soggetti/spettacolo/Glasgow 1992/6
 

Francesca Baltasara de los Reyes, first lady of Heredia's troupe, playing in Valencia, left the company, and her husband, the gracioso (fool) Miguel, at the height of her fame, and went to live in a hermitage near Cartagena. She became renowned for holiness, and when she died, all the bells of the hermitage rang of their own accord.

This is the sum of the information given us by the Genealogia, an annotated list, dating from the early 18th century, of hundreds of actors and actresses of the preceding century. Contrary perhaps to expectation, there were a number of actresses who were known for having led exemplary lives in spite of their professioni or who eventually retired to convents. Maria Calderón was mistress to Philip IV and the mother of Don John of Austria, who defeated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto; after a far from exemplary life she entered a convent in Guadalajara, eventually becoming the abbess. However, none took the theatrical imagination as did La Baltasara, whose spectacular conversion took place onstage, in the middle of a play, and it cannot have been very long after her death that a play was written (by three authors, Velez de Guevara, Coello, and Rojas de Zorilla, one act each, a fairly common practice). It was eventually published, the first play in a large collection of mid- 1 7th century hits, in 1652.

In adapting the Spanish original for the Italian music theatre, Rospigliosi made some significant changes. His version is shorter, tighter, cutting various rather repetitive episodes in Acts II and III in order perhaps to give more time for the arias, but chiefly to emphasise the spiritual aspects of the story. One may not regret the loss of several more pages of Alvero's laments and remonstrations, though personally I rather miss the onstage battle in Act II where Rodrigo and his fellow Knights of St John rout the Corsairs (however, we have done what we can to rectify this omission).

Where the Spanish play is historically-episodically structured, probably using local traditions of the story (it had all happened within living memory, after all), Rospigliosi has another agenda: Act I contains the crucial experience - within the extreme artificiality of a play within a play, the ultimate Reality speaks to Baltasara. In Act II Baltasara withstands temptation, and in Act III the power of the saint is made manifest - a necessary stage in the process of beatification.

Some of the most radical alterations occur in Act I: the Spanish play begins with the bustle of the theatre someone puts up a poster advertising 'La Gran Comedia del Saladino', spectators argue, vendors sell fruit, nuts and other essentials, the company gathers, Baltasara tells her fellow actors that she's not feeling up to much today. Rospigliosi chooses to begin at the heart of things, with Baltasara alone in her dressing room. Gradually the world of the theatre takes place around her, until it explodes with the chorus of spectators shouting their impatience for the play to begin. The play within the play is also significantly tailored for the Italian audience. Drawing on Spanish traditions of the Crusades, Velez de Guevara invented for Baltasara the character of Rosa Solimana, wife of Saladino. Baltasara makes her wrong entrance here on a horse ('Back!' cries Saladino 'the horse is in Act III!'). Rospigliosi rejected this spectacular but risky moment in favour of a completely different basic storyline taken from the books of Tasso with which his audience would have been familiar (see 'Tasso's Clorinda' below).

In Act II the Devil in person incites her former lover Alvero to try and get her back - this is taken from the Spanish play, but Rospigliosi has added a twist - Baltasara rejects Alvero (though with extreme difficulty), so the Devil tries again. Taking the disguise of a friendly damsel (where sex fails, chumminess may yet find a way - La Colpa uses much the same technique to seduce Vita in La Vita Humana), he creates a much more serious temptation - 'This is a theatre, open to all delights', exclaims Baltasara.

The Spanish Act III is very rambling, compared to Rospigliosi's, though the actual physical cause of her death - from continual fasting - is more clearly stated. Rospigliosi has conflated episodes from Acts II and III involving Beatrice (called Leonora in the Spanish - perhaps a significant change) and Rodrico to produce circumstances in which Baltasara can now manifest her sainthood, by saving not only Beatrice from despair - the soul's death - and from physical death, but also Rodrico's from committing the deadly crime of murder. It is significant that Baltasara sends the redeemed Beatrice to fmd a divine minister to be a witness. Penitenza is also Rospigliosi's invention, the personification of Heaven's grace, who will lead Baltasara into the theatres of paradise.

