AN EARLY CROAT TRANSLATION OF RINUCCINI'S »EURIDICE«

Some tirne ago Dragan Plamenac drew attention to the existence of an early l 7th-century translation into Croat of Ottavio Rinuccini's Euridice,1 the text which served as the libretto for the first preserved opera, set to music by both Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini. Plamenac did not discuss the translation at any length since he rightly observed that »every attempt to fit the Slavic text to the music that went with the Italian has failed of a practicable result.«2 Later the translation was briefly discussed by D. Pavlovic in his study of the origins of musical theatre in Dubrovnik3 and his observations have recently been brought to light again by J. Andreis in his Music in Croatia.4 Having satisfied himself that there was no way in which Primovic's Croat text could be fitted under the existing music of either Peri or Caccini, Plamenac presumably concluded, althought he nowhere says so explicitly, that Primovic simply translated the text of Ottavio Rinuccini's dramatic poem in the way in which a little later Ivan Gundulic, a person of much higher literary standing than Primovic, translated the same author's Arianna. Pavlovic mentions the specific musical stage directions which appear in Primovic's translation and these he sees as a sure indication that the translation was used in a performance with music. Andreas too mentions these stage directions, but both authors take them simply as examples of PrimoviC's avvareness of the role of music without tracing their origins. Apart from the obvious link with Rinuccini PrimoviC's translation thus remains unconnected with its true sources and because it is only a small episode in the cultural history of a small nation, its significance for the early history of opera is likely to remain unrecognized. The circumstances in which Rinuccini's Euridice was first set to music are too well known to be discussed here and therefore only a brief sum-