L'incoronazione di Poppea

Giovanni Francesco Busenello, librettist of L'incoronazione di Poppea

The main sources for the story told in Busenello's libretto are the Annals of Tacitus; book 6 of Suetonius's history The Twelve Caesars; books 61–62 of Dio Cassius's Roman History; and an anonymous play Octavia (once attributed to the real life Seneca), from which the opera's fictional nurse characters were derived.[9][10] The main story is based on real people and events.[11] According to the analyst Magnus Schneider, the character of Drusilla was taken from Girolamo Bargagli's 16th-century comedy The Pilgrim Woman.[12]

Busenello condensed historical events from a seven-year period (AD 58 to AD 65) into a single day's action, and imposed his own sequence. He was open about his intention to adapt history for his own purposes, writing in the preface to his libretto that "here we represent these actions differently."[13] Thus he gave his characters different attributes from those of their historical counterparts: Nerone's cruelty is downplayed; the wronged wife Ottavia is presented as a murderous plotter; Seneca, whose death in reality had nothing to do with Nerone's liaison with Poppea, appears as more noble and virtuous than he was;[14] Poppea's motives are represented as based on genuine love as much as on a lust for power;[15] the depiction of Lucano as a drunken carouser disguises the real life poet Lucan's status as a major Roman poet with marked anti-imperial and pro-republican tendencies.[16]

The libretto has survived in numerous forms—two printed versions, seven manuscript versions or fragments, and an anonymous scenario, or summary, related to the original production.[17] One of the printed editions relates to the opera's 1651 Naples revival; the other is Busenello's final version published in 1656 as part of a collection of his libretti. The manuscripts are all from the 17th century, though not all are specifically dated; some are "literary" versions unrelated to performances. The most significant of the manuscript copies is that discovered in Udine, Northern Italy, in 1997 by Monteverdi scholar Paolo Fabbri. This manuscript, according to music historian Ellen Rosand, "bristles with the immediacy of a performance", and is the only copy of the libretto that mentions Monteverdi by name. This, and other descriptive details missing from other copies, leads Rosand to speculate that the manuscript was copied during the course of a performance. This impression is reinforced, she says, by the inclusion of a paean of praise to the singer (Anna di Valerio according to Schneider)[18] who played the role of Poppea. Although its dating is uncertain, the manuscript's affinity with the original scenario has led to speculation that the Udine version may have been compiled from the first performance.[19]

Two versions of the musical score of L'incoronazione exist, both from the 1650s. The first was rediscovered in Venice in 1888, the second in Naples in 1930. The Naples score is linked to the revival of the opera in that city in 1651. Both scores contain essentially the same music, though each differs from the printed libretto and has unique additions and omissions. In each score the vocal lines are shown with basso continuo accompaniment; the instrumental sections are written in three parts in the Venice score, four parts in the Naples version, without in either case specifying the instruments. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a leading Monteverdi interpreter, refers to the contemporary practice of leaving much of a score open, to allow for differing local performance conditions. Another convention made it unnecessary to write down detail that performers would take for granted.[20] Neither Venice nor Naples score can be linked to the original performance; although the Venice version is generally regarded as the more authentic, modern productions tend to use material from both.[21]

Claudio Monteverdi

The question of authorship—essentially of how much of the music is Monteverdi's—is a contentious one, which Rosand acknowledges might never be entirely resolved. Virtually none of the contemporary documentation mentions Monteverdi, and music by other composers has been identified in the scores, including passages found in the score of Francesco Sacrati's opera La finta pazza. A particular style of metric notation used in some passages of the L'incoronazione scores suggests the work of younger composers.[22] The most debated areas of authorship are parts of the prologue, Ottone's music, the flirtation scene between Valetto and Damigella,[9] and the coronation scene including the final "Pur ti miro" duet.[22]

