes the serenata, is
markedly madder than his first. The scene takes place after Angelica
and Medoro have departed, and after Licori and Tirsi have been
separated by their linguistic crisis. Night has fallen, and Orlando
wanders through the woods:
  Where am I? Who guides me?
  This place where I tread ardently:
  is it the palate of Hell or is it the heavens?
  The sounding storms
  that swirl around me:
  are they not sorrowful daughters of the ocean?
  Yes, yes, these are the ocean waters.
  See how the Euphrates, and the Tigris,
  timid and lazy,
  halt before my fury!
  Oh God, what voice, oh God,
  What perturbing sounds!
  Angelica and Medoro, lovers, espoused,
  Gods, barbarous Gods,
  Where is Angelica? Why is she hiding?
  Bring her to Orlando, because I, offended,
  will with a singular tremor
  shake the sky all the way to its celestial paths;
  I will garble the heavens,
  I will turn the world into a mangled mountain,
  I will snatch the stars from their routes and the
  rays from the sun.
  Unhappy me, what did I say!
  Miserable me, what did I think!
  I turn my sword toward the heavens!
  Brutal love! Thankless woman! and mad Orlando!
  Oh leave me in peace;
  what do you want from me, vicious stars?
  Oh yes, I understand you well:
  those bloody lights,
  those unhappy comets
  Are the ire of the cruel messengers of the heavens.
  Leave; I will be the minister
  of their disdain. Do they want me
  to rip my tongue from my jaws? Or for me to open the path

M LN                                         137

   to this aching soul with my sword?
   I will do it gladly. Do they crave my death?
   Orlando will die: is it enough for you?
          What will you have from me,
          unhappy comets?
          No more, for I feel
          Hell in my breast.46

Deprived of the light of day, Orlando plunges further into his own
internal darkness and loses his sense of spatial and temporal reality: he
no longer understands himself to be in the pastoral grove, but rather
at the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, or perhaps at the banks of
Hell itself. He turns his eyes to the stars, and, just as he had struggled
to interpret the meaning of Angelica and Licori’s words, he struggles
to decode the night sky. Like a failed Dantean hero, incapable of read-
ing the physical signs of the heavens, Orlando decides that the stars
are the messengers of divine rage, rather than divine love.
   Yet there is still hope for Orlando’s enlightenment and revival from
his madness. Among the stars he spots a warm light: “But what benign
star shines on me through the horror of the night? Who brings me
peace?”47 This new star could shed the light of reason on Orlando
and restore him to his wits. But instead, Orlando, still lost in his love
madness, projects an image of Angelica onto the light: he is trapped
in the realm of illusion, and is unable to distinguish between the true
light of reason and the mirage of his own fury. Orlando concludes
the opera with mad but formulaically amorous verses:

   46
     “Ove son? Chi mi guida? / Quest, ch’io calco ardito, / Son le fauci d’Averno, o
son le stelle? / Le sonanti procelle / Che mi girano intorno, / Non son dell’Oceàn
figlie funeste? / Sì sì, dell’Ocean l’onde son queste. / Vedi l’Eufrate, e ‘l Tigri / Come
timidi e pigri / S’arrestano dinanzi al furor mio! / Oh Dio, qual voce, oh Dio, / Quali
accenti noiosi! / ‘Angelica e Medoro amanti e sposi!’ / Numi, barbari numi, / Angelica
dov’è? perché s’asconde? / Rendetela ad Orlando, o ch’io sdegnato / Farò con una
scossa / Fin da’ cardini suoi crollare il cielo; / Confonderò le sfere, / Farò del mondo
una scomposta mole, / Toglierò il corso agli astri, i raggi al sole. / Infelice, che dissi!
/ Misero, che pensai! / Io volger contro il Ciel la destra, il brando! / Crudo Amor!
Donna ingrata! e folle Orlando! / Deh lasciatemi in pace; / Che volete da me, maligne
stelle? / Ah sì, ben io v’intendo: / Quei sanguinosi lampi, / Quelle infauste comete /
Son dell’ira del Ciel nunzi crudeli. / Partite; io del suo sdegno / Il ministro sarò. Vuol
ch’io mi svella / Dalle fauci la lingua? o che col ferro / A quest’alma dolente apra la
via? / Il farò volentier. Brama ch’io mora? / Orlando morirà: vi basta ancora? / Da
me che volete, / Infauste comete? / Non più, ch’io mi sento / L’inferno nel sen.”
Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 135–36.
   47
     “Ma qual astro benigno / Fra l’orror della notte a me risplende? / Chi la pace mi
rende?” Metastasio, Tutte le opere II 136.