ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several representative works in which a soprano portraying the Virgin Mary interprets her maternal role through dramatic performance. Just as artists painted vivid depictions of the Madonna and Child and Mary at the Cross, composers evoked the same scenes through music. The comfort in repetition is clearly what helps the baby to fall asleep; in a Latin lullaby, a Latin nenia, Marco Antonio Centorio gave Mary a recurring refrain to lull the child into slumber. Through vocal performance of first-person narratives the Blessed Virgin Mary could come to life, whether characterized as Maria lactans or as Mater dolorosa, the older mother who embodies sadness or indignation. Seventeenth-century Italy offered up a particularly striking group of works that portray the events of Christ’s birth and crucifixion through the voice of Mary herself: lullabies around Christmastime sung by the young nursing mother, and Easter sung by the weeping mother mourning the death of her son on the cross.