Modern scholarship inclines to the view that L'incoronazione was the result of collaboration between Monteverdi and others, with the old composer playing a guiding role. Composers who may have assisted include Sacrati, Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Cavalli.[23] Ringer suggests that Monteverdi's age and health may have prevented him from completing the opera without help from younger colleagues; he speculates about an arrangement resembling "the workshop of Rubens, who might design a painting and handle the important details himself but leave the more mundane aspects ... to younger apprentice artists."[21] The musicologist Alan Curtis believes that only a single collaborator was involved, and published his 1989 edition of L'incoronazione under the joint authorship of Monteverdi and Sacrati.[22] The American musical analyst Eric Chafe's study of Monteverdi's tonal language supports the collaboration theory and postulates that some of the sections in question, including the prologue, the coronation scene and the final duet, reflect Monteverdi's intentions and may have been written under his direct supervision.[22]

L'incoronazione di Poppea is frequently described as a story in which virtue is punished and greed rewarded,[24] running counter to the normal conventions of literary morality.[15] The musicologist Tim Carter calls the opera's characters and their actions "famously problematic", and its messages "at best ambiguous and at worst perverted",[25] while Rosand refers to an "extraordinary glorification of lust and ambition".[9] The critic Edward B. Savage asserts that despite the lack of a moral compass in virtually all the main characters, Busenello's plot is itself essentially moral, and that "this morality is sustained by the phenomenon of dramatic irony".[26] From their knowledge of Roman history, audiences in Venice would have recognised that the apparent triumph of love over virtue, celebrated by Nerone and Poppea in the closing duet, was in reality hollow, and that not long after this event Nerone kicked the pregnant Poppea to death. They would have known, too, that Nerone himself committed suicide a few years later, and that others—Ottavia, Lucano, Ottone—also met untimely deaths.[13]

Seventeenth-century Rome, under autocratic papal rule, was perceived by republican Venetians as a direct threat to their liberties. Rosand has suggested that Venetian audiences would have understood the Poppea story in the context of their own times as a moral lesson demonstrating the superiority of Venice, and that "such immorality was only possible in a decaying society, not [in] a civilized nation".[27] Rosand concludes that the opera's broad moral compass places it first in a long tradition of operatic works that embraces Mozart's Don Giovanni and Verdi's Don Carlos.[9] Music analyst Clifford Bartlett writes that "Monteverdi's glorious music goes beyond Busenello's cynical realism, and presents human behaviour in a better light".[15]

The goddesses of Fortune and Virtue dispute which of them has the most power over humankind. They are interrupted by the god of Love, who claims greater power than either: "I tell the virtues what to do, I govern the fortunes of men."[n 2] When they have heard his story, he says, they will admit his superior powers.

Poppea, represented in a 16th-century painting

Ottone arrives at Poppea's villa, intent on pursuing his love. Seeing the house guarded by the Emperor Nerone's soldiers he realises he has been supplanted, and his love song turns to a lament: "Ah, ah, perfidious Poppea!"[n 3] He leaves, and the waiting soldiers gossip about their master's amorous affairs, his neglect of matters of state and his treatment of the Empress Ottavia. Nerone and Poppea enter and exchange words of love before Nerone departs. Poppea is warned by her nurse, Arnalta, to be careful of the empress's wrath and to distrust Nerone's apparent love for her, but Poppea is confident: "I fear no setback at all."[n 4]

The scene switches to the palace, where Ottavia bemoans her lot; "Despised queen, wretched consort of the emperor!"[n 5] Her nurse suggests she take a lover of her own, advice which Ottavia angrily rejects. Seneca, Nerone's former tutor, addresses the empress with flattering words, and is mocked by Ottavia's page, Valleto, who threatens to set fire to the old man's beard. Left alone, Seneca receives a warning from the goddess Pallade that his life is in danger. Nerone enters and confides that he intends to displace Ottavia and marry Poppea. Seneca demurs; such a move would be divisive and unpopular. "I care nothing for the senate and the people,"[n 6] replies Nerone, and when the sage persists he is furiously dismissed. Poppea joins Nerone, and tells him that Seneca claims to be the power behind the imperial throne. This so angers Nerone that he instructs his guards to order Seneca to commit suicide.

