This article starts from two important readings of Monteverdi's last opera: Ellen Rosand, ‘Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38(1985), 34–71; and Iain Fenlon and Peter Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’: Understanding ‘Poppea’, Royal Musical Association Monographs, 5 (London, 1992) It also seeks to develop my ideas on changing functions of ‘aria’ in the early seventeenth century most recently expressed in my ‘“In Love's harmonious consort”? Penelope and the Interpretation of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria', Cambridge Open Journal, 5 (1993), 1’16, and ‘Resemblance and Representation. Towards a New Aesthetic in the Music of Monteverdi’, ‘Con che soavità’: Essays in Italian Baroque Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580–1740, ed Iain Fenlon and Tim Carter (Oxford, 1995), 118–34. The music examples are drawn from the sources listed in their captions, with some minor editing and emendation, original note-values have been given where possible. All translations are my own. I am indeed grateful to Lorenzo Bianconi, Annegret Fauser, Iain Fenlon, Wendy Heller, Robert Holzer, Susan McClary and Anne MacNeil for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. I must also thank Clifford Bartlett and Paolo Fabbri for providing copies of original source material.Google Scholar

1 Opera as Drama (New York, 1956; rev edn, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988; repr. London, 1989), 91.Google Scholar

2 Argomento et scenario delle Nozze d'Enea in Lavinia, tragedia di lieto fine da rappresentarsi in musica, trans. in Composing Opera: From ‘Dafne’ to ‘Ulisse errante’, ed Tim Carter and Zygmunt Szweykowski, Practica musica, 2 (Cracow, 1994), 147–79 (p. 177).Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Wye J Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovarmi’ (Chicago and London, 1983), and compare (for instrumental music) V. Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton, 1991)Google Scholar

4 I have explored the issues in my chapter on seventeenth-century opera in The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, ed. Roger Parker (Oxford and New York, 1994), 1–46Google Scholar

5 See Rosand, Ellen; ‘Monteverdi's Mimetic Art. L'incoronazione di Poppea’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 1 (1989), 113–37; eadem, ‘Operatic Ambiguities and the Power of Music’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 4 (1992), 75–80Google Scholar

6 I use the word ‘mosaic’ deliberately given its rich echoes of a statement by Simone Luzzatto in his Discorso circa il stato de gl'Hebrei (Venice, 1638) which Fenlon and Miller take as a motto for The Song of the Soul’ (see pp. viii, 18) The internal image of our soul is like a mosaic, which seems to be a single shape, and on closer inspection shows itself to be made up of various fragments of small stones both cheap and precious, joined and assembled. Even more so is our soul made up of various differing and conflicting pieces, any one of which can appear distinctly at various times. Consequently, describing the nature and condition of a single man is very arduous and difficult, and it is more difficult still to aim to explain a man's actions in terms of a single norm or principle ’ Luzzatto's reasoning provides several lessons for the Monteverdi critic.Google Scholar

7 The best treatment of Ottavia, and in a critical and methodological context to which I owe a debt, is in Wendy Beth Heller, ‘Chastity, Heroism, and Allure Women in Opera of Seventeenth-Century Venice’ (Ph.D dissertation, Brandeis University, 1995), 225–85Google Scholar

8 On the pleasures and perils of song as viewed by contemporary theorists, see Rosand, Ellen, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1991), 40–5Google Scholar

9 Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS It IV 439 (9963); Naples, Biblioteca del Conservatorio S. Pietro a Majella, MS Rari 6 4.1Google Scholar

10 The most recent discussion of the sources is Alan Curtis, ‘La Poppea impasticciata, or Who Wrote the Music to L'incoronazione (1643)?’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 42 (1989), 23–54. However, reference must still be made to Wolfgang Osthoff, ‘Die venezianische und neapolitanische Fassung von Monteverdis “Incoronazione di Poppea” ‘, Acta musicologica, 26 (1954), 88–113; idem, ‘Neue Beobachtungen zu Quellen und Geschichte von Monteverdis “In coronazione di Poppea”’, Die Musikforschung, 11 (1958), 129–38, and Alessandra Chiarelli, ‘L'incoronazione di Poppea o Il Nerone Problemi di filologia testuale’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 9 (1974), 117–51 Paolo Fabbri, ‘New Sources for “Poppea”’, Music and Letters, 74 (1993), 16–23, reports the discovery of a new libretto and provides a useful, concise overview of the sources.Google Scholar

