"Der Dichter spricht...". La voce del poeta nel 'Torquato Tasso' di Donizetti

Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many literary, figurative, and musical works took inspiration from the lives of celebrated ancient and modern artists. In particular, the unhappy events in the life of Torquato Tasso were of the greatest appeal; the author of Aminta and La Gerusalemme liberata became an emblem of the romantic artist, constantly in conflict with the surrounding world. Among these works, Ferretti’s and Donizetti’s melodramma semiserio Torquato Tasso (1833) is unique in the fact that the authors let the character Tasso to deliver poetic fragments extracted from the works of the real Tasso, interspersed throughout the dramatic dialogue. This device is aimed to outline the portrait of the hero in his complex relationship with the courtly society, and to show the poet in the very act of creating; it is highlighted both in the libretto (by the use of italics) and in the music: citations appear only in recitative sections, within which some of them are emphasized by the use of the arioso singing. The essay shows how this calculated use of literary and musical devices generates a multi-layered game of mirrors. Through it one can listen, as in perspective, different voices: that of the character; that of the real poet, or rather of the image the posterity has constructed of him. Lastly, the voice of the opera’s authors, who use Tasso’s poetry in order to express their concerns about of the Italian literary and musical tradition, in a historical juncture in which its identity is being challenged.