Abstract
Vincenzo Galilei is said to have sung Dante’s monologue of Count Ugolino in the monodic style with the aim of realizing the musical idea of the Camerata. His monody, however, neither survives nor appears to have been successful. This paper investigates the cause of this failure. I argue that it was problematic that the male sang a lamento, a form usually assigned to the female role in early Baroque music. Galilei, indeed, shows his interest in the “Querelle des femmes” of his time, and, moreover, takes a liberal stance on the issue of gender. I suggest that his attempt anticipates Monteverdi’s experiments with the representations of gender in dramatic music.