11 Contrast these conventional arguments with the remarks on the not so public nature of ‘public’ opera in Venice in Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, ‘Production, Consumption and Political Function of Seventeenth-Century Opera’, Early Music History, 4 (1984), 209–96. Similarly, notions of a bourgeoisie (and therefore of a bourgeois morality) are highly contentious for this period.Google Scholar

12 The most powerful articulation of Monteverdi in broader cultural contexts is Gary Tomlinson's Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1987) I have engaged with Tomlinson's tendency towards a rather old-fashioned Geistesgeschichte in my review in Early Music History, 8 (1988), 245–60 His reading (and at times dismissal) of Monteverdi's Venetian music in the context of Marinism is both powerful and problematic: it is one reason why several recent Monteverdi scholars, myself included, have tried to explore this repertory in new, more sympathetic ways Some of the fruits of this reassessment will also be apparent in Massimo Ossi's Divining the Oracle: Aspects of Monteverdi's ‘Seconda prattica’ (Chicago and London, forthcoming).Google Scholar

13 Fenlon and Miller are only the latest to argue that by the end of the opera ‘there could hardly have been any doubt in the mind of any contemporary Venetian, familiar with subsequent events and in particular with Poppea's death at Nero's hand three years after their marriage, of the illusory character of this seeming Triumph of Love’ ('The Song of the Soul’, 92) Compare also ibid., 74: ‘ultimately, as any seventeenth-century audience would have known, Ottone was to get his revenge by ascending the Imperial throne after the reigns of Nero and Galba'. For Poppaea's murder see Tacitus’ Annals, XVI, 6; and for Nero's own sorry death and Otho's eventual assumption of the throne, see Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, VI, VIII. Similarly, another classical source to which Busenello refers, the tragedy Octavia then attributed to Seneca, would have informed audiences of the troubles lying ahead for Poppaea: the Roman people rise up against her in favour of Octavia, dashing to the ground statues of Nero's new bride. Ellen Rosand notes both general and specific connections between the pseudo-Senecan Octavia – the first extant fabula praetexta or historical play – and Poppea in ‘Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, 42–5; see also Heller, ‘Chastity, Heroism, and Allure’, 243–7.Google Scholar

14 Monteverdi was denounced anonymously (at an unknown date, but after 1623) for expressing pro-Habsburg/Spanish sentiments in public; see Glixon, Jonathan, ‘Was Monteverdi a Traitor?’, Music and Letters, 72 (1991), 404–6Google Scholar

15 See the preface to the 1656 edition of the libretto, L'incoronatione di Poppea di Gio. Francesco Busenello Opera musicale rappresentata nel Teatro Grimano l'anno 1642 (Venice, 1656): ‘Nerone innamorato di Poppea, ch'era moglie di Ottone, lo mandò sotto pretesto d'ambascaria in Lusitania per godersi la cara diletta, così rappresenta Cornelio Tacito. Ma qui si rappresenta il fatto diverso ’ ('Nero, in love with Poppaea, who was Otho's wife, sent him as a pretext on an embassy to Lusitania so as to enjoy his chosen beloved – this according to Cornelius Tacitus But here the action is represented differently…'). This is the libretto commonly described as having been printed in Busenello's ‘collected works’ (Delle hore ociose), but the copy in the British Library, London, is a separate fascicle The text was undoubtedly revised for this ‘literary’ publication, but in some areas it may be closer to the original text than scholars have assumedGoogle Scholar

16 The latter view derives from Dio Cassius, see Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, 7–8 In the prologue to Poppea, Fortuna accuses Virtù of selling privileges and titles for personal gain, which may be an indirect reference to Seneca.Google Scholar

17 See the excellent discussion in Robert R. Holzer, review of Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 5 (1993), 79–92Google Scholar

18 See William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter-Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), 527–8Google Scholar

