L'incoronazione di Poppea
Encyclopedia
L'incoronazione di Poppea (SV
308, The Coronation of Poppea) is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice
during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi
, is a setting of a libretto
by Giovanni Francesco Busenello
. One of the first operas to use historical events and people rather than classical mythology, it adapts incidents from the writings of Tacitus
, Suetonius
and others to recount how Poppea, mistress of the Roman emperor
Nerone (Nero
), is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples
in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times.
The original manuscript of the score does not exist; two surviving copies from the 1650s show significant divergences from each other, and each differs to some extent from the libretto. How much of the music is actually Monteverdi's, and how much the product of others, is a matter of dispute. None of the existing versions of the libretto, printed or manuscript, can be definitively tied to the first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo
, the precise date of which is unknown. Details of the original cast are few, and largely speculative, and there is no record of the opera's initial public reception. Despite these uncertainties, the work is generally accepted as part of the Monteverdi operatic canon, his last and perhaps his greatest work.
In a departure from traditional literary morality, it is the adulterous liaison of Poppea and Nerone which triumphs, although this victory is demonstrated by history to have been transitory and hollow. Moreover, in Busenello's version of the story all the major characters are morally compromised. Written when the genre of opera was only a few decades old, the music for L'incoronazione di Poppea has been praised for its originality, its melody, and for its reflection of the human attributes of its characters. The work helped to redefine the boundaries of theatrical music, and established Monteverdi as the leading musical dramatist of his time.
Opera as a dramatic genre originated around the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, although the word itself was not in use before 1650. Precursors of musical drama included pastoral plays with songs and choruses, and the madrigal
comedies of the late 16th century. Monteverdi had established himself as a leading composer of madrigals before writing his first full-length operas in the years 1606–08, while he was in the service of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua
.
These works, L'Orfeo and L'Arianna
, deal respectively with the Greek myths of Orpheus
and Ariadne
. After a disagreement in 1612 with Vincenzo's successor, Duke Francesco Gonzaga, Monteverdi moved to Venice to take up the position of director of music at St Mark's Basilica
, where he remained until his death in 1643.
Amid his official duties at Venice, Monteverdi maintained an interest in theatrical music and produced several stage works, including the substantial Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
("The Battle of Tancred and Clorinda") for the 1624–25 carnival. When the first public opera house in the world opened in Venice in 1637, Monteverdi, by then in his 70th year, returned to full-scale opera. He may have been influenced by the solicitations of Giacomo Badoaro
, an aristocratic poet and intellectual who sent the elderly composer the libretto for Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
("The Return of Ulysses"). For the 1639–40 carnival season, Monteverdi revived L'Arianna at the Teatro San Moisè
and later produced his setting of Il ritorno at the Teatro San Cassiano
. For the following season he wrote Le nozze d'Enea in Lavinia ("The Marriage of Aeneas to Lavinia"), now lost, which was performed at the third of Venice's new opera theatres, Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paulo.
Another wealthy poet-librettist in the Venice milieu was Giovanni Francesco Busenello (1598–1659), like Badoaro a member of the intellectual society Accademia degli Incogniti
. This group of free-thinking intellectuals had significant influence on the cultural and political life of Venice in the mid-17th century, and was particularly active in the promotion of musical theatre. Busenello had worked with Monteverdi's younger contemporary Francesco Cavalli
, providing the libretto for Didone
(1641), and according to theatre historian Mark Ringer
was "among the greatest librettists in the history of opera". It is unclear how and when Busenello met Monteverdi, though both had served in the Gonzaga court. Ringer speculates that they drew joint inspiration from their experiences of the Gonzaga style of rule, "a mixture of artistic cultivation and brutality", and thus developed a shared artistic vision.
; 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. The claim that L'incoronazione is the first opera on an historical rather than a mythical theme is compromised by the appearances of the Roman gods
, who initiate the action and intervene or comment at later points; but the story is based on real people, and refers to actual events.
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." 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 corrupt, pompous and silly rather than noble and virtuous; Poppea's motives are represented as based on genuine love as much as on a lust for power; 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.
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. 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 unnamed singer 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.
, 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. 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.
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 recently discovered score of Francesco Sacrati
's opera La finta pazza ("The pretend madwoman"). A particular style of metric notation used in some passages of the L'incoronazione scores suggests the work of younger composers. The most debated areas of authorship are parts of the prologue, Ottone's music, the flirtation scene between Valetto and Damigella, and the coronation scene including the final "Pur ti miro" duet.
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
. 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." Musicologist Alan Curtis
believes the collaboration involved only a single collaborator, and published his 1989 edition of L'incoronazione under the joint authorship of Monteverdi and Sacrati. 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.
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". 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
. Music analyst Clifford Bartlett writes that "Monteverdi's glorious music goes beyond Busenello's cynical realism, and presents human behaviour in a better light".
s, one mezzo-soprano
, two contralto
s, two or three tenor
s and two or three basses
.
The scene switches to the palace, where Ottavia bemoans her lot; "Despised queen, wretched consort of the emperor!" 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," replies Nero, 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 Nero 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."
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!"
. 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."
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") as the opera ends.
. 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...". The theatre held about 900 people, and the stage was much bigger than the auditorium.
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. 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" and was, according to a contemporary source, "as skillful in acting as she [was] excellent in music". 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. 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.
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." Thereafter there are no records of the work's performance for more than 250 years.
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. 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."
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. 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
. 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
. Malipiero's edition was used to stage performances in Paris (1937) and Venice (1949). The Redlich edition was performed at Morley College
, London in 1948, under the direction of Michael Tippett
.
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. 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. 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". 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".
in New York presented a version based on Curtis's edition, with an orchestra that mixed baroque and modern elements. The New York Times's Allen Kozinn wrote 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. 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." 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. 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 boot
s and pushed a lawnmower". At the end of 2007, in his opera review of the year, The Daily Telegraph
's 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
.
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. 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
. Elsewhere the French-based ensemble Les Arts Florissants
, under its director William Christie
, is presenting 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
.
, arioso
, arietta, ensemble
, recitative
—although Ringer comments that in this work the boundaries between these forms are more than usually porous. These elements are woven into a continuous fabric which ensures that the music always serves the drama, while maintaining a tonal and formal unity throughout. The characters have strong emotions, fears and desires which are reflected in their music. Thus Poppea's and Nerone's scenes are generally lyrical, sung mainly in the forms of arioso and aria, while Ottavia sings only in dramatic recitative. Seneca's music is bold and compelling, while Ottone's is hesitant and limited in range, "entirely inappropriate for anyone aspiring to be a man of action" according to Carter. Within this arrangement Monteverdi creates enough melodies to ensure that the opera is musically as well as dramatically memorable.