After Nerone leaves, Ottone steps forward and after failing to persuade Poppea to reinstate him in her affections, privately resolves to kill her. He is then comforted by a noblewoman, Drusilla; realising that he can never regain Poppea he offers to marry Drusilla, who joyfully accepts him. But Ottone admits to himself: "Drusilla is on my lips, Poppea is in my heart."[n 7]

The Death of Seneca (Luca Giordano, 1684)

In his garden, Seneca learns from the god Mercurio that he is soon to die. The order duly arrives from Nerone, and Seneca instructs his friends to prepare a suicide bath. His followers try to persuade him to remain alive, but he rejects their pleading. "The warm current of my guiltless blood shall carpet with royal purple my road to death."[n 8] At the palace Ottavia's page flirts with a lady-in-waiting, while Nerone and the poet Lucano celebrate the death of Seneca in a drunken, cavorting song contest, and compose love songs in honour of Poppea. Elsewhere in the palace, Ottone, in a long soliloquy, ponders how he could have thought to kill Poppea with whom he remains hopelessly in love. He is interrupted by a summons from Ottavia, who to his dismay orders him to kill Poppea. Threatening to denounce him to Nerone unless he complies, she suggests that he disguise himself as a woman to commit the deed. Ottone agrees to do as she bids, privately calling on the gods to relieve him of his life. He then persuades Drusilla to lend him her clothes.

In the garden of Poppea's villa, Arnalta sings her mistress to sleep while the god of Love looks on. Ottone, now disguised as Drusilla, enters the garden and raises his sword to kill Poppea. Before he can do so, Love strikes the sword from his hand, and he runs away. His fleeing figure is seen by Arnalta and the now awakened Poppea, who believe that he is Drusilla. They call on their servants to give chase, while Love sings triumphantly "I protected her!"[n 9]

Drusilla muses on the life of happiness before her, when Arnalta arrives with a lictor. Arnalta accuses Drusilla of being Poppea's assailant, and she is arrested. As Nerone enters, Arnalta denounces Drusilla, who protests her innocence. Threatened with torture unless she names her accomplices, Drusilla decides to protect Ottone by confessing her own guilt. Nerone commands her to suffer a painful death, at which point Ottone rushes in and reveals the truth: that he had acted alone, at the command of the Empress Ottavia, and that Drusilla was innocent of complicity. Nerone is impressed by Drusilla's fortitude, and in an act of clemency spares Ottone's life, ordering him banished. Drusilla chooses exile with him. Nerone now feels entitled to act against Ottavia and she is exiled, too. This leaves the way open for him to marry Poppea, who is overjoyed: "No delay, no obstacle can come between us now."[n 10]

Ottavia bids a quiet farewell to Rome, while in the throne room of the palace the coronation ceremony for Poppea is prepared. The Consuls and Tribunes enter, and after a brief eulogy place the crown on Poppea's head. Watching over the proceedings is the god of Love with his mother, Venere, and a divine chorus. Nerone and Poppea sing a rapturous love duet ("I gaze at you, I possess you"[n 11]) as the opera ends.

Floor plan of the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo (1654)

L'incoronazione di Poppea was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, as part of the 1642–43 carnival season.[33] The theatre, opened in 1639,[34] had earlier staged the première of Monteverdi's opera Le Nozze d'Enea in Lavinia, and a revival of the composer's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria.[34][35] The theatre was later described by an observer: "... marvellous scene changes, majestic and grand appearances [of the performers] ... and a magnificent flying machine; you see, as if commonplace, glorious heavens, deities, seas, royal palaces, woods, forests ...".[36] The theatre held about 900 people, and the stage was much bigger than the auditorium.[36]

