soggetti/spettacolo/Glasgow 1992/7
TASSO'S CLORINDA
The story of the doomed encounter of Tancredi and Clorinda is just one of the many strands woven together in the verse epic Jerusalem liberated published in 1580 by Torquato Tasso, but, thanks to Monteverdi, it is probably the best known. (Another story, famous through Handel and Gluck amongst others, is that of Armida the sorceress and the hero Rinaldo - Tasso's work, like Ariosto's Orlando, was plundered mercilessly for subjects). The various stories all centre on the crusade led by Godfrey of Boulogne to recapture Jerusalem from the Saracens.
Tancredi is not mentioned in Act I of La Baltasara as a possible character in Baltasara's play, though he is included in the list of Christian paladins to whom Clorinda issues a challenge. However, since we never do find out how the play of 'Clorinda' was to develop, he might well have played a part. Beatrice, the seconda dama, as well as performing the Prologue, was to have played Erminia, daughter of Antioch's Christian king, a prisoner in Jerusalem since the fall of Antioch, and betrothed to Tancredi. The substance of the first two scenes of 'Clorinda' is taken from book two (quotations from Edward Fairfax's contemporary English translation):
Aladino [Saracen King of Jerusalem]
... This aged Prince ycleped Aladine ...
Ismeno [his counsellor, a necromancer]
Ismen dead bones laid in cold graves that warmes
And makes them speak, smell, taste, touch, see and heare ...
... down fell the mildew of his sugred words ...
They speak of the noble Sophronia and Olindo, who were willing to be martyred to save the Christians still within the walls of the besieged city, and whose reprieve has just been gained by Clorinda.
Clorinda
A savage tygresse on her helmet lies ...
Proud were her lookes, yet sweet, though stern and stout ...
This lusty ladie came from Persia late ...
She meets Aladino, tells him that Ismeno is a filthy idol-worshipper, contrary to Mahomet's law, which she follows faithfully.
Let Ismen with his squares and trigons war
His weapons be the staff, the glasse, the ringe ...
The crucial episode of Clorinda inspecting the walls of Jerusalem, however, is based on the equivalent moment in the Spanish play: in Tasso, Clorinda's Mohammedan faith never wavers until she is defeated by Tancredi. This divergence from the universally known Tasso must have occasioned a certain frisson in the Roman audience, rather as if Richard III should decide he loved little children, or Hamlet kill Claudius at his prayers.
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