Monteverdi employs specific musical devices to signify moods and situations. For example, triple metre
signifies the language of love for Nerone and Ottone (unfulfilled in the latter case); forceful arpeggio
s are used to represent conflict; and the interlacing of texts, written as separate verses by Busenello, indicates sexual tension in the scenes with Nerone and Poppea, and escalates the discord between Nerone and Seneca. The technique of "concitato genere"—rapid semiquavers
sung on one note—is used to represent rage. Secret truths may be hinted at as, for example, when Seneca's friends plead with him to reconsider his suicide in a chromatic madrigal chorus which Monteverdi scholar Denis Arnold
finds reminiscent of Monteverdi's Mantuan days, carrying a tragic power rarely seen in 17th century opera. This is followed, however, by a cheerful diatonic
section by the same singers which, says Rosand, suggests a lack of real sympathy with Seneca's predicament. The descending tetrachord
ostinato
on which the final duet of the opera is built has been anticipated in the scene in which Nerone and Lucano celebrate Seneca's death, hinting at an ambivalence in the relationship between emperor and poet. According to Rosand: "in both cases it is surely the traditional association of that pattern with sexual love that is being evoked."
Arnold asserts that the music of L'incoronazione has greater variety than any other opera by Monteverdi, and that the purely solo music is intrinsically more interesting than that of Il ritorno. The musical peaks, according to commentators, include the final duet (despite its doubtful authorship), Ottavia's Act 1 lament, Seneca's farewell and the ensuing madrigal, and the drunken Nerone–Lucano singing competition, often performed with strong homoerotic overtones. Ringer describes this scene as arguably the most brilliant in the whole opera, with "florid, synchronous coloratura
by both men creating thrilling, virtuosic music that seems to compel the listener to share in their joy." Rosand finds Nerone's solo aria that closes the scene something of an anticlimax, after such stimulation.
Despite continuing debates about authorship, the work is almost always treated as Monteverdi's—although Rosand observes that some scholars attribute it to "Monteverdi" (in quotation marks). Ringer calls the opera "Monteverdi's last and arguably greatest work," a unified masterpiece of "unprecedented depth and individuality". Carter observes how Monteverdi's operas redefined the boundaries of theatrical music, and calls his contribution to 17th century Venetian opera "remarkable by any standard". Harnoncourt reflects thus: "What is difficult to understand... is the mental freshness with which the 74-year-old composer, two years before his death, was able to surpass his pupils in the most modern style and to set standards which were to apply to the music theatre of the succeeding centuries."
) passages. The boundaries between these elements are often indistinct; Denis Arnold, commenting on the musical continuity, writes that "with few exceptions it is impossible to extricate the arias and duets from the fabric of the opera."
conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
in a live stage performance, was issued in 1954. This LP version
, which won a Grand Prix du Disque
in 1954, is the only recording of the opera that predates the revival of the piece that began with the 1962 Glyndebourne Festival production. In 1963 Herbert von Karajan
and the Vienna Staatsoper
issued a version described by The Gramophone as "far from authentic", while the following year John Pritchard and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
recorded an abridged version using Leppard's Glyndebourne orchestration. Leppard conducted a Sadler's Wells production, which was broadcast by the BBC and recorded on 27 November 1971. This is the only recording of the opera in English.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
's 1974 version, the first recording without cuts, used period instruments in an effort to achieve a more authentic sound, although Denis Arnold has criticised Harnoncourt's "over-ornamentation" of the score, particularly his use of oboe and trumpet flourishes. Arnold showed more enthusiasm for Alan Curtis's 1980 recording, live from La Fenice
in Venice. Curtis uses a small band of strings, recorders and continuo, with a trumpets reserved for the final coronation scene. Subsequent recordings have tended to follow the path of authenticity, with versions from baroque specialists including Richard Hickox
and the City of London Baroque Sinfonia (1988), René Jacobs and Concerto Vocale (1990), and John Eliot Gardiner
with the English Baroque Soloists
.
In more recent years, videotape and DVD
versions have proliferated. The first was in 1979, a version directed by Harnoncourt with the Zurich Opera
and chorus. Leppard's second Glyndebourne production, that of 1984, was released in DVD form in 2004. Since then, productions directed by Jacobs, Christophe Rousset
and Marc Minkowski
have all been released on DVD, along with Emmanuelle Haïm
's 2008 Glyndebourne production in which the Festival finally rejects Leppard's big band version in favour of Haim's period instruments, to give an experience closer to that of the original audience.
Stattkus-Verzeichnis
The Stattkus-Verzeichnis is a catalogue of the musical compositions of the Italian Baroque composer Claudio Monteverdi. The catalogue was published in 1985 by Manfred H. Stattkus ; a second, new, revised and enlarged edition is due to appear in 2007. A free online version is already accessible....
308, The Coronation of Poppea) is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
, is a setting of a libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
by Giovanni Francesco Busenello
Giovanni Francesco Busenello
Giovanni Francesco Busenello was an Italian lawyer, librettist and poet of the 17th century.Born to a high-class family of Venice, it is thought that he studied at the University of Padua, where according to himself he was taught by Paolo Sarpi and Cesare Cremonino...
. One of the first operas to use historical events and people rather than classical mythology, it adapts incidents from the writings of Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
, Suetonius
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....
and others to recount how Poppea, mistress of the Roman emperor
Roman Emperor
The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor...
Nerone (Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
), is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times.
The original manuscript of the score does not exist; two surviving copies from the 1650s show significant divergences from each other, and each differs to some extent from the libretto. How much of the music is actually Monteverdi's, and how much the product of others, is a matter of dispute. None of the existing versions of the libretto, printed or manuscript, can be definitively tied to the first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo
Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo
The Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo was a theatre and opera house in Venice located on the Calle della Testa, and takes its name from the nearby Basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. Built by the Grimani family in 1638, in its heyday it was considered the most beautiful and comfortable theatre...
, the precise date of which is unknown. Details of the original cast are few, and largely speculative, and there is no record of the opera's initial public reception. Despite these uncertainties, the work is generally accepted as part of the Monteverdi operatic canon, his last and perhaps his greatest work.
