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Academic Disputations on Love: Socrates in Seventeenth-Century Opera
Year: 2025
Type of publication: kapitola v odborné knize
Name of source: Music as Classical Reception
Publisher name: Oxford University Press
Place: Oxford
Page from-to: 164-179
Titles:
Language Name Abstract Keywords
cze Akademické spory o lásce: Sókratés v opeře sedmnáctého století Kapitola zkoumá průsečíky řecké filozofie, komedie a hudby a zaměřuje se na dílo Nicolò Minata a Antonia Draghiho La patienza di Socrate con due mogli (Trpělivost Sókrata se dvěma ženami). Opera, která byla poprvé uvedena v Praze během karnevalu v roce 1680 pro habsburský dvůr Leopolda I., vznikla ve stínu velké morové epidemie ve Vídni. Jejím výchozím bodem byla starověká peripatetická anekdota, podle níž byl Sókratés bigamista. Peloponéská válka – a pravděpodobně také mor v Athénách – zabila tolik lidí, že athénští muži byli zřejmě zákonem povzbuzováni, aby si brali více žen, aby „zvýšili“ počet obyvatel. Kolem primární zápletky založené na tomto údajně historickém příběhu – využívající komický potenciál válčících manželek a trpělivého filozofa-manžela – opera rozvíjí vedlejší zápletku: soutěž dvou žen o aristokratického žáka Sókrata. Sókratés; Minato; Draghi; karneval; Habsburg; dramma per musica; komedie; opera; sedmnácté století
eng Academic Disputations on Love: Socrates in Seventeenth-Century Opera Exploring the intersections of Greek philosophy, comedy, and music, this chapter focuses on Nicolò Minato and Antonio Draghi’s La patienza di Socrate con due mogli (The patience of Socrates with two wives). First performed in Prague during the 1680 Carnival for the Habsburg Court of Leopold I, the opera was created in the shadow of the Great Plague of Vienna. It took as its starting point an ancient Peripatetic anecdote claiming that Socrates was a bigamist. The Peloponnesian War – and presumably also the plague of Athens – had killed so many that Athenian men were apparently legally encouraged to take multiple wives to ‘augment’ the population. Around a primary plot based on this purportedly historical narrative – exploiting the comic potential of warring wives and a long-suffering philosopher-husband – the opera weaves a subplot. This stages another competition by two women over an aristocratic student of Socrates, and hinges on which woman loves the student enough to become his (second) wife. The themes of love and its measurement emerge as light-hearted topics for philosophical debate. In Habsburg Europe, the cultivation of both philosophical debate and dramma per musica belonged to an imitation of antiquity as received in the high-prestige performative context of the Italian academies. By setting contemporary philosophical debate within the ancient school of Socrates, Minato and Draghi create a fanciful fusion of past and present suitable for the Carnival during which the opera was first performed: the perfect environment for frivolous treatment of love and philosophy, ancient and modern. Socrates; Minato; Draghi; carnival; Habsburg; dramma per musica; comedy; opera; seventeenth century

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