I’ve been staring at a blank word document for ages now, wondering where to begin. The last couple of days have gone by so quickly – not all, I hasten to add, because of adrenalin. Yesterday I did end up with a pounding migraine, so the end of the day washed by in a wave of naratriptan. But at least it’s a drug that makes you think you’re functioning until you finally pass out.

Yesterday, it has to be said, was a bad day at the office. Nothing much achieved apart from crossing certain boxes off my list and knowing that I wouldn’t find anything there. But at least it gave me time to allow the previous day’s discovery to sink in, and to work out a possible route for the book to have got from Florence to Ferrara. I saw this poster early yesterday morning and the image stuck with me, how triumphant she looks, and so nun-like with her hair like a black veil. I get the same sort of feeling from those plays. Actually, it still blows my mind that not only is convent culture permeable between convents (our author dedicates one of her plays to nun at another convent, knowing that she and her niece like a bit of culture), but it’s also travelling between cities. It is, as they say, a brave new world.

I went back this evening to have another look and to request a complete copy (it’s over 300 pages long, so I steeled myself for a hefty bill). A little more careful reading reveals that for some of the musical interludes, she even gives the tunes you’re supposed to sing the words to. Absolutely incredible.

And this morning I spent reading Lucrezia Bendidio’s love letters to Cardinal Luigi d’Este. Her correspondence over a period of just over twenty years, and the dispatches sent by his agents whilst he was away that give him news of her, reads like a slow train wreck. When they say there are no new stories, boy, it’s really true. Here we have a gloriously beautiful, talented woman who is the star of the court, but who becomes the victim of what these days would be called mobbing because she unwisely chooses to favour the cardinal over his brother, the duke. It looks like the Duke more or less orchestrated a hate campaign against her and ordered people not to speak to her; one of her greatest supporters comes and tells her that he’s sorry, but she can’t visit his wife anymore. But because she has no choice, she carries on singing for the Duke until he finds other singers, and then she really is hung out to dry.

Over the next fifteen years she endures insults, smears and public humiliation, and then finally she is forced to hand over land and belongings that were purchased with money given to her by the (now dead) Cardinal. Her letters, by the end, betray what looks to be mental illness; she is desperate and angry and has nowhere to turn. I often wonder what happened to Lucrezia. I bet she ended up in a convent – I do hope, though, that she wasn’t forced to enter the Convertite or the Soccorso (for battered wives).

And along with all this I find inklings that the kind of music she’s singing with her sister, ten years before the concerto di dame is formed for Margherita, is much more sophisticated than previously thought.

It certainly puts into perspective the more famous Tarquinia Molza / Giaches de Wert affair that happens later – Molza and Wert are both banished from the court for doing what everyone else was doing. Looks like Alfonso was a serial bully who didn’t like being a lesser priority.

So I’m feeling pretty exhausted tonight – post migraine, and like I’ve spent the best part of the day with someone really strung out. Food tonight was quick – just another wafer-thin pizza from the restaurant next door (thin, but actually with a circumference bigger than my hips, which is going some). Last night it was pasta e fagioli, which was warming and solid, especially as it seemed to have rather a lot of polenta in it as well. No picture – it was just yellow.

Tomorrow, back to poor Lucrezia, and hopefully to find a Modena jersey for Son no 2. I think I need to get home soon – overload is approaching!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Musica Secreta, Musicology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.