In a departure from traditional literary morality, it is the adulterous liaison of Poppea and Nerone which triumphs, although this victory is demonstrated by history to have been transitory and hollow. Moreover, in Busenello's version of the story all the major characters are morally compromised. Written when the genre of opera was only a few decades old, the music for L'incoronazione di Poppea has been praised for its originality, its melody, and for its reflection of the human attributes of its characters. The work helped to redefine the boundaries of theatrical music, and established Monteverdi as the leading musical dramatist of his time.
Historical context
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
comedies of the late 16th century. Monteverdi had established himself as a leading composer of madrigals before writing his first full-length operas in the years 1606–08, while he was in the service of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...
.
These works, L'Orfeo and L'Arianna
L'Arianna
L'Arianna was the second opera written by Claudio Monteverdi, and one of the most influential and famous specimens of early Baroque opera. It was first performed in Mantua on 28 May 1608. The libretto is by Ottavio Rinuccini, who took the Classical story of Ariadne and Theseus from Ovid's Heroides...
, deal respectively with the Greek myths of Orpheus
Orpheus
Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...
and Ariadne
Ariadne
Ariadne , in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and his queen Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and was the bride of the god Dionysus.-Minos and Theseus:...
. After a disagreement in 1612 with Vincenzo's successor, Duke Francesco Gonzaga, Monteverdi moved to Venice to take up the position of director of music at St Mark's Basilica
St Mark's Basilica
The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, northern Italy. It is the most famous of the city's churches and one of the best known examples of Byzantine architecture...
, where he remained until his death in 1643.
Amid his official duties at Venice, Monteverdi maintained an interest in theatrical music and produced several stage works, including the substantial Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda is an operatic scena for three voices by Claudio Monteverdi, although many dispute how the piece should be classified. The piece has a libretto drawn from Torquato Tasso's La Gerusalemme Liberata , a Romance set against the backdrop of the First Crusade...
("The Battle of Tancred and Clorinda") for the 1624–25 carnival. When the first public opera house in the world opened in Venice in 1637, Monteverdi, by then in his 70th year, returned to full-scale opera. He may have been influenced by the solicitations of Giacomo Badoaro
Giacomo Badoaro
Giacomo Badoaro was a Venetian nobleman and amateur poet. He is most famous for writing the libretto for Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria . He also provided librettos for the operas Ulisse errante by Francesco Sacrati and Elena rapita da Teseo by Jacopo Melani...
, an aristocratic poet and intellectual who sent the elderly composer the libretto for Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is an opera in a prologue and five acts , set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639–1640 carnival season...
("The Return of Ulysses"). For the 1639–40 carnival season, Monteverdi revived L'Arianna at the Teatro San Moisè
Teatro San Moisè
The Teatro San Moisè was an opera house in Venice, active from 1640 to 1818. It was in a prominent location near the Palazzo Giustinian and the church of San Moisè at the entrance to the Grand Canal....
and later produced his setting of Il ritorno at the Teatro San Cassiano
Teatro San Cassiano
The Teatro San Cassiano or Teatro di San Cassiano in Venice was the first public opera house when it opened in 1637. The theatre takes its name from the neighbourhood where it was located, the parish of San Cassiano near the Rialto. It was a stone building owned by the Venetian Tron family...
. For the following season he wrote Le nozze d'Enea in Lavinia ("The Marriage of Aeneas to Lavinia"), now lost, which was performed at the third of Venice's new opera theatres, Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paulo.
Another wealthy poet-librettist in the Venice milieu was Giovanni Francesco Busenello (1598–1659), like Badoaro a member of the intellectual society Accademia degli Incogniti
Accademia degli Incogniti
The Accademia degli Incogniti was a learned society of freethinking intellectuals, mainly noblemen, that significantly influenced the cultural and political life of mid-17th century Venice...
. This group of free-thinking intellectuals had significant influence on the cultural and political life of Venice in the mid-17th century, and was particularly active in the promotion of musical theatre. Busenello had worked with Monteverdi's younger contemporary Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known by that of Cavalli, the name of his patron Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.-Life:Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy...
, providing the libretto for Didone
Didone (opera)
Didone is an opera by Francesco Cavalli, set to a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello . The opera was first performed at Venice's Teatro San Cassiano during 1641....
(1641), and according to theatre historian Mark Ringer
Mark Ringer
Mark Ringer American writer, theater and opera historian, director and actor. Ringer’s books include Electra and the Empty Urn: Metatheater and Role Playing in Sophocles, a critical analysis of theatrical self-awareness in the seven Sophoclean tragedies, Opera's First Master, which Alan Rich of...
was "among the greatest librettists in the history of opera". It is unclear how and when Busenello met Monteverdi, though both had served in the Gonzaga court. Ringer speculates that they drew joint inspiration from their experiences of the Gonzaga style of rule, "a mixture of artistic cultivation and brutality", and thus developed a shared artistic vision.
Libretto
The main sources for the story told in Busenello's libretto are the Annals of TacitusAnnals (Tacitus)
The Annals by Tacitus is a history of the reigns of the four Roman Emperors succeeding Caesar Augustus. The surviving parts of the Annals extensively cover most of the reigns of Tiberius and Nero. The title Annals was probably not given by Tacitus, but derives from the fact that he treated this...
; book 6 of Suetonius
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....
's history The Twelve Caesars; books 61–62 of Dio Cassius
Dio Cassius
Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus , known in English as Cassius Dio, Dio Cassius, or Dio was a Roman consul and a noted historian writing in Greek...
's Roman History; and an anonymous play Octavia (once attributed to the real life Seneca
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
), from which the opera's fictional nurse characters were derived. The claim that L'incoronazione is the first opera on an historical rather than a mythical theme is compromised by the appearances of the Roman gods
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans...
, who initiate the action and intervene or comment at later points; but the story is based on real people, and refers to actual events.
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." 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 corrupt, pompous and silly rather than noble and virtuous; Poppea's motives are represented as based on genuine love as much as on a lust for power; the depiction of Lucano as a drunken carouser disguises the real life poet Lucan
Lucan
Lucan is the common English name of the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus.Lucan may also refer to:-People:*Arthur Lucan , English actor*Sir Lucan the Butler, Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend...
's status as a major Roman poet with marked anti-imperial and pro-republican tendencies.
The libretto has survived in numerous forms—two printed versions, seven manuscript versions or fragments, and an anonymous scenario
Scenario
A scenario is a synoptical collage of an event or series of actions and events. In the Commedia dell'arte it was an outline of entrances, exits, and action describing the plot of a play that was literally pinned to the back of the scenery...
, or summary, related to the original production. 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
Udine
Udine is a city and comune in northeastern Italy, in the middle of Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic sea and the Alps , less than 40 km from the Slovenian border. Its population was 99,439 in 2009, and that of its urban area was 175,000.- History :Udine is the historical...
