The brilliant and enigmatic Alessandro Stradella was born in 1639, the second son of Marc' Antonio Stradella. The upper-class family had a history of giftedness in the arts, especially oratory and music; it was also politically and socially ambitious. Marc' Antonio had relatives and business connections in Rome; these doubtless influenced the family decision to move there in 1653, where, presumably, the 14-year-old Alessandro studied music.
We do not know with whom he studied; the great Roman maestri of the day were Carissimi, Benevoli, and Bernabei. During his youthful development, Alessandro acquired formidable performing and compositional skills. Later sources repeatedly refer to him as a virtuoso, but there is no evidence as to whether he played or sang; we do know that he owned three lutes at the time of his death. After a few years' absence from Rome—1660 was a plague year—Alessandro returned, doubtless with the quite realistic expectation that he was about to embark on a brilliant career.
The cultural life of Rome in the 1660s was dominated by a single remarkable figure—Queen Christina of Sweden. She abdicated her throne in 1654 for reasons that are still not clearly understood and publically converted to Catholicism the following year. This event was trumpeted as a great diplomatic coup by the Papacy. Her entry into the city where she was to spend the rest of her life took place in 1655 and was celebrated with astonishing pomp.
At least five lavish musical entertainments were produced in her honor; one, Marazzoli's La vita humana, was composed specifically for her. Christina was infinitely more interesting, though far less physically arresting than the classic Garbo portrait would lead us to believe. The Pallas Nordica, as she was called, was, at age sixty-something, of a
very low Stature, extream fat, and thick. Her Complexion, Voice, and Countenance are very masculine: her Nose is great, her Eyes are large and blue, and her Eyebrows yellow. She has a double Chin strew'd with some long Hairs of Beard; and her under Lip sticks out a little. Her Hair is of a bright Chestnut colour, about a Handbreadth long, powder'd and bristl'd up, without an Headdress; she has a smiling Air, and obliging Manners. As for her habit, imagine a Man's Justaucor [a kind of waistcoat] of black Sattin, reaching to the Knee, and button'd quite down; a short black Coat, which discovers a Man's Shooe; a great Knot of black Ribbon instead of a Cravat, and a Girdle above the Justaucor, which keeps up her Belly, and makes its Roundness fully appear. (F.M. Misson, A New Voyage to Italy, 1739.)
Christina was also possessed of a voracious intellectual appetite and explored every significant philosophical trend of her era, from alchemy to Quietism. She maintained the most important academy in Rome and was a champion of opera, oratorio, and the cantata. In 1676 she instituted an Accademia in Musica at her palace, in essence a music competition, at which prominent Roman aristocrats and prelates served as judges.
While is is not clear that young Stradella was ever in her direct employment, he certainly collaborated on operas produced in Teatro Tordinona, Rome's first secular theatre and a pet project of Christina's. She also helped to finance the Oratoria dei Fiorentini, for which Stradella composed S. Giovanni Battista in 1675, arguably his most brilliant work.
By this time, Stradella was recovering from the first of a series of scandals that would seriously undermine his career. By 1667, Stradella was established in Rome and, though busily productive, was living well beyond his means and was seriously in debt. He took up marriage-brokering, with disastrous results.
In itself, this practice was neither uncommon nor illegal. However, several of his arranged alliances were sufficiently controversial to require him to lie low for a while. Finally Stradella and a crony, the contralto castrato Battista Vulpio, took money from an older woman (in Stradella's words, "of low birth, not respectable . . . also ugly") in order to marry her to the male relative of an extremely influential Roman cardinal. Evidently they got the fellow drunk enough to sign a contract. This was, of course, all accomplished without the knowledge or permission of the family. The ecclesiastical relative was not amused, and Stradella was forced to leave Rome in February of 1677.
Stradella's next city of enterprise was Venice, where he already had an influential and understanding patron, the nobleman Polo Michiel. From documentary evidence, it can be assumed that Stradella wrote most of his splendid instrumental chamber music for Michiel. Venice held great potential for a musician of Stradella's abilities: The cathedral of San Marco, the various ospidale, and the flourishing opera companies would have given him ample employment. But yet again, indiscretion undermined him.
Soon after his arrival in Venice, he was hired by another powerful aristocrat, Alvise Contarini, to tutor in music his mistress, the young Agnese Van Uffele. The inevitable happened. Stradella and Van Uffele fled to Turin, where they took refuge in the convents of San Domenico and S. Maria Maddalena, respectively. Stradella was in Venice for less that six months.
The seventeenth century being an age of vendetta, it is not surprising to learn that Contarini did not react to this elopement passively. While Stradella was attempting to court the favor of Turin's regent, Maria Giovanna of Savoy, Contarini was organizing a revenge. On October 10, assassins attacked Stradella (reports vary on the mode—it may have been either knives or cudgels), but did not succeed in killing him. Because the thugs were given asylum in the palace of the French ambassador, the incident became dangerous for the regent—Turin's relationship with France was tenuous at the time, and Maria Giovanna made it clear that she would never welcome Stradella to her court after this affair. When he was sufficiently recovered from his wounds, he was off again, this time to Genoa, but not in the company of Agnese Van Uffele.