19 Loredano's Scherzi geniali (Venice, 1632) contains ‘Agrippina calunniata’ (scherzo 2, pp 21–38), ‘Poppea supplichevole’ (scherzo 9; pp. 145–64) and ‘Seneca prudente’ (scherzo 11, pp 181–96) The last two are briefly discussed in Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, 46–8 ‘Poppea supplichevole’, a devious if passionate farrago of lies (against Octavia) and sexual promises, seems prompted in part by events in the pseudo-Seneca Octavia. In ‘Seneca prudente’, Seneca repeatedly invokes Fortune, Virtue and Moral Philosophy. Only Fortune and Virtue can withstand the attack of Envy, and all three can be protected only by Seneca's withdrawal from Nero's court and renouncing his riches ‘Lo dico per facilitare con l'esperienza l'asprezza de’ miei precetti, e per autenticare col'essempio i tratti della mia penna Lo dico anco per sottrarmi una volta di tanto peso, e vivere à me stesso in riposo sotto l'ombra della virtù’ (p. 191: ‘I say it to enact with experience the harshness of my precepts, and to authenticate by example the writings of my pen. I say it also to free myself for once of so great a weight, and to live by myself in calm under the shadow of virtue') Compare L'incoronazione di Poppea, Act 2, scene i ‘Or confermo i miei scritti, / autentico i miei studi’ ('Now I confirm my writings, I authenticate my studies’, see Example 2 below) Most would have spotted the irony of Loredano having Seneca claim ('Seneca prudente’, 193) that he is eternally grateful to Nero, and whoever wishes to erase that memory will have to kill himGoogle Scholar

20 Malipiero's L'imperatrice ambiziosa (Venice, 1642) is discussed in Rosand, ‘Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, 47–52.Google Scholar

21 As Wendy Heller pointed out, responding to an earlier version of this essay presented as a paper at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, Florida State University, Tallahassee (USA), 10–13 April 1997 I have drawn significant benefit from her response, her forthcoming ‘Tacito incognito Opera as History in L'incoronazione di Poppea’ also promises an important new political-historical reading of the operaGoogle Scholar

22 The point is noted, but not developed, in Holzer's review of Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, 80, and will be taken further by Heller in her forthcoming study (see n 21 above) Busenello may well have been influenced by Lucan's Pharsalia, particularly in its treatment of history in an epic mode and in its downplaying the role of the gods therein. Lucano appears alone in the 1643 scenario, in the 1656 libretto he is joined by Petronio and Tigellino (P Turpilianus Petronius and C Ofonius Tigellinus, two of Nero's intimates in Tacitus’ Annals)Google Scholar

23 John Dilwyn Knox, ‘The Concepts of Rhetorical and Socratic Ironia in the Renaissance (Latin and Italian Sources)'(Ph D dissertation, University of London, 1984), 111–14, to which the following discussion of paradoxical encomia is indebted See also Henry Knight Miller, ‘The Paradoxical Encomium, with Special Reference to its Vogue in England, 1600–1800’, Modern Philology, 53 (1956), 145–78; Rosalie L Colie, Paradoxia epidemica. The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox (London, 1966)Google Scholar

24 Compare George Chapman, A lustification of a Strange Action of Nero, in burying with a solemne funerali, one of the cast hayres of his mistresse Poppaea. Also a lust reproofe of a Romane smell-feast, being [a translation of] the fifth Satyre of Iuvenall (London, 1629), and S S., Paradoxes, or Encomiums in the praise of Being Lowsey; Treachery; Nothing; Beggery; the French Pox, Blindnesse, the Emperor Nero, Madnesse (London, 1653) The latter condemns (p 21) ‘that very Seneca who wrot[e] so much in the praise of temperance, and fortitude, yet lived like an absolute epicure, and dyed like an effeminate coward’ In the preface, the author claims that ‘I have attempted by a kind of novel Alchemy to turn Tin to Silver, and Copper into Gold’, of these paradoxes ‘there hath none more intricate, been discussed, and canvased, among the Stoicks in Zenos Porch, [and] if thy sense besot not thy understanding, I do not doubt a welcome'.Google Scholar

25 There are several editions of Hieronymi Cardani Neronis encomium including one published in Amsterdam in 1640 and the one in Cardano's Opera omnia, 10 vols (Lyons, 1663), i, 179–220Google Scholar

26 The collection is dedicated (12 April 1627) by Deuchino to the young Todaro Minio, who has already published anonymously with the printer The two other discourses are Dell'historia scritta, e non scritta and Della vanità dell'astrologia giudiciaria, Il Nerone difeso di Luciano takes up pages 126–61. According to the dedication (p 4), these are among several discourses ‘già fatti per sua [De Boulay's] memoria, ed esercitio’ and presented to ‘un religioso Claustrale'; further translations from French into Italian are promised depending on the success of the present volume.Google Scholar

27 Incidentally, this was a criticism often made of the Venetians, see Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty, 503Google Scholar

