Rachel Singh

Professor Silverstein
Independent Study
Capstone

Preserving the Old and Embracing the New: DePaul Opera Theater’s L’Egisto

When DePaul Opera Theater announced that it would be producing Francesco Cavalli’s

L’Egisto in the fall of 2019, there were two recordings available of the work. One of these

recordings was of the opera as directed by Raymond Leppard, a British conductor and Baroque

scholar who was also responsible for the only existing version of the score. Thus, the

documented precedent for L’Egisto was based largely on one voice, creating what one could

consider either a daunting challenge or an exciting opportunity in choosing to perform this

production.

With this in mind, maestro Jason Moy began to consider the environment in which

L’Egisto was conceived in order to best understand Cavalli’s intentions. Seventeenth-century

Venice was an era of duality. At face value, the Venetian Republic was proud, held to its own

high standards. The Church had a large Jesuit presence in Venice that oversaw much of the

Republic’s operations, including publishing (Modena et al. 67). In addition to the Church, the

Venetian patriate was supervising family life, enforcing “one of the most rigid marital regimes

known to history” to preserve its nobility (Muir 118). Venice boasted a booming economy due to

the influx of trade at its ports, and was renowned across modern-day Italy for its festivals, such

as Carnival.

However, this ideal representation set a perfect stage for the scandal happening below the

surface. Despite the heavy influence of Catholicism, priests, rabbis, and laypeople would engage

in alchemy, dream divination, and astrology (Modena 108, 111, 113). The marriage laws were
about as binding as the religious ones, for “extramarital liaisons were the norm” and Venice

“produced not just numerous courtesans but many informal relationships and a network of social

institutions created to provide social welfare to retired prostitutes and cast-off mistresses” (Muir

118). The Venetian public developed no shortage of ways to please the prevalent authorities

while simultaneously living their desired lives, and opera burst onto the Venetian scene in 1637

as a means of doing exactly that. Given the timing of the operatic season with Carnival, “the

audience members were themselves masked, at least when they arrived, and unknown patrons

staged for the unknowns in the opera boxes productions that took advantage of the collective

anonymity” (Muir 125). Due to this lack of identification, there was a lack of responsibility,

leading to the theater becoming an important place of social discourse and experimentation

without consequence from the Church. To accomplish this, composers and librettists would often

use myths as a mode of storytelling that the Church did not censor because of their fictional

nature, and yet allow for genuine and relatable human emotions on the stage.

In addition to returning to classical Greek myths, opera in its early days was designed to

emphasize the importance of the text over the music, a convention that has dramatically changed

since. Inspired by Greek oration and the dramas of Carnival, scholar Edward Muir notes that “the

librettist was king […] whereas composers seemed to be virtually interchangeable” because of

the desire for the storyline to be at the forefront of the production, and the music only incidental

(Muir 126). Thus, the use of myth was not only due to a desire to have the church’s sanction to

publish the libretto, but was also a result of a societal desire to return to classical Greek oration

as a form of high art.

This is the environment in which Cavalli’s L’Egisto was born. Opera was a thriving, fresh

market in Venice, and Cavalli had studied with Monteverdi, who was the leading figure behind
opera’s rise in popularity. By 1643 when L’Egisto premiered, Cavalli himself had written several

operas already, and was connected to the major theaters in Venice. According to maestro Moy,

Cavalli had likely encountered a situation at an opera house where there were significantly more

women than men, and he needed a production that would cater to their circumstances. Through

the already-popular storytelling vehicle of myth, Cavalli created an opera that would suit both

the needs of the opera house and the demands of the public, and L’Egisto was met with great

success.

Over time, L’Egisto was forgotten about until conductor Raymond Leppard created a

performing edition of the score, thus allowing L’Egisto to return to the operatic stage. However,

when Leppard revived L’Egisto in the 1980s, he was unsure about whether his modern-day

audience would share that same appreciation for an opera based on oration. Fearful that his

audience would not receive the small orchestra in L’Egisto well, he re-orchestrated the score for

a modern symphony orchestra to provide a fuller sound, more colors, and to add greater musical

activity to the production. His re-orchestrated version is the only score currently available for

purchase. Additionally, he made cuts in Cavalli’s original work, reducing the running time to a

three-hour show that is standard to modern audiences.

