ORLANDIANA -- Vivaldiana

Speranza

One would wish it were that simple, and even if this were true, things can still go wrong.

Even if you love the one who loves you, temperaments and loyalties tend to change.

A closer look at the characters in Vivaldi's ORLANDO FURIOSO is illuminating.

ANGELICA and RUGGERO mirror each other.

At first sight they loved that who loved them: MEDORO and BRADAMANTE.

But they are both pragmatists and they actually use and abuse the feelings of their respective lovers and of others.

To what extent is or was Angelica not charmed by Orlando?

To what extent is she testing Medoro?

Did Ruggero really drink a love potion or does he just want to share a bed with another woman?

Can we believe that Ruggero doesn't recognise his spouse Bradamante, or is he just pretending?

In Bracioli's libretto, Alcina and Angelica are quite BITCHY, whereas Ruggero acts with hardly any sense of responsibility to the people who love him.

Then we also have BRADAMANTE, ASTOLFO, MEDORO, the honest and faithful characters.

The fundamental difference between BRADAMANTE and the two males is that she is brave and adventurous while they lack courage, especially MEDORO.

But they have a quality in common as well.

Since they are not fickle they are quite DULL, as is often the case with the neat and decent characters in a story.

They might be morally superior, but did they ever have an opportunity to pick the fruits of carnal pleasures?

As far as those fruits are concerned, one gets the impression that Vivaldi's opera offered a wonderful opportunity to indulge such pleasures.

Vivaldi and Braccioli definitely knew that it was the hidden delights that the Venetian enjoyed most.

So this might have been one reason for BRACCIOLI to include the juicy story of Alcina in the ORLANDO FURIOSO.

A chaste hero, and even a rather silly one, was not sufficient for the pleasure island.

There could have been another reason for linking the two stories (ORLANDO-MEDORO-ANGELICA and RUGGERO-BRADAMANTE-ALCINA), or at least there is an unforeseen result.

The framing of parallel narratives of Orlando and Alcina brings a strong hint of similarity in their development and destiny, although their points of departure are diametrically opposed.

ORLANDO is desperately in love with ANGELICA, but during the melodramma it seems as if ALCINA is also falling desperately in love with RUGGERO.

RUGGERO may well be the first male ALCINA has ever had deeper feelings for.

The two main protagonists are both pursued by their respective feelings of love and lust.

In this sense, they mirror each other.

Both will be driven mad by their 'biological clock' and they will both step completely outside the normality of life. Whatever their intentions, both ORLANDO and ALCINA leave the stage empty-handed.

The world of ALCINA, the hostess of all the guests who enter her dangerous beehive, is a world of SOCIALITES who use each other, not a world of friends.

In the endgame of this story we witness a sometimes furious and sometimes melancholic mediation on this and that. Ruggero's is Alcina's angel of death. Orando in his utter madness also performs a dance of death at the end.

The moral is clear. The final words of the chorus in ORLANDO FURIOSO by Vivaldi are:

If a faithful lover/loves with constancy/in the end he enjoys the rewards of love.