28 Tre discorsi del Signor Henrico De Bullay, 144 Compare Loredano's ‘Seneca prudente’ in Scherzi geniali, 187. ‘Quai pensieri devono formare i Romani, i miei medesimi amici sovra l'immensità di tante mie ricchezze? Mi veggono adornare superbi giardini, trattenermi in così magnifiche Ville, havere possessioni così grandi, raccorre entrate così abbondanti Non hò dubbio, che l'invidia gli haverà co’ suoi fiati infetti E quei medesimi, che vengono alle mie case, per servirmi di corteggio, fanno voti per la mia caduta.’ Similarly (ibid, 191), Seneca admits to having ‘sette millioni, e cinquecento mille ducati di facoltà'.Google Scholar

29 Tre discorsi del Signor Henrico De Bullay, 143. ‘avezzo alli soli studij vani, e pedanteschi, che servono a dar trattenimento a’ fanciulli'.Google Scholar

30 Christopher-Robinson, Lucian and his Influence in Europe (London, 1979) remains the standard text on Lucian and his reception through to the eighteenth centuryGoogle Scholar

31 But see also Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 432.Google Scholar

32 See Rosand, , ‘Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, 37 ‘Most members of the [Incogniti] could boast at least one book on the Index librorum prohibitorum’Google Scholar

33 Compare the Lucianic play of Fortune versus Virtue in Leon Battista Alberti's Virtus dea (one of his Intercoenales) discussed in Robinson, Lucian and his Influence in Europe, 86.Google Scholar

34 In the preface to Novelle amorose de’ Signori Academici Incogniti publicate da Francesco Carmeni, segretario dell'Academia (Venice, 1641), f [A4] ‘è una pesta, & un difetto, non un'affetto del cuore’ For other Incogniti statements on Love, see Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, 35.Google Scholar

35 Rosand ('Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, 44) notes of this scene that ‘Seneca's attempts to preach stoicism to Ottavia are singularly lacking in compassion; they are ineffective, even repressive’, although this is in the section of her article dealing with the libretto, perhaps significantly, she does not consider this scene in her discussion of Monteverdi's score (but see below, note 43), for all that it surely sits uncomfortably with her view of the ‘moral integrity’ of Seneca's music (ibid., 55) Act 1, scene vi is also handled somewhat ambivalently by Fenlon and Miller (‘The Song of the Soul’, 63–7), who associate Seneca's madrigalesque word-painting (for example, a ‘long, virtuosic melisma on the word “bellezza”’, ibid., 64) with notions of irony (whether on Seneca's or on Monteverdi's part remains unclear) Heller ('Chastity, Heroism, and Allure’, 272–3) is less equivocal – Monteverdi's ‘representation of the philosopher's advice to Ottavia seems pregnant with satire’ – which seems entirely justified given the deliberate oddities in Seneca's music (for example, and as Heller notes, Fenlon and Miller's ‘long, virtuosic melisma’ is not on ‘bellezza’ at all, but on the immediately preceding definite article, ‘la bellezza')Google Scholar

36 There may be a further resonance here: Seneca was Spanish, as was the ciaccona in origin. As a potentially ‘low’ class genre, the ciaccona is also, of course, appropriate for VallettoGoogle Scholar

37 McClary, Susan, ‘Constructions of Gender in Monteverdi's Dramatic Music’, Feminine Endings Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minnesota and London, 1991), 35–52 (p 49). This important article first appeared in Cambridge Opera Journal, 1 (1989), 203–23.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., 49, 51Google Scholar

39 ‘Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, 66Google Scholar

40 Fenlon and Miller discuss the ideas of Giovanni Battista Doglioni and Giovanni Francesco Loredano in ‘The Song of the Soul’, 35–40Google Scholar

41 Ibid., 38.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., 40Google Scholar

43 It would be unreasonable to assume that Rosand's views have remained fixed, for all their subsequent influence on reading Poppea. Her 1985 article is a revision of papers presented in 1981 and 1982, it was also written in response to the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle/Nikolaus Harnoncourt Poppea (Zurich, 1975), where Seneca was patently mishandled, which may explain Rosand's special pleading for the character (curiously, the 1984 revival of the Peter Hall/Raymond Leppard Poppea at Glyndebourne – for all its controversial approach to the sources – came much closer to Rosand's proposed reading) Rosand's ‘Monteverdi's Mimetic Art’ (published in 1989 but originally written in 1983) suggests a slight but perhaps significant shift. Although Rosand does not deal primarily with Seneca in this article, there is one telling remark (p 122) in his encounter with Mercurio in Act 2, scene i, ‘music sustains Seneca's moral conviction here, just as earlier [in Act 1, scene vi, with Ottavia] it had helped to undermine it’ (compare note 35 above)Google Scholar

