The degrees of separation that divide Casanova from some of the cornerstones of contemporary music are far less than 6, as Fabio Di Spirito explains in this unmissable musical journey in stages. The Venetian adventurer bound his life to pure inspiration, finding in music a powerful and faithful ally.
O Venezia, Venaga, Venusia (Nino Rota, soundtrack de Il Casanova di Federico Fellini)
Only a few of us reckon that Nino Rota’s soundtrack for Federico Fellini’s Casanova (1976) is the best of his compositions, though absolutely all of them are masterpieces of film music. The Casanova charms like a sort of ghost music, populated by phantasms, sound nightmares mirroring the same phantasms and nightmares that agitate the story. An eighteenth-century vision of feebleness, a company of the palest ghosts fluttering about the scene in their desperate wish of death, a cupio dissolve with Casanova as the lead. Is it chance that the first sound we hear in the film, the ominous beginning of the Carnival, is that incredible musical instrument known as glass harp (or Glasspiel in German)? That spectral sound, so perturbing, almost intolerable to hear since it bears in itself its own negation, its contrary. The instrument, earlier a simple collection of drinking glasses filled with water at different heights, grew extremely popular in the 1700s: Mozart, Beethoven, Donizetti wrote scores for it (the folly scene in Lucia di Lammermoor). Its use by Nino Rota is easily explained by the instrument’s relevance in Casanova’s own time – again, the 1700s – and by the amazing affinity between its alienation effect and the narrative alienation that seems to be key to interpret the feature. There’s a third reason, too, of biographical nature. The glass harp was perfected by Benjamin Franklin. Born in Boston, a founding father of the USA, and a polymath of the most diverse interests: politics, diplomacy, science, publishing, activist journalism, literature, music. Yes, music, too. When I was in grade school, I was taught Franklin invented the lightning rod. I don’t know if they still teach that. What I believe is that, after Voltaire, Franklin was the man Casanova admired the most. The two shared not only unconstrained intelligence – genius, in Franklin’s case – but were also both freemasons and philanderers – in Franklin’s case, this was less obvious. On November 23, 1783, the two met in Paris, and discussed extensively about hot-air balloons, which Franklin was keenly interested in at the time.
Sountrack: Hit the Road, Jack by Ray Charles
Really, when I set out to write this ‘Casanova playlist’, I read an essay by Gino Benzoni: Di corsa per l’Europa (anche per vivere intensamente) (lit. ‘Running around Europe – to live intensely, too’), itself part of the catalogue of an art exhibition once held at Ca’ Rezzonico, in Venice: Il mondo di Giacomo Casanova (lit. ‘The World of Giacomo Casanova’), what immediately came to mind was Ray Charles’ son inviting Jack (Giacomo) to hit the road and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more… Those words do seem to address Casanova. Benzoni, a historian, wrote how, aged twenty, Casanova had the chance to hit the road and leave Europe behind. In Constantinople, he befriended a rich, powerful person who offered him to marry his daughter, Zelmi, and become his heir. Casanova couldn’t bring himself to accept, to make the final jump and leave Europe behind. He justified his decision stating that he couldn’t live without the brilliant, intellectual milieus of Europe, its courts, cultural gatherings. After this decision, Casanova began traveling incessantly about Europe: Mantova, Geneva, Parma, Turin, Lyon, Paris, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Venice, Holland, Switzerland, Avignon, Grenoble, Marseille, Valencia, Genoa, Leghorn, Florence, Rome, Naples, Barcelona… a tireless traveller, he could sustain moving around with ease, and grew easily accustomed to different cuisines, too. Casanova never rested if but for the very last part of his life, in the Bohemian town of Dux, later Duchov. Travelling and travelling from one city to the next to do the three things he is best at: eat, seduce, and converse. Hit the road, Jack…
Soundtrack: With a Little Help from my Friends by Joe Cocker
Giacomo Casanova and the librettist of Mozart’s three Italian operas, Lorenzo Da Ponte, were friends, as much as two men could be friends in a century dominated by self-interest and suffocating formality. Some say that on the night of the Don Giovanni’s premiere, at the National Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787, Casanova was among the invitees. Even fewer say that Casanova had been, in fact, the librettist for the Don Giovanni, because supposed author Da Ponte was in Vienna in the days prior to attend another premiere, L’arbore di Diana by Vicente Martín y Soler. Honestly, my own research yielded nothing that could sustain this. We have several letters Da Ponte wrote Casanova between September 1792 and August 1789, mailed from the several European cities (Dresden, London, Rotterdam, the Hague) Casanova sought fortune. In these letters, a narrative is easily observable. Let’s look at one of the most relevant: it starts with thunderous applause to the addressee to later steer into more practical issues: Da Ponte illustrates how hard it was for him to find commissions and to finance his projects, he insults those who refuse to do so, and then asks Casanova for help, either by contacting a creditor of Da Ponte’s and convincing him to forgive the debt or to champion his case to Casanova’s own protector in Bohemia, the Earl of Waldstein, for a possible monetary aid. The letter ends exalting the success of Da Ponte’s own poetry for the death of Louis XVI and other writings, of blatant self-aggrandizing nature. If the eighteenth century is the age of individualism against society, it is so also thanks to this masterpieces of hypocrisy and fiction that Da Ponte’s letters exemplify.
Leoš Janáček, They chattered like swallows, from On an overgrown path, Book 1
Casanova’s last years were quite bitter: in late 1785, as he was working as a secretary to Venice’s legate in Vienna, almost in poverty and serving a former power on its last legs, he accepted the invitation of the Earl of Waldstein, who hired him as a librarian in his castle in Dux/Duchov in June 1798. Often alone, with the Earl residing mostly in Vienna or in London, Casanova spends his last few years immersed in correspondence and in authoring his French-language memoir, L’Histoire de ma vie, a testimony to his amazing memory. They were difficult years, too: Casanova spoke no German and barely interacted with the court, especially with vicious butler Faulkircher, whom he often treats as inferior. It soon became apparent how they, in turn, targeted him, and aggressively marginalized him. We chose Janáček not because of strict affinity with our scope, but because the motive, so impetous in its brevity, and so aimless, too, seems to remind of Casanova’s suspended life in his last years at Dux.
Soundtrack: Pasquale Anfossi, La contadina incivilita, first movement
A tongue-in-cheek reference to a 1971 film that I loved as a young man: Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, the story of a successful composer with some identity issues. This is opposite what Casanova experienced: always rock-solid in his literary portrayal of his psyche, obsesses in his repetitive erotic, social, gastronomical performances. We would like to remind you, to conclude our compilation of music for Casanova’s life, Venetian soprano Maddalena Allegranti. She matters because Casanova, then much older than she was, met her and commented to her uncle how she was “a charming person, refined, lively, one that can make me feel bashful just by saying good day…” The two kept correspondence even in the final Dux years. She wants him in Dresden, where she will perform. Allegranti inspires us to end our list with a musician that was successful in those same years and was a protagonist of the Neapolitan school, though barely remembered today: Pasquale Anfossi. One of his operas, Viaggiatori felici (lit. ‘the merry travellers’), found success in London and brought to fame its primadonna, Margherita Allegranti. Is classical music was a museum, Anfossi, who at the time had to compete with Mozart, would probably be nothing more than a little painting ignored by most visitors in some forgotten hall dedicated to the Neapolitan 1700s. Sic transit gloria mundi…