, Northern Italy, in 1997 by Monteverdi scholar Paolo Fabbri
Paolo Fabbri
Paolo Fabbri is an Italian musicologist and academic. In 1989 he was awarded the Dent Medal. He is best known for his extensive publications on the life and works of Gioachino Rossini, and for a biography of composer Claudio Monteverdi which was first published in the Italian language in Turin in...
. 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 unnamed singer 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.
Composition
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 HarnoncourtNikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt is an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement...
, 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. 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.
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 recently discovered score of Francesco Sacrati
Francesco Sacrati
Francesco Sacrati was an Italian composer of the Baroque era, who played an important role in the early history of opera. He wrote for the Teatro Novissimo in Venice as well as touring his operas throughout Italy...
's opera La finta pazza ("The pretend madwoman"). A particular style of metric notation used in some passages of the L'incoronazione scores suggests the work of younger composers. The most debated areas of authorship are parts of the prologue, Ottone's music, the flirtation scene between Valetto and Damigella, and the coronation scene including the final "Pur ti miro" duet.
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
Benedetto Ferrari
Benedetto Ferrari was an Italian composer, particularly of opera, librettist and theorbo player.Ferrari was born in Reggio nell'Emilia. He worked in Rome , Parma , and possibly in Modena at some time between 1623 and 1637. He created music and libretti in Venice and Bologna, 1637-44...
and Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known by that of Cavalli, the name of his patron Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.-Life:Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy...
. 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." Musicologist Alan Curtis
Alan Curtis (harpsichordist)
Alan Curtis is a noted American harpsichordist, musicologist, and conductor of baroque opera. After graduate studies at the University of Illinois , where he wrote his dissertation on the keyboard music of Sweelinck, he studied in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt, with whom he subsequently recorded...
believes the collaboration involved only a single collaborator, and published his 1989 edition of L'incoronazione under the joint authorship of Monteverdi and Sacrati. 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.
Morality
L'incoronazione di Poppea is frequently described as a story in which virtue is punished and greed rewarded, running counter to the normal conventions of literary morality. The musicologist Tim Carter calls the opera's characters and their actions "famously problematic", and its messages "at best ambiguous and at worst perverted", while Rosand refers to an "extraordinary glorification of lust and ambition". 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". 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.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". 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
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
and Verdi's Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
. Music analyst Clifford Bartlett writes that "Monteverdi's glorious music goes beyond Busenello's cynical realism, and presents human behaviour in a better light".
Roles
With 21 individual roles and assorted chorus groups, L'incoronazione requires a large cast. However, doubling up in the smaller roles and in the choruses allows a performance to be staged with no more than 15 singers: six sopranoSoprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
s, one mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
, two contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
s, two or three tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
s and two or three basses
Bass (voice type)
A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...
.
| Role | Voice type | Appearances | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fortuna Fortuna Fortuna can mean:*Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck -Geographical:*19 Fortuna, asteroid*Fortuna, California, town located on the north coast of California*Fortuna, United States Virgin Islands... , Goddess of Fortune |
soprano | Prologue | |
| Virtù, Goddess of Virtue | soprano | Prologue | |
| Amore, God of Love | soprano | Prologue Act 2 XIII and XIV |
The part may be allocated to a treble Boy soprano A boy soprano is a young male singer with an unchanged voice in the soprano range. Although a treble, or choirboy, may also be considered to be a boy soprano, the more colloquial term boy soprano is generally only used for boys who sing, perform, or record as soloists, and who may not necessarily... voice. |
| Ottone Otho Otho , was Roman Emperor for three months, from 15 January to 16 April 69. He was the second emperor of the Year of the four emperors.- Birth and lineage :... (Otho), a noble Roman, enamoured of Poppea |
mezzo-soprano | Act 1: I, II, XI, XII, XIII Act 2: VIII, IX, XI, XIV Act 3: IV |
Originally written as a castrato Castrato A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's... role. |
| Due soldati, Two soldiers, part of Nerone's bodyguard | tenor | Act 1: II | |
| Poppea Poppaea Sabina Poppaea Sabina and sometimes referred to as Poppaea Sabina the Younger to differentiate her from her mother of the same name, was a Roman Empress as the second wife of the Emperor Nero. Prior to this she was the wife of the future Emperor Otho... (Poppaea Augusta Sabina), a Roman lady, mistress to Nerone |
soprano | Act 1: III, IV, X, XI Act 2: XII, XIII, XIV Act 3: V, VIIIabcd |
|
| Nero Nero Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death.... ne (Nero), Emperor of Rome |
soprano | Act 1: III, IX, X Act 2: VI III, IV, V, VIIIabcd |
Originally written as a castrato role. |
| Arnalta, Poppea's nurse | contralto or tenor | Act 1: IV Act 2: XII, XIV Act 3: II, III, VII |
The role is frequently allocated to a male voice, for comedic effect. |
| Ottavia Claudia Octavia Claudia Octavia was an Empress of Rome. She was a great-niece of the Emperor Tiberius, paternal first cousin of the Emperor Caligula, daughter of the Emperor Claudius, and stepsister and first wife of the Emperor Nero... (Octavia), Empress, wife to Nerone |
soprano | Act 1: V, VI Act 2: IX Act 3: VI |
|
| Nutrice, Ottavia's nurse | contralto | Act 1: V Act 2: X |
As with Arnalta, often played by a male. |
| Seneca Seneca the Younger Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero... , Nerone's former tutor |
bass | Act 1: VI, VII, VIII, IX Act 2: I, II, III, IV |
|
| Valletto, a court page | soprano | Act 1: VI Act 2: V, X |
|
| Pallade Athena In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is... (Pallas Athene), a goddess |
soprano | Act 1: VIII | |
| Drusilla, A Roman lady | soprano | Act 1: XIII Act 2: X, XI Act 3: I, II, III, IV |
|
| Mercurio Mercury (mythology) Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces... (Mercury), the messenger of the gods |
tenor | Act 2: I | |
| Liberto, a freed slave, now captain of the Praetorian Guard Praetorian Guard The Praetorian Guard was a force of bodyguards used by Roman Emperors. The title was already used during the Roman Republic for the guards of Roman generals, at least since the rise to prominence of the Scipio family around 275 BC... |
tenor | Act 2: II | |
| Tre famigliari, three members of Seneca's household | contralto, tenor, bass | Act 2: III | |
| Coro di Virtù, chorus of the Virtues | parts not set to music | Act 2: IV | This scene does not appear in either of the surviving music scores. |
| Damigella, lady-in-waiting to Ottavia | soprano | Act 2: V | |
| Lucano (Lucan), a Roman poet | tenor | Act 2: VI | |
| Petronio Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:... (Petronius) and Tigenello, members of Nerone's court |
tenor and bass | Act 2: VI | Not in the scores; in Busenello's libretto some lines for Nerone and Lucano are reallocated to these two courtiers. |
| Littore Lictor The lictor was a member of a special class of Roman civil servant, with special tasks of attending and guarding magistrates of the Roman Republic and Empire who held imperium, the right and power to command; essentially, a bodyguard... , A lictor |
bass | Act 3: II, III, IV | |
| Venere Venus (mythology) Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths... (Venus), goddess of Love, mother of Amore |
soprano | Act 3: VIIIc | |
| Consoli e tribuni, Consuls and tribunes of the Roman empire | tenor and bass parts | Act 3: VIIIb | |
| Coro di Amori, chorus of Love-gods | contralto and soprano parts | Act 3: VIIIc |
Synopsis
The action takes place in Imperial Rome around AD 60, in and around Poppea's villa and in various locations within the imperial palace.Prologue
The goddesses of Fortune and Virtue dispute which of them has 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." When they have heard his story, he says, they will admit his superior powers.Act 1
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!" 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."The scene switches to the palace, where Ottavia bemoans her lot; "Despised queen, wretched consort of the emperor!" 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," replies Nero, 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 Nero 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."