44 ‘Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, 69 Rosand continues ‘Monteverdi's vivid setting of Seneca's final words, projecting his impending death as he depicts the life flowing from his open veins, is one more instance of the composer's empathy with the heroic aspect of the act.’ True, Rosand has earlier (p 46) raised doubts about this scene: ‘When, in Act II, scene 3, Seneca announces his decision to his followers, we may be moved, but they are not Their brief plea for him to reconsider gives way to complete dissociation from the act They would not do the same. Life is too sweet. There is nothing worth dying for’ But again (compare note 35 above) this comes in her discussion of the libretto the music is kept apart. As for ‘Non morir, Seneca, nò’, Fenlon and Miller follow Rosand closely here, as elsewhere ‘This remarkable passage begins with rising chromatic lines in all voices to the words “Non morir, Seneca”, the music gradually growing in intensity through the cumulative effect of pungent suspensions’ (‘The Song of the Soul’, 79) Wolfgang Osthoff (Das dramatische Spatwerk Claudio Monteverdis, Tutzing, 1960, 98) takes a more detached view; he also notes the connection with ‘Non partir, ritrosetta’ on which I elaborate below.Google Scholar

45 I give the text as it was printed in the 1656 libretto, which for various reasons seems close enough to what Monteverdi had before him when he put pen to music paper.Google Scholar

46 In the case of the two manuscripts of the music for Poppea, the assumption has tended to be that the Naples manuscript presents a revised version (associated with a performance in Naples in 1651?) Thus Curtis suggests of nearly all the Naples ‘additions’ (given in an appendix to his 1989 edition) that they were the result of ‘afterthoughts’ and, it is implied, by composers other than Monteverdi. But the stemma of the sources for Poppea is extremely complex, and although apparently later sources (including, of course, the Venice manuscript, which also dates from the 1650s) may well contain later music, the proportion of revisions to additions remains unclear For example, the Udine libretto discovered by Paolo Fabbri (Udine, Biblioteca Comunale, Fondo Joppi 496; see ‘New Sources for “Poppea” ‘) seems to derive from a now-lost score closer to the version used at the première than the surviving Venice and Naples manuscripts, and yet it includes a number of the Naples ‘additions’ (but not the longer version of Seneca's final speech)Google Scholar

The present case is an instructive example The long version of Seneca's speech (and its opening ‘Supprimete i singulti') seems closer to Busenello's main source for Seneca's death scene, Tacitus’ Annals (XV, 60–4), compare also Lipsius’ Life of Seneca discussed in note 62 below) There is also fairly strong musical evidence to suggest that Seneca's final speech did not originally start at ‘Itene tutti a prepararmi il bagno’ The immediately preceding ritornello cadences on D minor (with or without a tierce de picardie, I use the language of major-minor tonality for convenience), and ‘Itene tutti’ begins on a chord of G major (Monteverdi, L'incoronazione di Poppea, ed Curtis, 129), whereas the setting of the beginning of Seneca's final speech in the Naples manuscript, at ‘Supprimete i singulti’ (ibid., 273), starts on a chord of D minor, the ‘key of the ritornello and also of Seneca's final cadence There is a clear tendency in Poppea as it survives for ritornellos to maintain tonal continuity with preceding and succeeding recitatives/arias, failing strong dramatic reasons to the contrary (e g the introduction of a new character) or obvious difficulties in the sources (e. g. the problem of Ottone's ritornellos in Act 1, scene i). And in general, Seneca's music is often in D minor (or else some kind of C) witness Act 1, scenes vii–viii and Act 2, scene i, and indeed the beginning of the present Act 2, scene iii Having Seneca begin with ‘Itene tutti a prepararmi il bagno’ (on G) creates a tonal disjunction, whereas the D minor of ‘Supprimete i singulti’ does notGoogle Scholar

47 Fenlon and Miller speak of ‘a steady, lilting, evenly phrased arioso’ ('The Song of the Soul’, 78) evidently, in their eyes, this opening is to be taken seriously.Google Scholar