Stradella seems to have spent the last four years of his life under the protection of Franco Marion Imperiale Lercaro, teaching the young ladies of the Genoan elite, writing the opera La forza dell'amor paterno for the Teatro Falcone in Venice (it was hugely successful) and Moro per Amore for Rome, as well as the oratorio La Susanna and more chamber music for Polo Michiel. Stradella maintained a friendly correspondence with his old patron, gossiping about the various strengths and weaknesses of the local opera divas, both male and female. It appears that the composer was leading a happy, fulfilled life.
In the 1680s, Genoa was a prosperous port city, spectacularly situated on a steep hillside. Life could be princely, especially for members of the upper classes, who reportedly took delight in flaunting their recently acquired wealth. Ladies were at one point forbidden by governmental decree to wear an excessive amount of jewelry in public. The Genoan nobility was fond of gambling and partying. More puritanical elements in the society often responded by sending anonymous letters to the government denouncing individuals they found offensive. One letter named Stradella, alleging that he behaved seductively with his female students.
The society as a whole was prone to violence; the murder rate, even in this very turbulent time, was unusually high. On the 28th of February, 1682, the inevitable happened. Stradella, walking home in the early evening with a servant, was fatally stabbed. Stradella's companion, who was walking ahead of him, saw nothing. No one really knows who had him killed. It is possible that Contarini persisted in his vendetta. It is more likely that indeed Stradella did misbehave with a young student and was knifed by an enraged father or brother. He was given an honorable burial, and remembered as one of the finest composers of his era.
These melodramatic scraps of biographical data made Stradella a figure of romance, especially in the nineteenth century. In 1844, Friedrich Flotow wrote an opera, Alessandro Stradella, that was quite a success in its day. Unfortunately, what has not survived is the kind of information that would help us gain insight into Stradella's works. The vocal music is extraordinarily demanding.
Did he write with any specific singers in mind? In Rome, attitudes and policies about vocal performance were in constant flux, depending on who was Pope. During the short reign of Clement IX (1666–68), who was himself a formidable librettist, opera was tolerated. Under Innocent XI (1676–89), opera and most theatre was banned. In Rome, castrati dominated the vocal scene, while in Venice, women sang in private concerts and on the opera stage. How well did Stradella know his singers? He was never in any one place long enough to have any lasting relationship with a performer that we know of. Of course, it is possible that he himself was an accomplished singer.
Despite his erratic behavior, his musical reputation was unimpeachable, even after his death. Handel borrowed liberally from his Roman works.
Stradella's cantatas are remarkable for their harmonic coherence, virtuosity, and dramatic content. The texts contain pastoral, mythological, astrological, and historical elements. Typical of the age, they are also strongly emblematic. That is, they use vivid imagery to fix a person or state of mind in the eye as well as the ear of the listener.
Among the more straightforward are the pastoral cantatas, "Tante perle" and "Frena, frena o Filli." The latter is to be found only in a manuscript source recently acquired by the Newberry Library. Its tuneful, highly syncopated musical setting, reminiscent of seventeenth-century Spanish song, undermins the hyperbolic groaning of the narrator at every turn. Stradella is therefore parodying the cherished clichés of baroque love-poetry.
"Si salvi" is emblematic to the point of obscurity. It is populated with mythological persons who may refer to real historical figuresCremember that Christina of Sweden was called the Pallas Nordica and Elizabeth I of England was known variously as Astrea or Orianna. Rather than being a generic lament on the evil nature of modern times, "Si Salvi" seems to refer obliquely to some now-unknown event.
"Non havea il sole ancora" takes a parallel course, exploring the theme of humanity's vulnerability to forces beyond its control. It is so specifically astrological that it is tempting to speculate that the cantata was composed for Queen Christina and her circle. As with "Frena, frena o Filli," the bright, rhythmically dynamic musical settings tend to undercut the dark, almost occult forebodings of the texts.
The most dazzling of the cantatas performed here is "Arianna." It is technically demanding for both the soloist and the continuo band and is unusually long. In both of these respects it anticipates—and may have served as a model for—the great Italian dramatic cantatas of Handel. "Arianna" is a masterpiece.
Stradella's many contributions to the cantata as a genre include his clear delineation of recitative and arioso and his expansion of the latter into aria. While he never actually composed a true da capo aria, he moved in that direction in his manipulations of motivic material. Stradella's wonderful sonatas are no less dramatic, inventive, and immaculately constructed.
I must, in conclusion, express my great indebtedness to Carolyn Gianturco, whose recent biography of Stradella forms the basis of this essay. The ensemble wishes to thank Marini Vecci for her wonderful and heroic efforts at untangling the knotted texts of Stradella's cantatas.
—Mary Springfels
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