PERI, Jacopo 1561-1633

La Dafne d'Ottavio Rinuccini Rappresentata alla Serenissima Gran Duchessa di Tosana. [Libretto]

Firenze: Appresso Christofano Marescotti ... Con licenza de' Superiori, 1604.

Small quarto. Modern carta rustica wrappers. 1f. (recto title with woodcut of Medici coat of arms, verso cast list), 20 unnumbered pp. + 1f. (recto blank, verso elaborate woodcut printer's device of 4-masted ship on a windblown sea with motto within decorative woodcut border), A1-C4. With decorative woodcut initial letter to first page of text; decorative woodcut initial to beginning and woodcut tailpiece to end of laudatory poem.

The poem, dedicated to co-composer Jacopo Corsi, consists of eight stanzas on 3 pp. preceding final leaf, commences "Qual novo altero canto."

Very minor internal wear; light foxing; minor creasing; small printed overpaste ("AL") to head of poem; C1 incorrectly designated "D."

In very good condition overall.

Third edition. The first edition, most probably published to coincide with the first performance of the work at Carnavale in 1598, is exceptionally rare, with only one copy recorded by Fuld, at the New York Public Library Special Collections, Music Division.

Rare Book Hub records only 5 copies of the 1600 edition having come to auction from 1957-2023; no copies of either the first edition or the present edition of 1604 are recorded as having come to auction.

Allacci col. 235. Fuld: The Book of World-Famous Libretti, p. 61. Gaspari V, p. 137 (edition of 1600). Sartori II, 7016 (three copies only, two in Italy, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Firenze and the Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica in Napoli, and one in the U.S., at the University of California, Berkeley). Wotquenne 2291 (edition of 1600). OCLC 954810182 (one copy only, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma). Sonneck I, pp. 339-345. See also Sternfeld: The First Printed Opera Libretto in Music and Letters Vol. LIX, no. 2, April 1978 for a full discussion of the libretto.

Considered an "experimental musico-dramatic work," Dafne consists of a prologue and six scenes by Jacopo Peri with assistance from Jacopo Corsi (1561-1602) set to a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini after Ovid’s Metamorphoses; it was first performed in Florence at the Palazzo Corsi in the 1598 pre-Lenten Carnival season (1597 old Florentine style).

Peri was an Italian composer, singer, and instrumentalist. "His most significant contribution was his development of the dramatic recitative for musical theatre." William V. Porter and Tim Carter in Grove Music Online

"Although only fragments of Corsi’s and Peri’s music survive, Dafne is significant for introducing Peri’s most radical innovation, recitative, which he described as ‘more than speech but less than song’ in the printed preface to his second opera, Euridice (1600). Recitative (stile recitativo) or speech-music, then, synthesized the two elements into an inseparable whole, creating a new language that was as much an expression of humanist ideas about the relationship between words and music as it was emblematic of the new art form. While other late Renaissance musical works for the stage had been entirely sung, this was the first to qualify as the genre we now call opera because of its emphasis on recitative, or speaking from the stage in song." Barbara Bussano Hanning in Grove Music Online

"In winter 1594–5 Corsi and Rinuccini asked [Peri] to complete Corsi’s musical setting, in stile rappresentativo, of Rinuccini’s dramatic pastoral Dafne. Three years later ... it was presented at Corsi’s palace, and Rinuccini later declared that ‘it gave pleasure beyond belief to the few who heard it’. It was repeated, apparently in altered form, at least three times in Florence during the next two years: on 18 January 1599 at Corsi’s house, three days later at the Pitti Palace, and twice in 1600, again at Corsi’s house. Though never printed, it was still being performed in the first decade of the 17th century. No complete score of the Peri-Corsi Dafne has survived, but six brief portions extant in several manuscripts have been identified as belonging to the work. ...

The impact of the Peri-Corsi Dafne and Peri’s Euridice [performed as part of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV's wedding celebrations in 1600], which Corsi sponsored, was extraordinary and far-reaching." Edmond Strainchamps in Grove Music Online

Dafne, generally considered to be the first opera, is a true landmark in the history of music. The music to the work has been lost, with the exception of 6 arias extant in manuscript only, in Florence and Brussels.

Item #41321

Price: $10,000.00  other currencies