48 This may not have been done by Monteverdi, at least in his original version The Udine libretto (Fondo Joppi 496) does not give the first appearance of To per me morir non vò’ (it has only ‘Non morir, Seneca, nò’, just as the 1656 libretto) and yet this libretto derives (according to Fabbri) from an early score, a suggestion reinforced by its allocation of different lines of the Famigliari's quatrains to ‘Vno’, ‘Altro’ and ‘Terzo’, i.e. in a trio format (But the Udine libretto also corresponds to the 1656 libretto in having the refrain To per me morir non vò, / Non morir, Seneca, nò’ at the end of each of the Famigliari's quatrains.) Again, musical evidence may be helpful, for all its obvious dangers ‘Non morir, Seneca, nò’ cadences on D minor (there may or may not be a tierce de picardie), and ‘Io per me morir non vò’ moves from D minor to a final cadence on A minor, followed by the ritornello in D minor (which, following the argument in note 46 above, would follow on better from a D cadence) ‘Io per me morir non vò’ sits better in the tonal context of the end of the ‘aria': ‘mai non dà quel che riceve’ cadences on D minor, ‘Io per me morir non vò’ begins in D minor and ends in A minor, and ‘Non morir, Seneca, nò’ starts on A as V of D minor and cadences on D minor followed by the ritornello in D minor in other words, the final sequence where ‘Non morir, Seneca, nò’ leads directly to the ritornello (cadence on D minor, start in D minor) may have been intended for its first appearance. The Naples manuscript takes the worst of both worlds, after ‘mai non dà quel che riceve’ it has ‘Io per me morir non vò’ followed by ‘Non morir, Seneca, nò’ (thus as the Venice manuscript) then followed by ‘Io per me morir non vò’ and the ritornello.Google Scholar

49 Ellen Rosand, ‘The Descending Tetrachord: An Emblem of Lament’, The Musical Quarterly, 55 (1979), 346–59 Rosand is, of course, primarily discussing descending, not ascending, tetrachords, and in fact the inversion of the figure in ‘Non morir, Seneca, nò’ may add further to its ironic/parodic overtones discussed belowGoogle Scholar

50 Poppea is called an ‘opera reggia’ in the title of the 1643 scenario other sources (see Chiarelli, ‘L'incoronazione di Poppea o Il Nerone') adopt generically neutral labels such as opera musicale, dram(m)a or dram(m)a musicale: the ‘trag[edia]’ in the libretto in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magi. VII.66 (ibid., 119) appears to be an eighteenth-century addition. Compare L'Alvida, opera regia (giornata 43) and La fortuna di Foresta prencipessa di Moscou, opera regia (giornata 50) in Flaminio Scala's collection of scenarios, Il teatro delle favole rappresentative (Venice, 1611), mentioned in Louise George Clubb, Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time (New Haven and London, 1989), 255. See-also Nino Pirrotta, ‘Commedia dell'arte and Opera’, Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. A Collection of Essays (Cambridge, MA, 1984), 343–60 (see p. 355), Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 34–65 (ch. 2. ‘The Question of Genre').Google Scholar

51 The text of the 1643 scenario forms the basis of the rubrics which Alan Curtis places at the head of each scene (where possible) in his 1989 edition of Poppea. The texts below follow Curtis, although I have modified his translations.Google Scholar

52 Compare Mercurio's reference to Seneca as ‘vero amico del cielo’ at the very beginning of his speech in Act 2, scene i. Mercury's arrival has been announced by Pallade in Act 1, scene viii (see the relevant section of the scenario given above): productions that omit the role (and many do) miss an important pointGoogle Scholar

53 Although this may not have been enough, in the Venice manuscript the bulk of Valletto's comments against Seneca are struck through, implying a cut in performanceGoogle Scholar

54 Rosand, ‘Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, 55 ‘Even Monteverdi's casting of Seneca as a bass contributes to his characterization, exploiting, as it does, a rather natural if not yet conventional association between vocal range and age, in this case the low voice with authority’ The distinguishing of Seneca is clearer still if one accepts that Mercurio, originally a bassetto, was transposed ‘alla quinta alta’, as it is marked in the Venice manuscriptGoogle Scholar

