Claudio Monteverdi's Venetian Operas

Sources, Performance, Interpretation

Ellen Rosand, Stefano La Via, Ellen Rosand, Stefano La Via

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780429575150
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Musik

Claudio Monteverdi's Venetian Operas features chapters by a group of scholars and performers of varied backgrounds and specialties, who confront the various questions raised by Monteverdi's late operas from an interdisciplinary perspective. The premise of the volume is the idea that constructive dialogue between musicologists and musicians, stage directors and theater historians, as well as philologists and literary critics can shed new light on Monteverdi's two Venetian operas (and their respective librettos, by Badoaro and Busenello), not only at the levels of textual criticism, historical exegesis, and dramaturgy, but also with regard to concrete choices of performance, staging, and mise-en-scène. Following an Introduction setting up the interdisciplinary agenda, the volume comprises two main parts: 'Contexts and Sources' deals with the historical, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts of the works - librettos and scores; 'Performance and Interpretation' offers critical and historical insights regarding the casting, singing, reciting, staging, and conducting of the two operas. This volume will appeal to scholars and researchers in Opera Studies and Music History as well as be of interest to early music performers and all those involved with presenting opera on stage.

Part I
Context and sources

1 Libertinism and politics: Notes for an Incognito reading of L’Incoronazione di Poppea

Mario Infelise

DOI: 10.4324/9780429200977-3

This chapter aims to contextualize L’Incoronazione di Poppea in the time of its first performance and to imagine its reception by the audience attending the opera during the carnival of 1643. The performance took place against the complicated background of contemporary Venetian libertinism, many aspects of which remain obscure despite the ample recent bibliography that now exists. One such grey area concerns the attitude of libertines to music. While musicologists studying this period tend to take for granted the available literature on libertinism, historians, by contrast, have nearly always neglected the role and importance of the nascent form of opera along with its social and cultural implications. As Lorenzo Bianconi rightly points out, Giorgio Spini’s seminal work on this cultural climate completely ignores this sub-sector;¹ nor, might I add, do we find any mention of either music or opera in Jean-Pierre Cavaillé’s ambitious study on seventeenth-century European libertinism written only a few years ago.² The only significant exception is Edward Muir whose 2007 book on seventeenth-century Venetian libertinism comprises a key chapter on L’Incoronazione di Poppea to which I will necessarily return.³ Muir’s study also has the undeniable merit of bringing together politics, literature, and music in a single social and cultural history while seeking the links between them.

My observations will build on two preliminary considerations. The first concerns the specific political and cultural context of the period in which the opera was first performed and possible links between that period and the era in which the events staged originally took place, also bearing in mind the fact that this was the first operatic representation to have been given a specific historical setting. The second regards the role of the men associated with the Accademia degli Incogniti, which dominated the Venetian cultural scene in the 1630s and 1640s, a role informed by their preferences and political positions.

Beginning with the former consideration, we should remember that the Thirty Years’ War was at its height during the period in question (1618–1648) and its impact was being felt in Italy. Moreover, this was also an important time of transition for the Republic of Venice. Following the conclusion of the conflict caused by the 1606 Interdict issued by Pope Paul V, Venice went on to play an active role in Europe, characterized by a tendentially anti-imperial and anti-Habsburg stance. As might be expected in a republic in which political positions were always the outcome of intense discussions and voting by councils with decision-making powers, there was no unanimity within the State’s ruling class.⁴ The generation of patricians who had participated alongside Paolo Sarpi in the struggle against the Church of Rome had sought to maintain links with the Protestant powers to the north, in particular with the Netherlands, in an attempt to counter the dominion of the Habsburgs, which was verging on absolute, especially after the assassination of the French king Henry IV. Many of these patricians had travelled around Europe – some had even served as ambassadors at European courts – and they would have been familiar with the transformations underway and the risks run by the Republic. There were considerable differences in position within the patriciate: some were in favor of seeking forms of peaceful coexistence with the Church of Rome, some were neutralist while others believed Venice should assume a more uncompromising, interventionist role. Such debates were also influenced by other types of divergences that had arisen among impoverished nobles and oligarchs within the patriciate concerning the organization of a number of Venice’s key governing bodies including the Council of Ten. Some used Venice’s mythical egalitarian origins to oppose those who wished to strengthen the institutions, thus enabling the concentration of power. The matter of Renier Zeno and the “correction” of power of the Council of Ten in 1628 are key episodes in a debate that implicitly raised the concern of how an aristocratic city-state with medieval origins was to survive in the midst of a multitude of absolute monarchies.

The great uncertainty of the times was exacerbated by factors such as a major economic crisis and the 1630 plague, with its serious demographic implications. Given that the survivors of such events would have been heavily traumatized, we should ask ourselves whether it might not be possible to trace the nihilism openly expressed in the writing of the generation born in the 1610s to that tragedy.

This situation continued until 1644, a watershed year when things changed. In 1645 the Turks landed at Candia, forcing Venice to rapidly reshuffle all of its priorities in order to defend the island that was the most important territory in its Levantine dominion. Moreover, by 1648, following the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia, there was a very new equilibrium in Europe. Venice’s intransigence towards Rome ceased and a pro-imperialist tendency began to emerge in her foreign policies. Matters finally returned to normal in 1657 with the readmission of the Jesuits, following their expulsion during the time of the Interdict.

It is important to bear these key historic events in mind when considering the overall context of L’incoronazione di Poppea. Although the Incogniti shared an interest in Giambattista Marino and were distinguished by an underlying skepticism derived from the Paduan teachings of Cesare Cremonini, we should not forget the political dimension involved. Many of the early writings of Giovanni Francesco Loredan, the “prince” of the Accademia degli Incogniti, had historical and political contents.⁵ In 1634, he published, under the anagrammed name Gneo Falcidio Donaloro, an account of the death of Wallenstein (Ribellione e morte del Volestain, generale della Maestà Cesarea, Sarzina 1634), and the general would also reappear in Loredan’s successful 1635 roman à clef Dianea, which contained a number of violent attacks upon Roman temporal power.⁶

With regard to the second consideration – the role of the men associated with the Accademia degli Incogniti – we should underline that the literature on the Incogniti is vast and rather repetitive. The consensus is that the Accademia was the main point of reference for contemporary literati, it was led by a Venetian patrician called Giovanni Francesco Loredan, and it was active from circa 1630 to 1660. Loredan, who enjoyed huge success in Europe as the author of a large body of historic and literary texts, some of which were translated into other European languages, was the patron of contemporary Italian letters and the guiding light of the Venetian libertine society, in particular due to his ability to control the publishing system. There are many studies on various, sometimes highly original, aspects of this milieu and the people in it, but a comprehensive work on the Incogniti has yet to be written.

Although much remains to be said about this matter, I will limit myself to a number of brief remarks pertinent to our argument, showing that, in addition to eroticism and nihilism, which may explain its lasting popular...