Corselli: Achille in Sciro (Achilles in Skyros)
a Metastasian opera based on a Greek myth
Arid followers of this page would know that Metastasio is one of the greatest librettists in the Baroque period and sometimes beyond. Despite written in Italian, his libretti are often translated into various languages in Europe and most operas that are written on his libretti are hits. It is therefore no understatement to say for a budding opera writer in the Baroque period, being able to use a Metastasian libretto would guarantee you a great box office. Today’s opera is, again, not a very famous one in our time given there has been a diminished interest in Baroque opera (which are often long, kind of redundant, and soapy in plot), but it was one of the notable turning points in the development of opera that shifted the almost exclusive uses of castrati to a more inclusive casting on the operatic stage.
A synopsis of the opera. Our protagonist is Achilles (Achille in Italian), whose mum heard many years ago about the prophecy in which he would die in the Trojan War and tried her best in preventing it from happen. How? She decided to have Achilles the child dress up as a girl and send ‘her’ to the King of Skyros (an island in Greece), Lycomedes (Licomede). Lyco has a few daughters so he said yes without second thought and sent Pyrrha — Achilles in disguise — to play with his girls. They grew up together and girls turned into pretty ladies… meanwhile Achilles grew into a man, of course. He fell in love with one of Lyco’s daughter Deidamia, who reciprocates. But the plot thickens: a guy called Teagene fell in love with Achilles’ female disguise, and Deidamia has a suitor. It was a double, double, toil and trouble until Ulysses (Ulises) heard that the Trojan War needs Achilles to be won, and tricked Achilles into revealing himself as a heroic guy with a bunch of gifts that included some swords and armour, which Achilles couldn’t resist playing with. Ulysses persuaded, and Achilles decided to participate in the Trojan War and he promised Deidamia that after he won he would come back to Skyros to have her his bride.
Throughout the opera it was clear that Achilles was struggling with his femininity, as shown by his exchanges with Nearco and Deidamia in Act I: on one hand, he wants to be a guy so that he can marry Deidamia officially (there was another prince on his way to Skyros to woo her, and Nearco said Lycomedes wanted to marry her off to that prince); on the other, he knows he would be in danger if Lyco knows he was a guy all along — throughout all these years, growing up with his daughters! This man vs. self and man vs. society conflict was real, and this sort of gender-based conflict was particularly rare and intriguing when you know that this was an opera based on a libretto by Metastasio, whose many libretti were the basis for many castrati operas. Although this is the case and we don’t know how Metastasio sees the castrati, what we do know is that during the composition of this libretti, it was a time when the operatic stage started to give way to men and women instead of the usual Baroque setting (men, castrati and sometimes women). That this transition was propelled by critics in the 18th century tells you a lot about how society sees the operatic stage and their performers: it was an effeminate thing to do, to the extent that it was like Achilles trying to keep his life intact by pretending to be a woman.
Some of you might know Shakespearean plays well and some, like the Taming of the Shrew, was about transformation (men <> men for Lucentio, Tranio and Hortensio), and some, like Twelfth Night, was about en travesti (woman <> man for Viola). Of course, Shakespeare’s time and his audience should be more open to gender balances in the performing arts, given the castrati weren’t super popular in England after the Handel-Senesino duo. But in other places on Europe, the castrati tradition succeeded until the middle of the classical period. So this kind of gender transitioning plots are quite new on the Metastasian stage. He says in his epiphanical scene:
E questa cetra
Dunque l’arme d’Achille?
…All’onorato incarco
Dello scudo pesante
…A rincomincio adesso
A rawisar me stesso.(And this lyre,
Is this the weapon for Achilles?
…To the honoured charge
Of the heavy shield
…I begin now
To recognize myself.)
Achilles detests himself in female wear, to the point where he finds it masking his true masculinity. Not saying it’s true, but in this scene, he becomes true to his nature again. It was a sort of parallel for the operatic stage at that time, too, because the critics, as mentioned before, hated how opera effeminates its performers and even their audience. But at the end of the day, Achilles still had to compromise: he would have to fight the Trojan War, and come back to marry Deidamia as well; perhaps it was Metastasio’s hint that eventually every party have to compromise for the collaborative, artistic masterpiece.
Reference:
- Heller, W. (1998). Reforming Achilles: Gender, “opera seria” and the Rhetoric of the Enlightened Hero, Early Music, 26(4):562–581.