55 Rosand would presumably disagree, given that (ibid.) his ‘music is unlike that of any of Monteverdi's other basses. It uses a range that extends both lower and higher than usual, from low E to high d’, and exploits both extremes. It is more independently melodic, more affective and expressive, and more responsive to text, eschewing excessive doubling of the basso continuo and the cadential movement in large intervals that characterize most previous operatic music for bass.’ Compare also Nino Pirrotta, ‘Falsirena and the Earliest Cavatina’, Music and Culture, 335–42, discussing the music of Arsele, scored for bass, in Domenico Mazzocchi's La catena d'Adone (Rome, 1626), the ‘role of the philosophic sage’ which offers a direct model for Seneca’ Arsete's ‘singing reflects the noble, concerned, and yet disinterested ponderings of a man whose age and wisdom have placed him beyond the reach of the passions, even though he has not lost the ability to be saddened by the folly of others’ (ibid., 337).Google Scholar

56 The connection was suggested by Denis Arnold in his article ‘Giustiniana’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), vii, 418 See also Ellen Rosand, ‘Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and the Power of “Music”’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 7 (1995), 179–84 (see p 181) Also typical of the giustiniana is the presence of comical stammers these are not so apparent in the music for the Proci, but, and curiously enough for my developing argument, the repeated ‘nò’ in the Famigliari's ‘Io per me morir non vò’ – emphasized to excess in the Venice manuscript (Curtis for the most part follows the underlay in the Naples manuscript here) – comes close to stammering.Google Scholar

57 See Ossi, Massimo, ‘“Excuse me but your teeth are in my neck” Of (Love) Bites, Jokes, and Gender in Claudio Monteverdi's “Eccomi pronta ai baci”’, paper presented at (among others) the Seventh Biennial Conference on Baroque Music, University of Birmingham (UK), 4–7 July 1996.Google Scholar

58 The Lamento della ninfa, ‘Non havea Febo ancora’, published in Monteverdi's Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi libro ottavo (Venice, 1638) is in many ways a test case; see my ‘Possente spirto. On Taming the Power of Music’, Early Music, 21 (1993), 517–23 Its text (a canzonetta by Ottavio Rinuccini) does not conform to standard lament types, and its music, in a sensuous triple time over a descending tetrachord ground bass, differs strikingly from, say, the Lamento d'Arianna (and, for that matter, the recitative laments for Penelope in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria or Ottavia in L'incoronazione di Poppea). The three shepherds who introduce and conclude the nymph's lament, and interject therein, also threaten a possible spanner in the works (see Susan McClary, ‘Excess and Frame: The Musical Representation of Madwomen’, Femmine Endings, 80–111). However, the tendency has been to treat the Lamento della ninfa as a somehow serious piece, indeed, there is a considerable vested interest on the part of Monteverdi scholars in viewing it as such See, for example, the important discussion in Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), 204–19Google Scholar

59 The relevant passage in ‘Non partir, ritrosetta’ is notated in triple minim (C3), whereas its equivalent in ‘Non morir, Seneca, nò’ is in triple-semibreve (3/1), to use Curtis's terminology for identifying different layers of triple-time writing in the surviving sources for Poppea (although the present example should urge a degree of caution in Curtis's positing of a chronological order between the two versions of triple-time notation, with triple-semibreve being more old-fashioned) On the face of it, triple-semibreve would seem to suggest a slower pace, but the relationship between various triple-time notations and either tempo or proportion (i e the relation with contiguous duple-time music) is highly problematic compare, for example, the furor that has greeted the suggestions in Roger Bowers, ‘Some Reflection on Notation and Proportion in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610’, Music and Letters 73 (1992), 347–98Google Scholar

60 Fenlon and Miller note the sharp pointing up in this scene of ‘The contrast between the heroic possessor of constantia and the undisciplined, wavering masses of humanity’ ('The Song of the Soul’, 78)Google Scholar

61 It is omitted from the libretto usually associated with a performance in Naples in mid-century, Il Nerone overo L'incoronatione di Poppea (Naples, 1651). Rosand ('Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea’, 45) explains this as a response to the demands of Catholic censors, whose power was much more effective outside Venice than withinGoogle Scholar

62 Seneca's injunction to the Famigliari draws directly upon Lipsius’ Life of Seneca; see Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, 29 Fenlon and Miller (ibid., 79) note the reference to ‘dell'inconstanza vil le macchie indegne’ in the omitted portion of Seneca's speech but present that speech in a curiously garbled version.Google Scholar

