The release on CD by Glossa of The Medici Castrato introduces a new vocal talent – countertenor Raffaele Pe – onto the label and, with this programme, a new reflection of the creative currents coursing through the Italian states (and beyond) at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Originally hailing from Lodi in Lombardy, Italy, Pe studied in London and it is from there that his rapidly expanding career is developing, the alluring timbre of his voice and his innate musicality bringing him to the attention of concert – and opera – audiences across Europe and beyond. That talent is much in demand with many of today’s leading directors of early music.

For The Medici Castrato Pe has chosen to focus on the life and career of a castrato, Gualberto Magli, whose own fabulous talents coincided with the rise of opera in Italy, the maturity of astonishing composers such as Claudio Monteverdi and Giulio Caccini, and the lavish patronage provided to the world of culture by the House of Medici. Magli was, for example, called upon to perform at the opening performances of the favola in musica composed by Monteverdi in 1607, L’Orfeo.

Appropriately, Raffaele Pe’s programme includes selections from L’Orfeo, but it also looks at other reflections of Gualberto Magli’s art through compositions by Sigismondo d’India, Girolamo Montesardo, Johann Nauwach, as well as the father and daughter composers, Giulio and Francesca Cacccini. Joining Raffaele Pe with their virtuosic skills are Chiara Granata (triple harp) and David Miller (theorbo).

As Glossa releases The Medici Castrato, we took the opportunity to talk to Raffaele Pe about his music-making and about this captivating recording programme.

What has having created a programme built around the performing life of Giovanni Gualberto Magli – both for concert and recording purposes – informed you, as a modern-day singer, about the nature of the music which he sung, how it might have been performed, and about the musical world of Magli’s times?

I find the figure of Gualberto Magli particularly interesting because of his many talents, from his vocal abilities to sing in the high range, to his artistry as an actor and his admired skills as a harp player. This condition was clearly one of the fundamental artistic premises that somehow allowed the development of what we call “opera” at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Italy. The word “opera” is the plural of the Latin word “opus” (one work) and it requires a mixture of competencies and arts according to an innovative process of hybridization. Retracing the path of Gualberto and the music he might have encountered during his career provide a relevant model even for contemporary interpreters and the way we approach this vocal repertoire.

What do you think that Magli gained from being a pupil of Giulio Caccini?

Undoubtedly, Caccini introduced Gualberto to the modern art of monody, but most of all I believe he unfolded his revolutionary idea of sprezzatura, as described in the opening of his collection Le nuove musiche (Florence, 1601): “Bisogna cantare senza misura, quasi favellando in armonia con sprezzatura [...]”. This sentence is revolutionary in the sense that goes radically against the more common definition of sprezzatura of the time, originally provided by Baldassarre Castiglione in his courtesy book Il cortegiano (1528). Castiglione identifies an idea of grace that argues for simplification and control against prolixity and affectation. In Caccini’s interpretation such condition in singing is obtained by deconstructing the metrics and the rhythm of the music according to the dramatic charge of the text, a very efficient tool to coordinate an expressive declamation of the poetry accompanied by a regulated bass line. This is something that still can be deepened in its relevance both for historical and modern performance.

At the outset of the seventeenth century Magli’s services were not only demanded for the opening of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in Mantua but they were secured also by the Elector of Brandenburg. Where else is it known that Magli performed and how much fame do you think that he accumulated?

Gualberto Magli was also active in Naples, where he was sent, supported with a grant, by the Grand Duke of Tuscany to learn how to play the harp – something very similar to our modern scholarships. There are also traces of him in relation to possible performances in Rome at the court of Ferdinando Gonzaga around 1610. I believe Gualberto really became a leading figure in Italy for his unique artistic skills. For this reason it should not surprise us to find his presence in the chronicles of the time in regards to a concert in which he took part in the house of Count Giovanni de’ Bardi, singing madrigals in the company of Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri and Adriana Basile.

Your Medici Castrato recording includes a newly-composed piece by Alessandro Ciccolini. How did this piece come to be written, and what interest do you have generally for singing music of a more contemporary nature?

My relationship with Alessandro Ciccolini started a couple of years ago for a performance of Gaetano Veneziano’s Lamentazioni del Mercoledì Santo. Alessandro is well known for his outstanding contribution to the completion of Vivaldi’s opera Montezuma and to several other important Baroque compositions. His knowledge of the style is second to none, but it is not only a matter of the technical skills that he possesses, it is also about his sensibility for the text and the lyrical lines of his music that made me ask him to write a new composition for my recording. His homage to Gualberto Magli is based on one of my favourite sonnets, Solo et pensoso by Francesco Petrarca, and it is imagined as a piece written for Gualberto in the early stages of the Florentine recitar cantando. Apart from these premises, the piece allows for a great expansion of vocal abilities mixing arioso passages accompanied by the harp with recitativos and a long passacaglia in the middle section. Which offers a great variety for concert performances as well...

Beyond the areas of early Baroque Italian monody and opera, where in early music do you want to take your voice?

This experience with the recitar cantando repertoire opens up many interesting perspectives onto the music of later composers influenced by the same approach to vocal writing and practice. I would like to look at later works by Tosi, Bononcini, Scarlatti, Gasparini or even Handel, Vivaldi and Porpora, trying to revive the technical and dramatic skills that Gualberto brought to perfection in relation to poetry in music in the performance of these pieces. I am interested in finding a renewed balance in singing practice between expressive declamation and vocal lyricism, especially for what concerns the highest of all the singing styles, the stile patetico, which finds its roots in the early seventeenth and then becomes the blazon of many superheroes of later operatic adventures, such as in Pacini, Pistocchi, Annibali and Guadagni.

MARK WIGGINS
© 2014 Note 1 Music / Glossa Music