DŸsseldorpheus,
1585
Johann Wilhelm, the
Duke of JŸlich, Kleve and Berg married at DŸsseldorf on 16 June 1585 the
countess MarkgrŠfin Jacobe von Baden. The celebration was epic. Well,
mythological at least.
On the third day of the event, a huge artificial mountain with two peaks was
constructed. Upon each peak a musician representing the mythological musicians
Amphion and Orpheus sat, playing. Amphion had applied his musical gifts to the
building of the legendary walls of Thebes, charming the walls into place with
his music and never lifting a hand. (Ovid Met. 6.146-312; 'most
postclassical treatments of [Amphion] in the arts celebrate the power of
Amphion's music.' Reid.) Orpheus' representative at the Renaissance hochzeit
played on the false hilltop among a throng of wild animals assembled for the
show.
A woodcut published two years later in Cologne shows the scene.
The allegorical purpose of the scene had something to do with invoking the
muses, "in the form of Orpheus and Amphion," as sponsors for the
newlyweds. Guests were told by placards posted around the scene how the
mythological allusions had anything to do with the wedding. I well might have
needed some help in the explication, too!
Orpheus gets top billing in lots of weddings, especially after 1600, when the
wedding of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV of France witnessed the premier of
Peri's Euridice — a watershed event in the history of opera that
joined the forces of Caccini and Rinuccini at Florence's Palazzo Pitti and that
is still being talked about. Throughout the 17th Century, Orpheus charmed the
nethergods into relinquishing Eurydice in no fewer than 30 operas premiered
from Vienna to WolfenbŸttel and from London to Madrid.
And further, Vienna and Graz had witnessed a similar mise en scene in 1571,
when an artificial hill was erected — apparently like a parade float, in
today's conception, pulled by four white drafthorses — and upon this
mobile hilltop sat Eurydice and Orpheus along with representations of the
inhabitants of the Underworld who were charmed by Ovid's Orpheus (i.e. Ixion
and Tityos, and Tantalus, etc.).
So, particularly in light of that precedent, it is especially remarkable to me
that Orpheus is there at the DŸsseldorf wedding at the dawn before the 17th
Century singing an entirely different tune.
Near contemporaries include Edmund Spenser, whose Faerie Queen (1596)
includes Orpheus' music calming strife among the Argonauts (FQ 4.2.1),
likely a role similar to that conceived in the company of Amphion at
DŸsseldorf.
The mythological pastiche is nicely explicated and brilliantly contextualized
by E.-B. Krems, "Das Drama des Sehens und der
Musik: zur Darstellung des Orpheus-Mythos in bildender Kunst und Oper der
frŸhen Neuzeit," Marburger Jahrbuch fŸr Kunstwissenschaft 36 (2009)
269 - 300. I owe all my knowledge of the DŸsseldorf Orpheus/Amphion to her
article, pp. 269 - 71.
OGCMA0785NOTOrpheus_DŸsseldorf