The date of the first performance of L'incoronazione and the number of times the work was performed are unknown; the only date recorded is that of the beginning of the carnival, 26 December 1642.[37] A surviving scenario, or synopsis, prepared for the first performances, gives neither the date nor the composer's name. The identity of only one of the première cast is known for certain: Anna Renzi, who played Ottavia. Renzi, in her early twenties, is described by Ringer as "opera's first prima donna"[38] and was, according to a contemporary source, "as skillful in acting as she [was] excellent in music".[39] On the basis of the casting of the opera which shared the theatre with L'incoronazione during the 1642–43 season, it is possible that Poppea was played by Anna di Valerio, and Nerone by the castrato Stefano Costa.[9] There are no surviving accounts of the opera's public reception, unless the encomium to the singer playing Poppea, part of the libretto documentation discovered at Udine in 1997, relates to the first performance.[19]

There is only one documented early revival of L'incoronazione, in Naples in 1651. The fact that it was revived at all is noted by Carter as "remarkable, in an age where memories were short and large-scale musical works often had limited currency beyond their immediate circumstance."[40] Thereafter there are no records of the work's performance for more than 250 years.[37]

After two centuries in which Monteverdi had been largely forgotten as a composer of opera, interest in his theatrical works revived in the late 19th century. A shortened version of Orfeo was performed in Berlin in 1881; a few years later the Venice score of L'incoronazione was rediscovered, leading to a surge of scholarly attention.[41] In 1905, in Paris, the French composer Vincent d'Indy directed a concert performance of L'incoronazione, limited to "the most beautiful and interesting parts of the work." D'Indy's edition was published in 1908, and his version was staged at the Théâtre des Arts, Paris, on 5 February 1913, the first recorded theatrical performance of the work since 1651.[37][42] The work was not received uncritically; the dramatist Romain Rolland, who had assisted d'Indy, wrote that Monteverdi had "sacrifice[d] freedom and musical beauty to beauty of line. Here we no longer have the impalpable texture of musical poetry that we admire in Orfeo."[43]

Nerone pondering his misdeeds (Detail of 1878 painting by J. W. Waterhouse)

In April 1926 the German-born composer Werner Josten directed the opera's first American performance, at Smith College, Massachusetts where he was professor of music. His production was based on d'Indy's edition.[44] The following year, on 27 October, L'incoronazione received its British première, with a performance at Oxford Town Hall by members of the Oxford University Opera Club using a score edited by Jack Westrup.[45] In the 1930s several editions of the opera were prepared by leading contemporary musicians, including Gustav Mahler's son-in-law Ernst Krenek, Hans Redlich, Carl Orff (who left his version incomplete), and Gian Francesco Malipiero.[9] Malipiero's edition was used to stage performances in Paris (1937) and Venice (1949).[37] The Redlich edition was performed at Morley College, London on May 21, 1948, under the direction of Michael Tippett.[46][47]

Richard Strauss made reference to L'incoronazione in the Act III music lesson scene of his 1935 opera, Die schweigsame Frau, completely recomposing the Act 2, Scene 5 duet "Sento un certo non so che" in his own florid and late-Romantic idiom as one of many uses of preexisting musical material to set an appreciably antique atmosphere by the standards of the time. In that scene, the duet is used as an excuse for the title role to flirt with her husband, in disguise as a singing teacher.

Until the 1960s performances of L'incoronazione were relatively rare in commercial opera theatres, but they became increasingly frequent in the decade that saw the quatercentenary of Monteverdi's birth. The 1962 Glyndebourne Festival anticipated the quatercentenary with a lavish production using a new edition by Raymond Leppard. This version, controversially, was adapted for a large orchestra, and though it was enthusiastically received it has subsequently been described by Carter as a "travesty", and its continuing use in some modern productions as indefensible.[48] A version by Erich Kraack was conducted by Herbert von Karajan at the Vienna State Opera in 1963; the following decades saw performances at Lincoln Center in New York, Turin, Venice and a revival of the Leppard version at Glyndebourne.[37] The Venice performance at La Fenice on 5 December 1980 was based on Alan Curtis's new edition, described by Rosand as "the first to attempt a scholarly collation and rationalization of the sources".[9] The Curtis edition was used by Santa Fe Opera in August 1986, in a production which according to The New York Times "gave music precedence over musicology", resulting in a performance that was "rich and stunningly beautiful".[24]

The 350th anniversary of Monteverdi's death, celebrated in 1993, brought a further wave of interest in his works, and since that time performances of L'incoronazione have been given in opera houses and music festivals all over the world. In April 1994 the Juilliard School in New York presented a version based on Curtis's edition, with an orchestra that mixed baroque and modern elements. Allan Kozinn wrote in The New York Times that this production had done well to resolve daunting problems arising from Monteverdi's having left instrumentation and scoring details open, and from the numerous competing versions of the score.[49] In 2000 the work was chosen by Opéra de Montréal as the company's first venture into baroque opera, with a performance directed by Renaud Doucet. Opera Canada reported that Doucet had found "a perfect rhetoric for a modern crowd, creating an atmosphere of moral ambivalence that the courtiers of Monteverdi's day would have taken for granted."[50] Less successful, in the critics' eyes, was the innovative English National Opera (ENO) production directed by Chen Shi-Zheng in October 2007. According to The London Evening Standard critic Fiona Maddocks the cast was strong, but they all seemed to be playing in the wrong roles.[51] For unexplained reasons much of the action took place underwater; at one point "a snorkeller flip-flops across the stage in a harness." Seneca "wore green Wellington boots and pushed a lawnmower".[51] At the end of 2007, in his opera review of the year in The Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen compared ENO's production unfavourably with a punk musical version of the opera that had been staged during that year's Edinburgh Festival.[52]

In May 2008 L'incoronazione returned to Glyndebourne in a new production by Robert Carsen, with Leppard's large-scale orchestration replaced by the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Emmanuelle Haïm. The Organ's reviewer praised the vocal quality of the performers, found Haim's handling of the orchestra "a joy throughout" and declared the whole production "a blessed relief" after the previous year's ENO staging.[53] On 19 August the Glyndebourne singers and the orchestra, led by Haim, presented a semi-staged version of the opera at the 2008 BBC Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall.[54] Elsewhere the French-based ensemble Les Arts Florissants, under its director William Christie, presented the Monteverdi trilogy of operas (L'Orfeo, Il ritorno d'Ulisse and L'incoronazione) in the period 2008–10, with a series of performances at the Teatro Real in Madrid.[55]

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• Neef, Sigrid, ed. (2000). Opera: Composers, Works, Performers (English ed.). Cologne: Könemann. ISBN 3-8290-3571-3.
• Ringer, Mark (2006). Opera's First Master: The Musical Dramas of Claudio Monteverdi. Newark N.J.: Amadeus Press. ISBN 1-57467-110-3.
• Robinson, Michael F. (1972). Opera before Mozart. London: Hutchinson & Co. ISBN 0-09-080421-X.
• Rosand, Ellen (1991). Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: the Creation of a Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-25426-0. Retrieved 13 November 2009.
• Rosand, Ellen (2007). Monteverdi's Last Operas: a Venetian trilogy. Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24934-9.
• Schneider, Magnus Tessing (November 2012). "Seeing the Empress Again: On Doubling in L'incoronazione di Poppea". Cambridge Opera Journal. 24 (3): 249–291. doi:10.1017/S0954586712000286. S2CID 191464972. (subscription required)
• Whenham, John (2004). "Perspectives on the Chronology of the First Decade of Public Opera at Venice". Il Saggiatore musicale. 11: 253–302.
• Ziosi, Roberta (1997). "I libretti di Ascanio Pio di Savoia: Un esempio di teatro musicale a Ferrara nella prima metà del seicento". In Paolo Fabbri (ed.). Musica in torneo nell'Italia del seicento. Lucca: Libreria musicale italiana. ISBN 88-7096-194-X.