Act 2
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." 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!"
Act 3
Drusilla muses on the life of happiness before her, when Arnalta arrives with a lictorLictor
The lictor was a member of a special class of Roman civil servant, with special tasks of attending and guarding magistrates of the Roman Republic and Empire who held imperium, the right and power to command; essentially, a bodyguard...
. 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."
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") as the opera ends.
Early performances
L'incoronazione di Poppea was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, as part of the 1642–43 carnival season. The theatre, opened in 1639, 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 patriaIl ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is an opera in a prologue and five acts , set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639–1640 carnival season...
. 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...". The theatre held about 900 people, and the stage was much bigger than the auditorium.
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. 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
Anna Renzi
Anna Renzi was a leading Italian opera singer of the mid-17th century, renowned for her acting ability as well as her voice. She has been described as the first prima donna. She sang in Rome and Venice, where she appeared in the role of Ottavia in the premiere of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di...
, who played Ottavia. Renzi, in her early twenties, is described by Ringer as "opera's first prima donna" and was, according to a contemporary source, "as skillful in acting as she [was] excellent in music". 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. 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.
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." Thereafter there are no records of the work's performance for more than 250 years.
Rediscovery
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. In 1905, in Paris, the French composer Vincent d'IndyVincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...
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
Théâtre Hébertot
Théâtre Hébertot is a theatre at 78, boulevard des Batignolles, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, France. The theatre, completed in 1838 and opening as the Théâtre des Batignolles, was later renamed Théâtre des Arts in 1907...
, Paris, on 5 February 1913, the first recorded theatrical performance of the work since 1651. The work was not received uncritically; the dramatist Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
, 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."
In April 1926 the German-born composer Werner Josten
Werner Josten
Werner Erich Josten was a German-born composer of contemporary classical music. He studied in Munich with Rudolf Siegel and in Geneva with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and emigrated to the United States in 1920 or 1921...
directed the opera's first American performance, at Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
, Massachusetts where he was professor of music. His production was based on d'Indy's edition. The following year, on 27 October, L'incoronazione received its British première, with a performance at Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
Town Hall by members of the Oxford University Opera Club using a score edited by Jack Westrup
Jack Westrup
Sir Jack Westrup was an English musicologist, writer, teacher and occasional composer.-Biography:Jack Allan Westrup was the second of the three sons of George Westrup, insurance clerk, of Dulwich, and his wife, Harriet Sophia née Allan. He was educated at Dulwich College, London 1917-22, and at...
. In the 1930s several editions of the opera were prepared by leading contemporary musicians, including Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
's son-in-law Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...
, Hans Redlich
Hans Redlich
Hans Ferdinand Redlich was an Austrian classical composer, conductor, musicologist and writer.-Redlich's Continental Years:...
, Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
(who left his version incomplete), and Gian Francesco Malipiero
Gian Francesco Malipiero
Gian Francesco Malipiero was an Italian composer, musicologist, music teacher and editor.-Early years:Born in Venice into an aristocratic family, the grandson of the opera composer Francesco Malipiero, Gian Francesco Malipiero was prevented by family troubles from pursuing his musical education in...
. Malipiero's edition was used to stage performances in Paris (1937) and Venice (1949). The Redlich edition was performed at Morley College
Morley College
Morley College is an adult education college in London, England. It was founded in the 1880s and has a student population of 10,806 adult students...
, London in 1948, under the direction of Michael Tippett
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...
.
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
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
anticipated the quatercentenary with a lavish production using a new edition by Raymond Leppard
Raymond Leppard
Raymond "Def" Leppard, CBE is a British conductor and harpsichordist.He was born in London and grew up in Bath, where he was educated at the City of Bath Boys' School, now known as the Beechen Cliff School...
. 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. A version by Erich Kraack was conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
at the Vienna State Opera
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera . In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian...
in 1963; the following decades saw performances at Lincoln Center in New York, Turin, Venice and a revival of the Leppard version at Glyndebourne. The Venice performance at La Fenice
La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
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". The Curtis edition was used by Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
in August 1986, in a production which according to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
"gave music precedence over musicology", resulting in a performance that was "rich and stunningly beautiful".
Recent revivals
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 SchoolJuilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
in New York presented a version based on Curtis's edition, with an orchestra that mixed baroque and modern elements. The New York Times's Allen Kozinn wrote 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. In 2000 the work was chosen by Opéra de Montréal
Opéra de Montréal
Opéra de Montréal is an opera company in Montreal. It performs at the Place des Arts theatre complex in downtown Montreal, in the borough of Ville-Marie. It was founded in 1980...
as the company's first venture into baroque opera, with a performance directed by Renaud Doucet. Opera Canada
Opera Canada
- Citations :-External links:****...
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." Less successful, in the critics' eyes, was the innovative English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
(ENO) production directed by Chen Shi-Zheng
Chen Shi-zheng
Chen Shi-Zheng 陳士爭 born in 1963 in Changsha, Hunan, China) is a New York-based theater director.Having earned a BA from the Hunan Art School in Traditional Opera, he received his MA from the Tisch School of Art at New York University...