Though DePaul Opera Theater’s production would not have been possible without

Leppard’s efforts in bringing L’Egisto back into the operatic canon, maestro Moy wanted this

production to have its roots in a seventeenth-century context, as it was designed to be, and not to

be remade into a twenty-first century one. Moy relayed in an interview that he was able to access

an unpublished Bärenreiter edition of the L’Egisto score, which was paring down Leppard’s re-

orchestration. Using this version, he compiled a score specifically for DePaul Opera Theater’s

use, which featured the original orchestration as well as Leppard’s helpful cuts. According to
Moy, composers like Monteverdi and Cavalli “don’t need harmonic scaffolding” like that which

Leppard tried to provide. Furthermore, DePaul University’s Baroque Ensemble served as the

orchestra for L’Egisto, which aided the authenticity of the production in both instrument style

and performance technique. The smaller ensemble and the increased starkness in the texture,

Moy hoped, would draw a modern audience into the production with a sense of immediacy that

other, more modern operas would lack.

However, in a society where “bigger is better” is a common sentiment, would Moy’s idea

ultimately work? Conductor Trevor Pinnock, a Baroque specialist, describes in his essay

“Reflections of a ‘Pioneer’” his attempts to make Baroque music appeal to a modern audience.

As he explored ways to add novelty to his work, he found himself returning more frequently to

the roots of the production. In his ensemble the English Concert, he specifically decided to use

period instruments because “we had arrived at a crossroads where there was a need to find a new

way forward through exploration and discovery”, as he felt that the best performances of the

works in question had already been done on modern instruments (Pinnock 18). Pinnock

describes modernity as a spectrum, for although a performance of a Baroque-era piece may be

authentic to a degree, it will also be contemporary to a degree, such as through the use of

modern-day recording equipment to preserve it. Through his adjustment to a more historically-

accurate performance, he discovered that returning to former conventions was hailed as

innovative in his own time since it was different than standard post-Baroque opera.

Thus, it stands to reason that Moy’s decision to produce L’Egisto in a more authentic

manner would attract a modern audience instead of deterring one because it is such a unique

mode of opera that is not often seen. Furthermore, his decision permits L’Egisto to fulfill the

duty that it was intended to and acknowledge a history of oration. The alternative of forcing the
production to act as a modern one would result in exactly that: a forced masquerade of the

modern that could not possibly meet standards it was not designed for. At a time when audiences

are selective about the operas that are intended to be produced with a modern orchestration due

to their monotony, a L’Egisto unwillingly wrangled into a modern context could not hope to

succeed. With DePaul Opera Theater’s L’Egisto, audiences were instead met with the oxymoron

of a tradition of communication being so antiquated that it is avant-garde.

In junction with Moy’s musical approach, director Elizabeth Margolius focused on

preserving the intended Baroque elements in her staging. Her conception of the piece was what

she described as “contemporary Baroque”, which emphasized the Baroque facets of the piece,

but also had a contemporary echo. For instance, the costumes featured Baroque patterns and

were inspired by Baroque imagery, yet were cut in a contemporary manner. Similarly, the

movements that she instructed the cast with were drawn from both contemporary staging

movements and Baroque gestural movements. However, what was most notable was her use of

the space. Since DePaul’s Gannon Concert Hall features a large stage, Margolius had freedom

beyond what the cramped Venetian opera houses of the 1640s would have offered. Yet in an

interview, she spoke about her decision to instead not use the space that she had available. She

chose to integrate the orchestra into the performers to reflect the intimate feeling that the

performance would have carried in Cavalli’s time, but also to intrigue the audience with a

seemingly novel arrangement. To balance this, her contemporary echo in the design was that the

actors were on raised platforms, simulating the modern convention on having the orchestra in a

pit and the performers on a higher level than the instrumentalists. Thus, Pinnock’s words hold

true yet again: trusting the nature of Baroque opera to find favor with audiences is effective

because Baroque opera is innately different, and that difference is appealing.

she directs, on the text. Although she hoped that the audience would be intrigued by the staging,

costumes, and other efforts, what she truly wanted them to glean from watching L’Egisto was a

connection with the themes in the text. In her opinion, it is the storyline that makes L’Egisto

unique as an opera, regardless of its style. If the audience were to engage with the themes in the

text, as the opera was designed to promote given its roots in oration, that would become the most

important factor in determining whether the opera appealed to them, and not the musical or

staging differences between Baroque and post-Baroque opera.