63 My argument here and below owes an obvious debt to Heller, ‘Chastity, Heroism, and Allure'.Google Scholar

64 The scene for ‘La Virtù con un Choro di Virtù, Seneca’ is given in the 1656 libretto (from which the text below is taken) and also in three of the manuscript librettos ('La Virtù in machina …') Rovigo, Biblioteca dell'Accademia dei Concordi, Silvestriana 239, Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, BOZ 1043, and Venice, Museo Civico Correr, Cicogna 585. It is not present in the Udine libretto (Fondo Joppi 496), and the 1643 scenario makes no reference to this scene, it surely did not appear in the first performance However, it may not just be a ‘literary’ addition for the 1656 libretto; although Chiarelli places the Rovigo and Venice librettos (she did not know of the Warsaw one) in the same stemma as the 1656 libretto, neither derives directly from the print, and indeed they may contain readings anterior to it (see ‘L'incoronazione di Poppea o Il Nerone’, 128–33); Fabbri draws the same conclusion concerning the Warsaw libretto ('New Sources for “Poppea”’, 16–18)Google Scholar

Curiously, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria also contains a ‘missing’ scene set in the afterlife following a significant death, Act 3, scene ii for Mercury and the shades of the suitors (in a ‘desert’, during which Hell opens) following immediately upon the ‘suicide’ of Iro, see Rosand, ‘Iro and the Interpretation of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria’, Journal of Musicology, 7 (1989), 141–64 (pp 160–2) This scene was omitted from the score (we do not know whether it was ever set to music) ‘per esser maninconica’Google Scholar

65 Fenlonand Miller ('The Song of the Soul’, 76) note the further connection between Seneca's notion (Act 2, scene iii) of the virtuous soul which ‘se ne vola all'Olimpo’ and Virtù's (in the prologue) ‘Io son la tramontana / che sola insegno agl'intelletti umani / l'arte del navigar verso l'Olimpo'.Google Scholar

66 Loredano, Giovanni Francesco, Bizzarie academiche (Bologna, 1676), 217–18 ‘Amore è figliuolo dell'harmonia, e però quegli amanti, che vorrebono farlo nascere nelle loro amate hò ben io veduti cantare, ma non versar lagrime, indegne dell'huomo, e che sarebbero atte a produrre il riso in vece d'Amore’ ('Love is child of harmony, and therefore I have seen those lovers who wish to give rise to it in their beloveds sing, but not release tears, which are unworthy of man and which would be more apt to produce laughter instead of Love') This is from the celebrated ‘Contesa del canto e delle lagrime’ discussed in Ellen Rosand, ‘Barbara Strozzi, Virtuosissima cantatrice The Composer's Voice’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 31 (1978), 241–81 (pp 278–80); Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, 38–40. Compare Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, 39 ‘Amore potrà ben nascere dalla Musica’Google Scholar

67 Nino Pirrotta, ‘Monteverdi and the Problems of Opera’, Music and Culture, 235–53 (pp. 251–3). As an aside, it is curious that Busenello and Monteverdi did not take advantage of Nero's musical prowess to justify the use of music on the stage Compare Giulio Cesare Corradi's Il Nerone, drama per musica (Venice, 1679), set to music by Carlo Pallavicino for the Teatro S. Giovanni Crisostomo, where Nero both sings and acts as part of his attempted seduction of Gilde, wife of Tiridate, proclaimed king of Armenia The plot here is interesting. There is a dispute between Nero and Seneca (Act 1, scene ii) rather close to Poppea (Act 1, scene ix), but Seneca stays on Nero's side in the Pisonian conspiracy, and at the end of the opera he receives Nero's vow to reform his wicked ways ('De l'opre tue fedeli / Seneca in guiderdone / giura, e promette Augusto / d'esser sul Tebro un Regnator più giusto').Google Scholar

68 Review of Fenlon and Miller, ‘The Song of the Soul’, 86Google Scholar

69 Compare Edward B Savage, ‘Love and Infamy The Paradox of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea’, Comparative Drama, 4 (1970), 197–207 Savage invokes dramatic irony in Monteverdi's music in terms typical of literary criticism, it is also typical that musicologists have tended not to follow his perceptive lead I read too late a pre-publication copy of Robert C Ketterer, ‘“Militat omnis amans” Ovidian Elegy in L'incoronazione di Poppea’, forthcoming in The International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 4 (1997) Ketterer's placing of the opera in the context of carnivalesque subversion meshes nicely with my remarksGoogle Scholar