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. 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 boot
Wellington boot
The Wellington boot, also known as rubber-boots, wellies, wellingtons, topboots, billy-boots, gumboots, gummies, barnboots, wellieboots, muckboots, sheepboots, shitkickers, or rainboots are a type of boot based upon leather Hessian boots...
s and pushed a lawnmower". At the end of 2007, in his opera review of the year, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
's Rupert Christiansen
Rupert Christiansen
Rupert Christiansen is an English writer, journalist and critic, grandson of Arthur Christiansen and son of Kay and Michael Christiansen . Born in London, he was educated at Millfield and King's College, Cambridge, where he took a double first in English...
compared ENO's production unfavourably with a punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
musical version of the opera that had been staged during that year's Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
.
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
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is a British period instrument orchestra. The OAE is a resident orchestra of the Southbank Centre, London, associate orchestra at Glyndebourne Festival Opera and has its headquarters at Kings Place...
under Emmanuelle Haïm
Emmanuelle Haïm
Emmanuelle Haïm is a French harpsichordist and conductor with a particular interest in early music and Baroque music....
. 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. 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
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
, at the Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
. Elsewhere the French-based ensemble Les Arts Florissants
Les Arts Florissants (ensemble)
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra...
, under its director William Christie
William Christie (musician)
William Lincoln Christie is an American-born French conductor and harpsichordist. He is noted as a specialist in baroque repertoire and as the founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants....
, is presenting 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
Teatro Real
The Teatro Real or simply El Real , is a major opera house located in Madrid, Spain.-History:...
in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
.
Music
Written early in the history of opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea broke new ground in matching music to stage action, and in its musical reproductions of the natural inflections of the human voice. Monteverdi uses all the means for vocal expression available to a composer of his time—ariaAria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
, arioso
Arioso
In classical music, arioso is a style of solo opera singing between recitative and aria. Literally, arioso means airy. The term arose in the 16th century along with the aforementioned styles and monody. It is commonly confused with recitativo accompagnato....
, arietta, ensemble
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
, recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
—although Ringer comments that in this work the boundaries between these forms are more than usually porous. These elements are woven into a continuous fabric which ensures that the music always serves the drama, while maintaining a tonal and formal unity throughout. The characters have strong emotions, fears and desires which are reflected in their music. Thus Poppea's and Nerone's scenes are generally lyrical, sung mainly in the forms of arioso and aria, while Ottavia sings only in dramatic recitative. Seneca's music is bold and compelling, while Ottone's is hesitant and limited in range, "entirely inappropriate for anyone aspiring to be a man of action" according to Carter. Within this arrangement Monteverdi creates enough melodies to ensure that the opera is musically as well as dramatically memorable.
Monteverdi employs specific musical devices to signify moods and situations. For example, triple metre
Triple metre
Triple metre is a musical metre characterized by a primary division of 3 beats to the bar, usually indicated by 3 or 9 in the upper figure of the time signature, with 3/4, 3/2, and 3/8 being the most common examples...
signifies the language of love for Nerone and Ottone (unfulfilled in the latter case); forceful arpeggio
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
s are used to represent conflict; and the interlacing of texts, written as separate verses by Busenello, indicates sexual tension in the scenes with Nerone and Poppea, and escalates the discord between Nerone and Seneca. The technique of "concitato genere"—rapid semiquavers
Sixteenth note
thumb|right|Figure 1. A sixteenth note with stem facing up, a sixteenth note with stem facing down, and a sixteenth rest.thumb|right|Figure 2. Four sixteenth notes beamed together....
sung on one note—is used to represent rage. Secret truths may be hinted at as, for example, when Seneca's friends plead with him to reconsider his suicide in a chromatic madrigal chorus which Monteverdi scholar Denis Arnold
Denis Arnold
Denis Midgley Arnold, CBE was a British musicologist. After being employed in the extramural department of The Queen's University, Belfast, he became a Lecturer in Music at the University of Hull, and from 1969 to 1975 was Professor of Music at The University of Nottingham...
finds reminiscent of Monteverdi's Mantuan days, carrying a tragic power rarely seen in 17th century opera. This is followed, however, by a cheerful diatonic
Diatonic scale
In music theory, a diatonic scale is a seven note, octave-repeating musical scale comprising five whole steps and two half steps for each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps...
section by the same singers which, says Rosand, suggests a lack of real sympathy with Seneca's predicament. The descending tetrachord
Descending tetrachord
In music theory, the descending tetrachord is a series of four notes from a scale, or tetrachord, arranged in order from highest to lowest, or descending order. For example --- , as created by the Andalusian cadence. The descending tetrachord may fill a perfect fourth or a chromatic...
ostinato
Ostinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...
on which the final duet of the opera is built has been anticipated in the scene in which Nerone and Lucano celebrate Seneca's death, hinting at an ambivalence in the relationship between emperor and poet. According to Rosand: "in both cases it is surely the traditional association of that pattern with sexual love that is being evoked."
Arnold asserts that the music of L'incoronazione has greater variety than any other opera by Monteverdi, and that the purely solo music is intrinsically more interesting than that of Il ritorno. The musical peaks, according to commentators, include the final duet (despite its doubtful authorship), Ottavia's Act 1 lament, Seneca's farewell and the ensuing madrigal, and the drunken Nerone–Lucano singing competition, often performed with strong homoerotic overtones. Ringer describes this scene as arguably the most brilliant in the whole opera, with "florid, synchronous coloratura
Coloratura
Coloratura has several meanings. The word is originally from Italian, literally meaning "coloring", and derives from the Latin word colorare . When used in English, the term specifically refers to elaborate melody, particularly in vocal music and especially in operatic singing of the 18th and...
by both men creating thrilling, virtuosic music that seems to compel the listener to share in their joy." Rosand finds Nerone's solo aria that closes the scene something of an anticlimax, after such stimulation.
Despite continuing debates about authorship, the work is almost always treated as Monteverdi's—although Rosand observes that some scholars attribute it to "Monteverdi" (in quotation marks). Ringer calls the opera "Monteverdi's last and arguably greatest work," a unified masterpiece of "unprecedented depth and individuality". Carter observes how Monteverdi's operas redefined the boundaries of theatrical music, and calls his contribution to 17th century Venetian opera "remarkable by any standard". Harnoncourt reflects thus: "What is difficult to understand... is the mental freshness with which the 74-year-old composer, two years before his death, was able to surpass his pupils in the most modern style and to set standards which were to apply to the music theatre of the succeeding centuries."
