The composer also wrote the libretto for the opera, which is set almost entirely in a cell in the monastery where Juana of Castille or Johanna the Mad (1479-1555) spent the remaining forty-six years of her life. The libretto is a mix of medieval French, Spanish and Latin but fortunately I had read the English translation so I wasn't totally lost. I was also familiar with the story of Johanna the Mad having seen this painting in Madrid’s Museo del Prado earlier this year. The painting by Francisco Pradilla Ortiz (1848-1921) is entitled Joanna the Mad accompanying the Coffin of Philip the Handsome to the Cartuja de Miraflores in Granada. Here Johanna does appear mad and obsessed.
Image via Wikipedia
It’s a tragic and bizarre love story based on historical accounts.
Johanna was the daughter of Isabella I of Aragon and Ferdinand II of Castille. These combined kingdoms later became Spain. Johanna was betrothed at 16 years of age to Phillip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy (in Flanders), the son of Maximillian I, Holy Roman Emperor. It was a marriage of royal alliance between the Trastámaras and the Hapsburgs.
Johanna was madly in love, even obsessed with Phillip, who was quite a looker and had many extramarital affairs. Understandably jealous, Johanna sulked and raged with fits of temper and depression which earned her the moniker “mad”. When her mother died in 1504, Johanna was crowned the Queen of Castille. However both her father and her husband bickered in a quest for possession of the throne declaring the new Queen mentally unstable. By 1506, Johanna’s father backed down leaving Phillip to reign but only for a few months. Phillip died suddenly in September 1506, possibly poisoned by his father in law.
Pregnant with their sixth child, Johanna was distraught. Although Phillip had already been buried, in December 1506, Johanna exhumed Phillip’s corpse and set off on a long funeral procession to Granada to bury him there with her mother. It is said that she opened the casket many times to kiss Phillip’s body and would not allow any other woman near the corpse. During January she paused the procession as she went into labour and refusing a midwife gave birth to a child on her own. A few months later she resumed the pilgrimage to Granada with the putrefied corpse, repeatedly opening the coffin to check on Phillip and kiss his feet.
Johanna’s lone reign as Queen of Castille was a disaster. The plague struck and eventually Johanna was forced to hand the crown over to her father in 1507. Ferdinand II had his daughter isolated and confined to a cell in a monastery in Castille, adjacent to her husband’s burial place. In defiance of her father, Johanna was said to eat off the floor, and remained unwashed, barely dressed and barefoot. Johanna's children were brought up in Flanders away from her cell.
After Ferdinand II’s death, Charles I, Johanna’s son took the throne and become King of Spain. Charles continued the incarceration of his mother in order to assure his domination and hence she lived in isolation with deteriorating mental health and no regard to her personal hygiene until she died aged 75.
Poor Johanna was betrayed and mistreated by her husband whom she misguidedly revered, her father and her son to the extent to turn anyone mad.
In the Opera, the composer Zuidam has three sopranos portraying Johanna at various points in her life. The effect is quite eerie particularly when the three cry over the coffin of Phillip. The whole opera has a macabre feel well suited to the morbid story of tragic love and mourning.
The fantastic backdrop had moving images reminiscent of inkblot psychology with left right symmetry. My perceptions were of creepy images of skulls and blood and of Phillip in death and as if trying to rise from the dead. Hopefully these perceptions were intended and I don't have some subconcious macabre psychological issues.
The Dr Anton Phillipzaal was packed with an enthusiastic audience who bravoed the powerful production, as morbid as it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment