Notes for the zarzuela edition Los cielos premian desdenes by Marcos de Lanuza, Count of Clavijo, and anonymous composer

Abstract

Marcos de Lanuza, Count of Clavijo, is one of the least known playwrights and, nevertheless, with great effort worked for the artistic excellence of the musical theatre of his time. From its three known zarzuelas, and still unpublished, we have chosen Júpiter y Ío. Los cielos premian desdenes for being the most suggestive in terms of the relationship between dramatic poetry and music. He wrote it by order of Carlos II for the Shrovetide of 1699, and wanted to take Ovid's Metamorphoses (I) as a pretext for the plot, but adapting the love of the gods to a moralizing outcome that is included in the subtitle and that, at the same time, reveals the homage to the zarzuela Los celos hacen estrellas that Vélez de Guevara represented in the palace in 1672. The score is kept manuscript and anonymous, although we dare to shuffle the names of Sebastián Durón, Juan de Navas and Antonio Literes as possible composers. Musically, it contains the elements characteristic of the human baroque tone, together with the stylistic novelties imported from Italy, which make up a discourse ruled by fragments with four voices alternated with others alone (couplets and recitations), and with accompaniment of violins, violas, flutes and bugles, and the relevant continuous bass. The objective of this short article is to make known this zarzuela and lay the foundations for its critical edition for Digital CSIC, the institutional repository of the CSIC.