In keeping with the goal of returning L’Egisto to the manner it was originally performed

in, certain roles were played by different genders in Leppard’s version than in DePaul Opera

Theater’s. For example, the characters Lidio, Dema, and La Notte were written by Cavalli for

male altos. Where Leppard had transposed their parts an octave down so that a male baritone or

tenor could sing them, DePaul Opera Theater’s production featured mezzo sopranos singing the

roles in the octave where it was written, and playing the character as either a pants role (Lidio) or

as a fully female role (Dema and La Notte). This is in tandem with what would have occurred in

Cavalli’s time, for in the Venetian opera house, gender roles were constantly thrown into

question, often with characters disguising themselves as other characters, regardless of the

gender of the actor, the character, or the disguise.

DePaul Opera Theater further analyzed gender roles in their portrayal of Cupid as

gender-neutral. In an interview, soprano Julia Clarke who was singing the role of Cupid in this

production, described the already-present conflict between binary genders that Cavalli had

written, for Cupid is referred to by “he” pronouns throughout the libretto, yet is always sung by a

woman. In addition to that signal that Cupid does not fall under a specific gender label, Cupid is
a child who references still having a mouth full of his mother’s milk. Clarke explained that

children are not aware of their own gender until age four, and Cupid was not nearly old enough

to have that awareness. However, her decision was complicated by the fact that Cupid is a god

and has many more capabilities than the typical baby. She related a conversation that the cast had

about Cupid’s gender orientation, revealing that her approach toward portraying Cupid as a

gender-neutral character was discussed and decided as a cast given the context in the libretto. In

this way, she felt that this character choice served the performance, and that making any other

choice would have caused aspects of the performance not to align. The costumes also aided her

in her portrayal of Cupid, for the clothing was masculine, but Clarke tucked the shirt in a

feminine French tuck style. The costume did not make any attempt to hide her long hair,

although it was pulled back. In fact, the greatest challenge that Clarke found in building her

character was not in acclimating to the gender-neutral aspect of Cupid, but rather in developing

the godly characteristics that Cupid possesses despite being a baby. Cupid’s non-binary

orientation only aided her in discovering movements that would be godly, with Clarke describing

it as “freeing” in developing Cupid’s character.

Though the implementation of a gender-neutral Cupid was done based on evidence in the

score and not out of political intention, this decision also follows one of the original purposes of

Venetian opera, which was to contribute to social conversations. The current sociopolitical

conversation about gender fluidity is not new, but neither is it finished, and people who identify

as non-binary are not always safe to do so. Perhaps a welcome change from the current climate,

in L’Egisto, Cupid was only judged for actions, and not for identity. Since Cavalli’s time, the

theater has been used as a place to portray aspects of life that it is not safe to portray in the world

outside, and DePaul Opera Theater continued this tradition in their production.
 Lastly, a typical characteristic of Baroque opera based off a myth is that there is always a

moral to the story. Several times throughout L’Egisto, characters speak to the audience, warning

them about the perils of love, the fleeting nature of beauty, or basking in the joys of fidelity.

However, the moral of the production of DePaul Opera Theater’s L’Egisto appears to be that

music does not have to be elaborate for a show to appeal to audiences, nor do opera-goers need

several dramatic arias to feel satisfied after attending a production. The recitative style so

prevalent in L’Egisto went unnoticed by many audience members, for they were drawn to the

plot just as Margolius had intended in her directing, and as L’Egisto’s roots mandated. The more

authentic version of the score that Moy had prepared served the same purpose that Pinnock had

found in his use of period instruments: a form of music that is different from the standard is

exciting and intriguing for that exact reason. On the whole, DePaul Opera Theater’s production

was authentic to Cavalli’s intentions, aligned with the tradition of Venetian theater, effectively

engaged with modern discourse, and was enjoyable for contemporary audiences to watch.
 Works Cited

Clarke, Julia. “L’Egisto Cupid Interview”. 1 November 2019, Holtschneider Performance

Center, DePaul University, Chicago, IL.

Margolius, Elizabeth. “L’Egisto Director Interview”. 21 October 2019, Holtschneider

Performance Center, DePaul University, Chicago, IL.

Modene Léon de, et al. The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon

Modenas Life of Judah. Princeton University Press, 1989.

Moy, Jason. “L’Egisto Musical Interview”. 3 October 2019, Holtschneider Performance Center,

DePaul University, Chicago, IL.

Muir, Edward. The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines, and Opera.

Harvard University Press, 2007.

Pinnock, Trevor. “Reflections of a ‘pioneer.’” Early Music, vol. 41, no. 1, Feb. 2013, pp. 17-21.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1093/em/cas162.