(It.: ‘tale [presented] in music’).
A term used to describe early 17th-century operas and (as ‘favola per musica’, i.e. ‘for music’) librettos. The Latin ‘fabula’ appears in titles of pastoral-mythological entertainments in the 15th century sometimes known as ‘hybrid dramas’ (‘drammi mescidati’), for example Poliziano’s La fabula d’Orpheo (1480). The classicizing label doubtless lent respectability to a genre lacking the solid precedents of classical tragedy and comedy. In the 16th century the Italian equivalent, alone or with a qualifier (‘pastorale’, ‘boschereccia’, ‘marittima’ etc.), is used for plays in the pastoral tradition, again filling a generic vacuum (but Guarini opted for the more loaded ‘tragicommedia’). Marco da Gagliano, in the preface to his Dafne (1608), described the first opera librettos as ‘favole’, placing them squarely in the context of the pastoral, although Alessandro Striggio was the first librettist to use the title in print with La favola d’Orfeo (1607). Monteverdi followed suit, coining ‘favola in musica’ for the title-page of the score of Orfeo (published 1609). The term continued to be applied to librettos in the first half of the century and beyond – La catena d’Adone (D. Mazzocchi, 1626) is a ‘favola boschereccia’, and Ormindo (Cavalli, 1644) a ‘favola regia’ – although it fell out of use as operas lost their pastoral-mythological aura.
N. Pirrotta and E. Povoledo: Li due Orfei: da Poliziano a Monteverdi (Turin, 1969, enlarged 2/1975; Eng. trans, 1982, as Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi)
S. Reiner: ‘La vag’Angioletta (and others), i’, AnMc, no.14 (1974), 26–88
H.W. Kaufmann: ‘Music for a favola pastorale (1554)’, A Musical Offering: Essays in Honor of Martin Bernstein, ed. E.H. Clinkscale and C. Brook (New York, 1977), 163–82
TIM CARTER