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likely attempting to describe a lira da braccio, the Renaissance
instrument closely associated with Orpheus and with
recitations of poetry by humanists. This type of lira, a sevenstring
chordal instrument played with a bow, died out in the
early seventeenth century, and in 1688, when Steffani chose
to evoke its sound to depict Amphion’s lira, it was an attempt,
supported by the illusion of the music from the hidden viols,
to reconstruct the mythical sound of the antique lyre.
This scene of Amphion and the harmony of spheres was, in
the context of Niobe, an expression of the intellectual
ambition of Amphion, and it made a great impression on
Pietro Torri, a composer who arrived in Munich in 1687.
Later, in 1716,Torri presented Max Emanuel with the cantata
La Reggia dell’Armonia, in which Anfione’s solo aria with its
quartet of hidden viols is interpolated completely and without
modification. To make his cantata about Harmony, Torri
f e s t i va l o p e ra
added the character of Il Tempo (Father Time), and wrote a
dialogue between Anfione and Il Tempo. More than twenty
years after Niobe, Regina di Tebe, Torri was paying homage
to its timeless expression of the Harmony of the Spheres,
associating the fame of Amphion, the mythic musician of the
antiquity, with the art of Steffani, the influential composer of
the reign of Maximilian Emanuel. This new context, created
by extracting this extraordinary piece of music from its
original dramatic setting, was freed from the tragic ends of
Amphion and Niobe, bringing it back instead to its original
allegory of the eternal power of music. ■
—Gilbert Blin
BEMF Stage Director in Residence
143
2 0 1 1 b o s t o n e a r l y m u s i c f e s t i v a l
NIOBE, REGINA DI TEBE