Audio Anthology of Italian Literature Recording #5 The Epic Poems of the Renaissance Ludovico Ariosto: from "Orlando Furioso" (Selected chapters) Torquato Tasso: from "Gerusalemme Liberata" (Selected chapters) Read by Moro Silo Running time: 50 min. Cassette $19.95 CD $29.95
Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) is the poet who best expresses the ideals of the Renaissance; his poetic and human vision is characterized by a desire for Man's complete harmony with himself and the world, by a faith in human reason and dignity and by a full involvement in worldly things. Ariosto's major work, "Orlando Furioso", recounts in verse different and fanstastic adventures of Medieval knights and their lady loves, but the traditional chivalric style is just a pretext for an imaginative pageant of duels and battles, incredible journeys, monsters and sorcerers, enchanted castles, friendship and love, betrayal and deceit, narrated at an unflagging pace in a dazzling style that transports the reader to that half-world between dream and reality.
Torquato Tasso's (1544-1595) works are the most representative of the post-Tridentine period with its realization of Man's ephemerality after the Renaissance belief in his strength. In his major work, "Gerusalemme liberata", the feudal, courtly world is described through the fantastically dramatic adventures of the characters, and love is treated as the temptation of a purely earthly happiness in conflict with religious spirituality.
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO From "Orlando Furioso": Proemio (1'57'') Astolfo sulla luna (8' 08'') La pazzia di Orlando (18'17'')
TORQUATO TASSO from " Gerusalemme Liberata": Dedica (2'43'') Erminia fra i pastori (9'35'') La morte di Clorinda (9'01'')
