LUCIA RONCHETTI’S RIVALE AS AN EXAMPLE OF GÉRARD GENETTE’S HYPERTEXTUALITY PRACTICE

Abstract

The subject of this article will be the 2017 opera Rivale by Roman composer Lucia Ronchetti. This exceptionally interesting work is a direct reference to André Campra’s opera Tancrède and Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigal Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. Rivale’s libretto presents the story known from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata, this time told from Clorinda’s perspective. The analysis concerns the composer’s conscious references not only to Campra and Monteverdi’s works, as her most important source of inspiration, but above all to selected musical styles and operatic genres, which become a starting point for her creative dialogue with musical tradition, conducted through practices characteristic of hypertextuality. The research method we adopted is Gérard Genette’s concept of hypertextuality. The aim of the article is to demonstrate that the most important goal of opera, which is to arouse emotions, is preserved in Ronchetti’s work, but above all – that it can still be achieved by resorting to traditional means of musical rhetoric.