List of musical items
The table uses the numberings from the 1656 printed version of Busenello's libretto, and includes the two Act 2 scenes for which no music exists in the surviving scores. Typically, "scenes" comprise recitative, arioso, aria and ensemble elements, with occasional instrumental (sinfoniaSinfonia
Sinfonia is the Italian word for symphony. In English it most commonly refers to a 17th- or 18th-century orchestral piece used as an introduction, interlude, or postlude to an opera, oratorio, cantata, or suite...
) passages. The boundaries between these elements are often indistinct; Denis Arnold, commenting on the musical continuity, writes that "with few exceptions it is impossible to extricate the arias and duets from the fabric of the opera."
| Number | Performed by | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prologue | Fortuna, Virtù, Amore | Deh, nasconditi, o Virtù (Pray hide thy face, O Virtue) |
Preceded by a short instrumental sinfonia |
| Act 1 1: Scene I |
Ottone | E pur' io torno qui (And so I am drawn back) |
|
| 1: Scene II | Due soldati, Ottone | Chi parla? chi parla? (Who's speaking? Who's speaking?) |
|
| 1: Scene III | Poppea, Nerone | Signor, deh, non partire! (My lord, oh, do not go!) |
|
| 1: Scene IV | Poppea, Arnalta | Speranza, tu mi vai il cor accarezzando; (Hope, you continue to beguile my heart) |
The Venice score (Vn) has a shorter version of Poppea's opening "Speranza, tu mi vai" than appears in the Naples score (Np) and in the libretto. |
| 1: Scene V | Ottavia, Nutrice | Disprezzata Regina, Regina Disprezzata! (Despised queen, queen despised!) |
|
| 1: Scene VI | Seneca, Ottavia, Valletto | Ecco la sconsolata donna (Behold the grieving lady) |
|
| 1: Scene VII | Seneca | Le porpore regali e le grandezze (Royal purple and high estate) |
|
| 1: Scene VIII | Pallade, Seneca | Seneca, io miro in cielo infausti rai (Seneca, I see fateful signs in heaven) |
|
| 1: Scene IX | Nerone, Seneca | Son risoluto alfine, o Seneca, o maestro, (I have finally decided, O Seneca, O master) |
|
| 1: Scene X | Poppea, Nerone | Come dolci, Signor, come soavi (How sweet, my lord, how delicious) |
|
| 1: Scene XI | Ottone, Poppea | Ad altri tocca in sorte (Others are allowed to drink the wine) |
Vn omits a final recitative from Ottone, and a sotto voce expression of sympathy for Ottone from Poppea's nurse Arnalta. |
| 1: Scene XII | Ottone | Otton, torna in te stesso (Ottone, come to your senses) |
|
| 1: Scene XIII End of Act 1 |
Drusilla, Ottone | Pur sempre di Poppea, hor con la lingua, (Poppea is all you ever talk about) |
|
| Act 2 2: Scene I |
Seneca, Mercurio | Solitudine amata, eremo della mente (Beloved solitude, mental sanctuary) |
|
| 2: Scene II | Liberto, Seneca | Il comando tiranno esclude ogni ragione (The tyrant's commands are quite irrational) |
Vn omits additional lines for Liberto, and also the repeat of his "More felice!" (Die happy) salutation. |
| 2: Scene III | Seneca, tre famigliari | Amici, è giunta l'hora (Friends, the hour has come) |
Vn omits additional lines for Seneca after the Coro di Famigliari. |
| 2: Scene IV | Seneca, coro di Virtú | Liete e ridente (Lightness and laughter) |
Scene in Busenello's libretto, not in Vn or Np, in which a Chorus of Virtues welcomes Seneca to heaven. |
| 2: Scene V | Valletto, Damigella | Sento un certo non so che (I feel a certain something) |
Vn shortens the final duet for Valletto and Damigella. |
| 2: Scene VI | Nerone, Lucano | Hor che Senca è morto, cantiam (Now that Seneca is dead, let us sing) |
The libretto allocates some Nerone/Lucano lines to the courtiers Petronio and Tigellino, neither of who figure in Vn or Np. Vn has a shorter version of the Nerone–Lucano duet and omits a stanza from Nerone's aria. |
| 2: Scene VII | Nerone, Poppea | O come, O come a tempo (O how, how sometimes, my beloved...) |
Scene in Busenello's libretto, not in Vn or Np, in which Nerone and Poppea reiterate their love. Np replaces this scene with a solo for Ottavia. |
| 2: Scene VIII | Ottone | I miei subiti sdegni (Did my rash anger...) |
The libretto adds five additional lines for Ottavia to the end of the scene, vowing vengeance on Poppea. Np extends this to 18 lines; neither version is included in Vn. |
| 2: Scene IX | Ottavia, Ottone | Tu che dagli avi miei havesti le grandezze (You who were ennobled by my ancestors) |
|
| 2: Scene X | Drusilla, Valletto, Nutrice | Felice cor mio (O happy heart, rejoice!) |
|
| 2: Scene XI | Ottone, Drusilla | Io non so dov'io vada (I know not whither I am going) |
|
| 2: Scene XII | Poppea, Arnalta | Hor che Seneca è morto, Amor, ricorro a te (Now that Seneca is dead, Love I appeal to you) |
|
| 2: Scene XIII | Amore | Dorme l'incauta dorme (She sleeps, the unwary woman sleeps) |
|
| 2: Scene XIV End of Act 2 |
Ottone, Amore, Poppea, Arnalta | Eccomi transformato (Here I am, transformed) |
The libretto has additional lines for Ottone, not in Vn or Np. |
| Act 3 3: Scene I |
Drusilla | O felice Drusilla, o che sper'io? (O happy Drusilla! Will my dreams come true?) |
|
| 3: Scene II | Arnalta, Littore, Drusilla | Ecco la scelerata (Behold the evil woman) |
|
| 3: Scene III | Arnalta, Nerone, Drusilla, Littore | Signor, ecco la rea (My lord, there is the criminal) |
In Np, four lines of Drusilla's from Scene IV are sung here. The lines remain, with different music, in Scene IV in both Vn and Np, but appear only in Scene IV in the libretto. |
| 3: Scene IV | Ottone, Drusilla, Nerone | No, no, questa sentenza cada sopra di me (No, no! It is I who must be punished) |
Littore has a line in the libretto and in Np, which is omitted in Vn. |
| 3: Scene V | Poppea, Nerone | Signor, hoggi rinasco (My lord, today I am reborn) |
|
| 3: Scene VI | Arnalta | Hoggi sarà Poppea di Roma imperatrice (Poppea shall be Empress of Rome today) |
The libretto transposes Scenes VI and VII as they appear in Vn and Np, so that Ottavia's lament is heard first. |
| 3: Scene VII | Ottavia | A Dio, Roma! a Dio, patria! amici, a Dio! (Farewell, Rome, my fatherland, my friends!) |
|
| 3: Scene VIII(a) | Nerone, Poppea, | Ascendi, o mia diletta (Ascend, O my beloved) |
|
| 3: Scene VIII(b) | Consoli, tribuni | A te, sovrano augusta (O august sovereign) |
|
| 3: Scene VIII(c) | Amore, Venere, coro di Amori | Madre, madre, sia con tua pace (Mother, forgive me for saying so) |
The libretto and Np carry extended versions of this scene; the Coro di Amori does not appear in Vn. |
| 3: Scene VIII(d) End of Opera |
Nerone, Poppea | Pur ti miro, pur ti godo (I gaze at you, I possess you) |
The text for this scene, included in both Vn and Np, does not appear in the published libretto. The words may have been written by composer-librettist Benedetto Ferrari Benedetto Ferrari Benedetto Ferrari was an Italian composer, particularly of opera, librettist and theorbo player.Ferrari was born in Reggio nell'Emilia. He worked in Rome , Parma , and possibly in Modena at some time between 1623 and 1637. He created music and libretti in Venice and Bologna, 1637-44... ; they appear in the libretto of his 1641 opera Il pastor regio. |
Recording history
The first recording of L'incoronazione, with Walter GoehrWalter Goehr
Walter Goehr was a German composer and conductor.Goehr was born in Berlin where studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outside Germany, while working for Berlin Radio in 1932. He was invited to become music director for...
conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich
Tonhalle Orchester Zurich
Tonhalle Orchester Zürich is a symphony orchestra founded in 1868 in Zürich Switzerland, where it established its residence in the neue Tonhalle in 1895....
in a live stage performance, was issued in 1954. This LP version
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
, which won a Grand Prix du Disque
Grand Prix du Disque
The Grand Prix du Disque is the premier French award for musical recordings. The award was inaugurated by l'Académie Charles Cros in 1948 and offers prizes in various categories. The categories vary from year to year, and multiple awards are often made in any one category in the same year...
in 1954, is the only recording of the opera that predates the revival of the piece that began with the 1962 Glyndebourne Festival production. In 1963 Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
and the Vienna Staatsoper
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera . In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian...
issued a version described by The Gramophone as "far from authentic", while the following year John Pritchard and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It tours widely, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's national orchestra"...
recorded an abridged version using Leppard's Glyndebourne orchestration. Leppard conducted a Sadler's Wells production, which was broadcast by the BBC and recorded on 27 November 1971. This is the only recording of the opera in English.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt is an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement...
's 1974 version, the first recording without cuts, used period instruments in an effort to achieve a more authentic sound, although Denis Arnold has criticised Harnoncourt's "over-ornamentation" of the score, particularly his use of oboe and trumpet flourishes. Arnold showed more enthusiasm for Alan Curtis's 1980 recording, live from La Fenice
La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
in Venice. Curtis uses a small band of strings, recorders and continuo, with a trumpets reserved for the final coronation scene. Subsequent recordings have tended to follow the path of authenticity, with versions from baroque specialists including Richard Hickox
Richard Hickox
Richard Sidney Hickox CBE was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music.-Early life:Hickox was born in Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire into a musical family...
and the City of London Baroque Sinfonia (1988), René Jacobs and Concerto Vocale (1990), and John Eliot Gardiner
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE FKC is an English conductor. He founded the Monteverdi Choir , the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique...
with the English Baroque Soloists
English Baroque Soloists
The English Baroque Soloists is a chamber orchestra playing on period instruments, formed in 1978 by English conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Its repertoire comprises music from the early Baroque period to the Classical period...
.
In more recent years, videotape and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
versions have proliferated. The first was in 1979, a version directed by Harnoncourt with the Zurich Opera
Zurich Opera
Oper Zürich is an opera company based in Zurich, Switzerland. The company gives performances in the Opernhaus Zürich which has been the company’s home for fifty years.-History:...
and chorus. Leppard's second Glyndebourne production, that of 1984, was released in DVD form in 2004. Since then, productions directed by Jacobs, Christophe Rousset
Christophe Rousset
Christophe Rousset is a French harpsichordist and conductor, specializing in the performance of baroque music on period instruments.-Biography:...
and Marc Minkowski
Marc Minkowski
Marc Minkowski is a French conductor of classical music, especially known for his interpretations of French Baroque works. His mother is American, and his father was Alexandre Minkowski, a Polish-French professor of pediatrics and one of the founders of neonatology...
have all been released on DVD, along with Emmanuelle Haïm
Emmanuelle Haïm
Emmanuelle Haïm is a French harpsichordist and conductor with a particular interest in early music and Baroque music....
's 2008 Glyndebourne production in which the Festival finally rejects Leppard's big band version in favour of Haim's period instruments, to give an experience closer to that of the original audience.
Editions
Since the beginning of the 20th century the score of L'incoronazione has been edited frequently. Some editions, prepared for particular performances (e.g. Westrup's for the 1927 Oxford Town Hall performance) have not been published. The following are the main published editions since 1904. Years of publication often postdate the first performances from these editions.- Hugo Goldschmidt (Leipzig, 1904 in Studien zur Geschichte der Italienischen Oper im 17 Jahrhundert)
- Vincent d'Indy (Paris, 1908)
- Gian Francesco Malipiero (Vienna, 1931 in Claudio Monteverdi: Tutte le opere)
- Ernst Krenek (Vienna, 1935)
- Giacomo BenvenutiGiacomo BenvenutiGiacomo Benvenuti was an Italian composer and musicologist. He was the son of organist Cristoforo Benvenuti and studied at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna under Luigi Torchi and Marco Enrico Bossi...
(Milan, 1937) - Giorgio Federico Ghedini (Milan, 1953)
- Hans Redlich (Kassel, 1958)
- Walter Goehr (Vienna and London, 1960)
- Raymond Leppard (London, 1966)
- Alan Curtis (London, 1989)
Sources
(pp. 10–17 of notes accompanying CD release 02292 42547)External links
(Busenello's libretto in Italian, with final scene added)- "Claudio Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea" by Uri Golomb, Goldberg Early Music Magazine 42 (October 2006): 60–71