Aaron J. Rabushka asks:

>Is this the same Alessandro Striggio who wrote libretti for Monteverdi?
>If so it's interesting to know that he wrote music too!

I doubt it is the same person.  The composer Alessandro Striggio was born
circa 1535 and died in 1592.  Monteverdi was born in 1567 and died in 1643.
Monteverdi's did not write his first opera, Orfeo, until 1607, long after
Striggio had died.

Then there is the simple fact that Alessandro Striggio's style of
composition epitomized the sort of lavish complexity that opera was
precisely a reaction against.  It is recorded that Striggio once wrote
a 60 part work, now lost.  By comparison, early opera is based on monody,
where there is only ONE line!  The fathers of opera thought that the
terrible modern upstarts had started to create works of monstrously
excessive complexity.  They thought that words were sung to simple musical
accompaniment in Classical Greek drama, and wanted a return to Classical
purity.  Somehow I just can't imagine Alessandro Striggio being partisan
to that sort of movement.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
[log in to unmask]