Giasone
Giasone (Jason) is an opera in three acts and a prologue with music by Francesco Cavalli and a libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini.
Sole opens with an aria about the gloriousness of the day because Giasone (i.e. Jason) will set out leading his Argonauts on a quest to find the Golden Fleece - or so it is expected.
[3] A recitative begins with the Argonaut Ercole (i.e. Hercules), who complains that Giasone has not awoken yet, even though the sun is shining.
Orestes introduces himself as Isifile's (Queen of Lemnos) spy in Colchis on a mission to get information about Giasone, but he is afraid of getting caught.
After a lengthy conversation, Demo agrees to meet with Orestes and give him information about Giasone a later time.
Delfa (Medea's nurse) sings the aria "Voli il tempo" about how she has renounced love in her old age.
Giasone addresses Medea, who tells him she knows the identity of his night-time incognito lover and reproaches him for not living up to his duties as father of his twin children.
In the countryside with huts near the mouth of the Ibero, Isifile is in a trance and singing the lament aria "Lassa, che far degg'io?"
Later Medea is in her magic chamber performing witchcraft and singing the aria "Dell'antro magico" in order to invoke Pluto (King of the Underworld) and ask him to protect Giasone while he is away seeking the Golden Fleece.
Alinda (a Lady) then sings a cheerful aria "Per provo so" on the subject of finding new love as a cure for pain.
Here the gods Jove (i.e. Jupiter) and Aeolus resolve to create a storm to shipwreck Giasone so that he will return to Isifile in Lemnos.
Returning to earth to a demolished harbor and a storm at sea, Orestes and Alinda discuss Isifile's jealousy that has driven her to madness.
In the recitative that follows, Ercole praises Giasone for having lived up to his manly duties while Medea defends his passionate love for her.
Alinda answers with the trumpet aria "Quanti soldati" in which she rejoices the arrival of all the soldiers available for maidens of Lemnos as a result of the storm.
In the end, they agree to stop fighting and together sing the love duet "Non piu guerra" in trumpet aria/concitato style.
Set in a flowery glade, Besso and Delfa discuss Giasone's conflicting marriages to Medea and Isifile.
Giasone then instructs Isifile to go in secret to meet Besso in the Valley of the Orseno and ask him if he has carried out his orders.
Giasone meets with Besso and tells him to go to the Valley of Orseno and wait for a messenger who will ask if he has carried out his orders.
Egeo begins with the aria "Perch'io torni a penar" in which he complains about his miserable situation as a slave of unrequited love for Medea.
In the Valley of Orseno, Medea sings the strophic aria "L'armi apprestatemi" expressing her rage against her rival with stile concitato gestures.
On an uninhabited place with ruins, Giasone speaks of his regret and grief because he believes he has killed Isifile at the request of the jealous Medea.
Isifile forgives him and they sing the love duet "Quanto son le mie gioie" to arrive at the standard Venetian happy ending.
Ellen Rosand remarks that by the mid-seventeenth-century Venetian public opera had developed a number of musical and dramatic conventions, several of which Giasone exhibits.
Such scenes use a special kind of poetic meter called sdrucciolo, which places an accent on the antepenultimate syllable.
[13] Isifile’s lament (act 3-21) is of the type based on the Monteverdi’s Arianna (1608) model,[14] in which several sections express various emotions.
Such subject matter could be used for political purpose by the creators of libretti, many of whom were members of Academia degli Incogniti (“Academy of the Unknown”), a group of libertine, skeptical, and often pessimistic thinkers in Venice at the time when Giasone was produced.
[17] Often, these plots were modifies to reinforce inequitable gender roles[18] or question authorities, most notably the Catholic Church and especially the Incogniti’s ultimate rivals, the Jesuits.
Because castrati have a youthful appearance due to lack of secondary sexual characteristics, they could easily slip into such a role.
McClary notes that Giasone sings the aria “Delizie contenti” upon entering in II.2, thus declaring he is a character of this “effeminate” type: youthful, attractive, androgynous, pleasure-seeking, and lacking a sense of duty.
She stresses that such a character would not have been considered a good role model for masculine behavior at the time and place of the opera’s first performance.