As Leonora is transformed into Beatrice, so are the actors of the comic subplot subtly changed. Historically Baltasara was married to Miguel Ruiz, the gracioso or clown who appears in the Spanish play. Miguel has been turned into Biscotto, who while greatly attached to Baltasara is clearly not married to her. Rospigliosi's Lisa in the Spanish play is Iusepa the graciosa, Miguel's stagepartner. But the Spanish comic actor is much more akin to his or her English counterpart than to the Italian, caught in the strict role demarcation of the Commedia dell'Arte. Neither Biscotto nor Lisa fits any commedia type - Biscotto is obviously the sort of grand comedian who remains known by his own name whatever part he is playing. Lisa is even more interesting - her preoccupations are money and independence, and it is tempting to cast her as somebody of significance and responsibility within the troupe, perhaps even as the actor-manager owner - there were indeed female 'Autors' in 17th-century Spain ...

Giulio Rospigliosi first went to Spain in the retinue of Cardinal Francesco Barberini in 1626. He was already an accomplished dramatist, and his plays were performed in Madrid - a dedication to one of them published later in Rome states that Lope de Vega himself admired them. Returning to Rome, in the years from 1630 to 1644 he wrote at least eight dramas to be set to music, which were performed, and sometimes revived, each year, as the Barberini contribution to the Carnival celebrations.

In 1644 he returned to Madrid as Papal Nuncio. Shortly after his arrival there, the Barberini Pope, Urban VIII, died, and Innocent X, from the rival family of the Pamphili, took his place. The Barberini fled Rome, and Rospigliosi stayed in Madrid, where he was joined by his equally theatre-loving nephew Jacopo, and the singer Ludovico Lenzi (who sang the role of Intendimento in La Vita Humana, and directed the production of La Baltasara). Records are scarce, but it seems that he knew Calderón de la Barca, and certainly came home with quantities of Spanish plays, for his subsequent works are nearly all based on Spanish models (except for La Vita Humana, which was written especially for Christina of Sweden on the occasion of her coming to Rome; however, even this shows strong Spanish influence in its thought and imagery). He stayed in Madrid for nearly ten years, and eventually returned to Rome in 1653 for the festivities celebrating the reconciliation of the Barberini and the Pamphili, for which he wrote a play for music (Dal male il bene) based on one of those he brought back from Madrid.

He continued to write for the Barberini - 1656 was a kind of Annus mirabilis, when three pieces of his were performed in the same Carnival season, in honour of the ex-Queen Christina of Sweden, includine Calderon's Le armi e gli amori (with theatrical prologue foreshadowing Baltasara), and La Vita Humana (revived in Glasgow in 1990). He also continued to rise within the church, becoming a Cardinal in 1657, and was finally elected Pope in 1667. His reign was short, and marked by continuing problems with French Jansenists (reforming Catholics) and with the Turks, but nevertheless he abolished certain abuses against Jews, reduced taxes, founded an academy for the study of church history, and protected the arts - he was a patron of the first public theatre in Rome, Christina's project, the theatre Tordinona.

La Baltasara was his last opera, the only one of his performed in his pontificate. The libretto had probably been written some years before, possibly while he was still in Spain; the score, however, shows signs of having been revised for the performances in question. It is interesting to speculate why this particular piece might have been chosen. It was produced by Jacopo, the new Pope's nephew, and directed by Lodovico Lenzi, both of whom had been with Rospigliosi during the long stay in Madrid. There is in Spanish drama of the period a strong fascination with illusion and reality - one thinks of Calderón's La vida es sueño (Life's a Dream) - and also with the theatre itself - Calderón again, in El gran teatro del mundo, and earlier, in Lope de Vega's Lo fingido verdadero, on the conversation of St. Gines, a pagan Roman actor who in playing a Christian, sees God. This too is at the heart of La Baltasara, the idea that truth may speak through falseness, that at the point where the illusion is most powerful the ultimate reality becomes apprachable. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to think of La Baltasara almost as a kind of apologia pro vita sua.

Kate Brown     
 

            

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