Re Torrismondo

In the last few months of his confinement at Sant’Anna, Tasso was busy composing his Torrismondo, completing a tragedy which he had started in the early 1570s with the title Galealto re di Norvegia. Maintaining the setting in the far north of Europe (Tasso had carried out research using Olaf Magnus’s Historia) provided Tasso with creative freedom in a genre that was considered the most noble, and subject to the norms set out in Aristotle’s Poetics. In preparation for his work, he requested and carefully read the classical precedents by Sophocles and Euripides, and created a plot based on the noble friendship between Torrismondo and Germondo, and their love for Alvida. Torrismondo first breaks the pact with his friend, then discovers that Alvida is his sister. Thus Tasso adds the Sophoclean element of incest to the tragedy of love and friendship. The suicide of both Alvida and Torrismondo is the inevitable outcome for characters overcome with pain and anguish, first burdened by guilt, then punished by a destiny devoid of explanation or redemption. Mourning the death of the protagonists, the final chorus utters the lament (Ahi lacrime, ahi dolore) with which Tasso conveys weariness and suffering. The work was completed at the end of 1586, and printed the following year at Mantua, with a dedication to Vincenzo Gonzaga.