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1 results

  • 4 - Il bacio mordace: Of Kissing and Biting

  • Roseen Giles, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book:
    Monteverdi and the Marvellous
    Published online:
    10 October 2023
    Print publication:
    28 September 2023, pp 134-163

  • Summary

    The bacio mordace, or the biting kiss, was one of the most erotic and consequently very popular poetic tropes of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, particularly through the poetry of Battista Guarini (1538–1612) and Giambattista Marino (1569–1625). In his later books of madrigals, particularly the Seventh Book of 1619, Monteverdi was drawn to madrigals with such provocative imagery, although in a more overt way compared to his earlier kiss madrigals of the Second Book of 1590. In his later kiss madrigals, Monteverdi sought to give a musical dimension not so much to a cerebral obsession with kisses, but rather in the execution of them. The concertato medium proved ideal to render musical poets’ syntactical play on who is kissing whom, and the degree to which teeth were involved.