Il ballo delle ingrate (1608)
Il ballo delle ingrate is a semi-dramatic ballet by Claudio Monteverdi, set to a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini, first given in Mantua on 4 June 1608 as part of the wedding festivities for Francesco Gonzaga and Margaret of Savoy. It belongs to the world of the Italian court spectacle rather than the later theatrical ballet tradition: sung mythological dialogue (Venus, Cupid and Pluto) frames a single choreographed episode in which the spirits of women who scorned love are brought up from the Underworld to serve as a warning.
What it contains
- Ballet de Cour (Court Ballet) · The entire work, as staged for the 1608 Mantuan wedding festivities — A sung mythological frame (Venus, Cupid, Pluto) built around a single choreographed processional episode, performed as a dynastic wedding entertainment with court nobles among the dancers. Source: "It was first performed in Mantua on Wednesday, 4 June 1608 as part of the wedding celebrations for Francesco Gonzaga (the son of Monteverdi's patron Duke Vincenzo of Mantua) and Margaret of Savoy."
- Pavane · The central danced episode: the entrance and exit of the ingrates — Couples dance 'two by two' with 'grave steps' - a slow, weighted, processional pattern for paired dancers, characteristic of the grave couple-dances of the period. Source: "the spirits of the "female ingrates" enter and dance "two by two...with grave steps" as Pluto sings a warning to the women in the audience."
What is danced
The article preserves only one described passage of movement: the entrance of the 'female ingrates,' who 'enter and dance "two by two...with grave steps"' while Pluto sings a warning to the women in the audience. This is a paired, processional dance of grave, dignified character rather than virtuosic display - consistent with the slow, weighted couple-dances used in early-seventeenth-century Italian court entertainments to signal solemnity or mourning. The dancers exit the same way they entered, 'return[ing] to the underworld,' with one ingrate breaking into a sung lament as the group withdraws.
Context
The work dates from 1608, the year after Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, and was created for the same Mantuan court and the same wedding season that also produced his opera L'Arianna and music for a prologue to Guarini's L'idropica. It sits in the tradition of the Italian court ballo/balletto - sung and danced allegorical entertainment for dynastic occasions - in which courtiers themselves took part in the dancing: the article notes that 'Both Vincenzo and Francesco Gonzaga took part in the dancing,' blurring the line between performer and noble patron typical of ballet de cour before the form migrated to purpose-built theatres and professional dancers.
Staging history
The piece was later revised, probably for a revival in Vienna, and published in this revised form in Monteverdi's Eighth Book of Madrigals in 1638; the musicologist Paolo Fabbri argues the revisions were made in haste for a performance marking the 1636 coronation of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, with the original Mantuan wedding references removed. The article gives no further staging history beyond the original 1608 performance and this proposed revival, and lists only modern audio recordings (1982-2017) rather than theatrical productions.
How to watch it
Watch for the shift from sung allegorical debate (Venus and Cupid pleading with Pluto) into the single danced set-piece: the paired, slow-stepped entrance and exit of the ingrates, framed by Pluto's warning and the closing lament. The dancing here is not decorative but argumentative - it exists to prove Pluto's warning to the audience, so its gravity and restraint are the point rather than any technical display.
Credits
- composer: Claudio Monteverdi