„Gli aversari de la vera fede”. Un’ipotesi sul Terzo libro dei madrigali a cinque voci di Marc’Antonio Ingegneri

A hypothesis about Marc’Antonio Ingegneri’s Terzo Libro de’ Madrigali a Cinque Voci (1580) is formulated, according to which the collection can be regarded as made up of two different layers, each with its own patronage context. While the first half of the book fits well the requests of its actual dedicatee, Antonio Londonio, the second half might have been intended for the Farnese court of Parma, with its starting piece, the political-religious madrigal Santa Chiesa di Dio, celebrating the victories gained in the Flanders by the Duke’s son Alessandro over the Protestants; it seems instead very unlikely that in 1580 Santa Chiesa could refer (as recently asserted) to the battle of Lepanto, won in 1571 by don Giovanni d’Austria (who had died in 1578), given the propitiatory character of its text. A role for Margherita Farnese is finally guessed in the Italian diffusion of Etienne de la Boétie’s sonnet J’ai senti les deux maux, set to music by Ingegneri in the style of a French chanson at the end of his Terzo Libro: the reading adopted by Ingegneri differs in fact from all printed versions of La Boétie’s text, but its identical to that which was to be set to music by Claude Le Jeune while the French composer was in the service of the Duke of Anjou.