Antonia Bembo: Produzioni armoniche - Ha, que l'absence est un cruel martire

#baroque #baroquecomposer #classicalmusic #AntoniaBembo

Antonia Bembo is one of a series of important seventeenth-century women composers to finally receive the attention she deserves. Thanks to painstaking scholarship over the course of the last thirty years, Bembo’s major female contemporaries—Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre—all have claimed their place within the musicological Olympus. Conversely, because of a lack of crucial information, Antonia Bembo remained one of the “enigmas of music history,” as one of her early scholars remarked. This unfortunate state of affairs has come to an end thanks to Claire Fontijn’s book. Through groundbreaking archival findings and impeccable research, Claire Fontijn has created the composer’s first full-length biography and comprehensive analytical study of her works.

Lyrics:
Ha, que l’absence est un cruel martire,
lorsqu’on aime tendrement
un objet tout charmant
et qu’on ne l’ose dire.
L’on se plaint, l’on soupire,
l’on chérit le tourment
et l’amour nous inspire
de répeter souvent:
Ha, que l’absence est un cruel martire,
lorsqu’on aime tendrement
un objet tout charmant
et qu’on ne l’ose dire.

Painting:
Penelope awakened by Euryclea with the news of Ulysses' Return, 1772, by Angelica Kauffman

Kauffman particularly favored the character Penelope, inventing several compositional themes centered on the loyal wife of Odysseus. Here, the nurse Euryclea, awakes the sleeping Penelope with the news of Ulysses’ return after many years away fighting in the Trojan War. During his long absence, Penelope cunningly avoids marrying any of the over one hundred suitors who attempt to claim her as their wife, remaining loyal to her husband. In order to prove that he is, in fact, her husband, Penelope announces a contest. Whoever can string Ulysses’ rigid bow and shoot it through twelve axe heads can have her hand in marriage. Ulysses does this handily, yet Penelope tests him further, fearing he is a god in disguise. She finally accepts him as her true husband after he correctly describes their bed.