Baroque: Alessandro Stradella

Alessandro Stradella   1680

Engraving by Louis Denis

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Source: Italy On This Day

Born on 3 July 1643, Alessandro Stradella was an aristocrat educated in Bologna who wrote operas, oratorios and serenatas (serenades). He may have been born during his father's very brief time as a cavalier (knight) and governor of Vignola. Sources vary widely on just when Stradella arrived in Rome from 1653 to 1654, but he is apparently on record as a singer at St. Marcello del Crocifisso Cathedral in 1655 ['Choral Repertoire' Dennis Shrock].

In 1658 Stradella is found a singer in the employment of Queen Christina of Sweden [All Music Blair Johnston], she having given up her throne at age 28 to live in Rome from 1654 to her death in 1689. Johnston and Shrock have Stradella writing his first composition for Christina in 1663, a motet called 'Chare Jesu Suavissime'. Christina was probably overall the most important association of Stradella's life. Though she could provide an influential umbrella for those she favored due that she herself was a darling of papal Italy, she couldn't supply a parachute for every occasion that Stradella fell out of grace with either the Church or some powerful European house.

Come 1669 Stradella was composing for the new theatre in Rome, the Teatro Torinona [Greene]. Among other of Stradella's skills, however, was getting into trouble. The first such occasion arrived in 1669 when a failed attempt to embezzle money from the Church had him leaving Rome for a brief time, returning by 1670.

This period in Rome finds Stradella composing in four notable genres at which we glance herein, those being oratorios concerti grossi, serenatas and operas. Stradella's first oratorio was 'Santa Editta' arriving in circa 1672-73. His oratorio, 'Ester Liberatrice del Popolo Hebreo', arrived circa 1673. The oratorio had long since originated as sacred sibling to secular opera minus the latter's theatrical pomp. The oratory was originally a space or building set apart from the main church for celebration of Mass. Upon the development of the baroque oratorio centuries later, which between characters, choir(s) and an orchestra could demand some space alike operas wanted theatres, oratories began getting built to accommodate these large sacred works which didn't belong in theatres alongside operas profane, yet neither in the church which was the holy domain of the Mass and its litanies.

'Ester Liberator of the Jewish People' concerns Jewish Ester, new bride to Persian king, Ahasuerus (Xerxes in Greek), in confrontation with Ahasuerus' minister, (H)aman, whose notion it was to erase the Jewish population due impertinence by Ester's cousin, Mordocheo. Spoiler: Ahasuerus discovers his recent bride, married for her humble beauty, to be Jewish, the latter whom saves the Jews from the violent intentions of Aman whose wealth she inherits when he is executed by the king. Stacking herein only approximates chronological order and shouldn't be interpreted to represent such between titles of the same year.

Stradella is credited with composing the first works fitting the bill of a concerto grosso ("big concert"), though the term wasn't used until Arcangelo Corelli in 1681. Corelli composed numerous concerti grossi as distinguished from smaller concertinos. Andrea De Carlo identifies Stradella's 'Vola, vola in altri petti ossia Il duello' as his earliest concerto grosso. I've not identified instrumentation for this, but early manuscripts also include three concertinos of 'Vola, vola'. Commissioned by Gaspare Altieri toward premiere in honor of Queen Christina on 15 August 1674, this is also an early serenata by Stradella.

'Webster's' has the term "serenade" originating in 1649 from Latin "serenus" (serene). Most are familiar with the serenade as a romantic piece performed in open air in the evening, perhaps with an image in one's mind of a lover with her suitor at a window. The aubade [c 1678 'Webster's'] is the morning version. Stradella's baroque serenatas refer to more elaborate outdoor evening performances involving orchestra. Evening entertainments held outdoors permitted orchestration for louder performances for larger audiences than indoors.

It was also during this period in Rome that Stradella wrote 'Sonata di Viole' aka 'Concerto Grosso in D Major'. This was composed circa 1675 as a sinfonie for violins, violoncelli and continuo.

'St. John the Baptist' (San Giovanni Battista) was composed for Palm Sunday falling on 7 April 1675 (the Sunday one week prior to Easter Sunday). It's performance at the Church of San Giovanni i Fiorentini is thought to have had a crew including Arcangelo Corelli on violin alongside others like Pasquini, Lonati and Colista. Stradella probably sang as he often did. This is the happy New Testament story of the beheading of John the Baptist by Herod upon request of his daughter.

This period in Rome also brought the concerto grosso serenata titled 'Qual prodigio e ch'io miri?' circa 1675. Another of Stradella's serenatas carried a title appropriate to a musical evening on the lawns as 'La forza delle stelle ovvero Il Damone' ('The power of the stars or Il Damone'). This was commissioned in 1677 by Queen Christina upon a theme of her own being that of one female and two male lovers discussing the best means to a lady's heart.

Regardless of Queen Christina's considerable prestige (her apartments assigned by the Pope), she couldn't mend a public dispute with a cardinal in 1677 which required Stradella to leave Rome for the safety of Venice, he not to see Rome again. Stradella was there soon hired by Doge Alvise Contarini of the Contarini dynasty to tutor his mistress, Agnese Van Uffele. But Alessandro and Agnese ran off to Turin together instead. Contarini followed where he found assistance in the Church, which forced Uffele to choose between becoming a nun or wedding Stradella, which the pair did on 10 October 1677. "You think?" Contarini soon considered, that not a pleasing solution, then had Stradella assassinated, or so he believed. Stradella survived and was in Genoa come early 1678 while Uffele disappeared from the annals of history.

In Genoa Stradella composed for the Teatro Falcone and local nobility. His comic opera (opera buffa), 'Il Trespolo tutore', premiered at Il Falcone in January of 1679. This is a love story between a pupil and her tutor amidst the (in)sanities of physical love. Come Stradella's opera, 'Doriclea', in 1681. He is thought to have composed 'Moro per amore' the same year, though it wasn't presented to the public until 1695, thirteen years after his death. His oratorio, 'La Susanna', also arrived in 1681. This work is based on the 13th chapter of the Old Testament book of 'Daniel' in which Susanna confronts two powerful Elders who falsely accuse her of adultery, and is saved by Daniel who exposes their perjury.

Stradella was stabbed to death on 25 Feb 1682 at the Piazza Banchi. Once again concerning an affair, this time the cuckold was a member of the Lomellini family, his hitmen more successful than had been Contarini's. Between poking where he oughtn't have and otherwise living dangerously Stradella managed more than 300 works, including a minimum of six operas, 170 cantatas and 27 instrumental pieces. Leaving his manuscripts to an underage son, those were sold with the assistance of a friar to Francesco II d'Este, Duke of Modena, for 600 gold doubloons, now collected at the Estensian Library in Modena. Stradella was later the subject of Friedrich Wilhelm Riese's opera, 'Alessandro Stradella', premiering at the Stadttheater in Hamburg on 30 December 1844. "G" numbers in Stradella (none used herein) are from 'Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682): A Thematic Catalogue of his Compositions' by Carolyn Gianturco and Eleanor McCrickard published in 1991.