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| | Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music | Vol. 12 No. 1 | Reviewed by Beth L. Glixon: Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and ... |
 | | Ziani has chosen to set the first part of the text, with its rhetorical questions (which Noris could have drafted, instead, in recitative) in a homogenous fashion, rather than placing special emphasis on the words “revenge” and “inconstant.” Perhaps the 12/8 pastoral-like meter arose in Ziani’s mind as a reflection of the night-time garden setting. |
| | Ziani set the second part of the text to reflect Semiramide’s fury, which she must hold inside (enchained); thus, as in the first section of the aria, the furious music, which Heller rightly deems “more eloquent,” expresses the wider sentiment of that entire segment of the text rather than a more local one. |
| | In sum, while Heller finds that “Ziani was hard-pressed to find accepted techniques to portray a woman of her nature” (259), it may be that Ziani portrayed her nature extremely well, focusing on her conflicting desires that cancelled out the possibilities for truly lyrical expression, which was assigned instead to Iside. |
| sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu /v12/no1/glixon.html (4542 words) |
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