Resumen de Nas origens do melodrama: a Tragédia neolatina em Portugal
Maria Margarida Lopes de Miranda
Modern opera was born in Italy in the early 17th century, as is well known, as an attempt at the reconstitution of ancient Greek drama. Although priority is claimed by Camerata Fiorentina as a pathbreaker for the drama per musica, we cannot ignore some relevant landmarks arising precisely from the tight cooperation of humanist playwrights and musicians throughout the 16th century. Portugal has also witnessed attempts at uniting music and theatre inspired by the classics long before the 17th century.
In Coimbra (1559-1562), the collaboration between the humanist Miguel Venegas and the musician Francisco de Santa Maria (famous for his skills as a composer of choros pera tragédias) gave rise to a new musical genre, described, at the time, as mos tragicus. The final product was a sort of polyphonic declamation, subordinated to the word and meant to increase its expressive value, thus recovering the unity of ancient prosody. Although we do not know all the musical scores by Francisco de Santa Maria, these are the oldest known exemples of music written for humanistic theatre.
