L'incoronazione di Poppea (SV 308, The Coronation of Poppaea) is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season.Rosand (1991), p. 18 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 differences 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 in Venice, 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 wins the day, although this triumph is demonstrated by history to have been transitory and hollow. 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, for 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
Opera as a dramatic genre originated around the turn of the 17th century, 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.Neef, p. 326 Monteverdi had already 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 Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.Carter (2002), pp. 1–2 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.Neef, p. 324
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 writing 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).Ringer, pp. 137–138 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.Ringer, pp. 213–214Rosand (1991), pp. 37–40 Busenello had worked with Monteverdi's younger contemporary Francesco Cavalli, providing the libretto for Didone (1641),Robinson, p. 74 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.
Creation Libretto
The main sources for the story told in Busenello's libretto are the Annals of Tacitus; book 6 of Suetonius's history The Twelve Caesars; books 61–62 of Dio Cassius's Roman History; and an anonymous play Octavia (once attributed to the real life Seneca), from which the opera's fictional nurse characters were derived. Ringer, p. 215 The main story is based on real people and events. According to the analyst Magnus Schneider, the character of Drusilla was taken from Girolamo Bargagli's 16th-century comedy The Pilgrim Woman.Schneider (2012), pp. 288–290.
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".Carter (2002), pp. 270–272 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; 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.Carter (2002), p. 274
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.Carter (2002), p. 265 One of the printed editions relates to the opera's 1651 Naples revival; the other is Busenello's final version published in 1656 as part of a collection of his libretti. The manuscripts are all from the 17th century, though not all are specifically dated; some are "literary" versions unrelated to performances. The most significant of the manuscript copies is that discovered in Udine, Northern Italy, in 1997 by Monteverdi scholar Paolo Fabbri. This manuscript, according to music historian Ellen Rosand, "bristles with the immediacy of a performance", and is the only copy of the libretto that mentions Monteverdi by name. This, and other descriptive details missing from other copies, leads Rosand to speculate that the manuscript was copied during the course of a performance. This impression is reinforced, she says, by the inclusion of a paean of praise to the singer (Anna di Valerio according to Schneider)Schneider (2012), pp. 259–260. 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.Rosand (Monteverdi's Last Operas), pp. 61–65
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 Harnoncourt, a leading Monteverdi interpreter, refers to the contemporary practice of leaving much of a score open, to allow for differing local performance conditions. Another convention made it unnecessary to write down detail that performers would take for granted. Neither the 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.Ringer, pp. 218–219
The question of authorship—essentially of how much of the music is Monteverdi's—is a contentious one, which Rosand acknowledges might never be entirely resolved. Virtually none of the contemporary documentation mentions Monteverdi, and music by other composers has been identified in the scores, including passages found in the score of Francesco Sacrati's opera La finta pazza. A particular style of metric notation used in some passages of the L'incoronazione scores suggests the work of younger composers. 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.Rosand (Monteverdi's last operas), pp. 65–68
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.Questions of Authorship in Josquin, Monteverdi, and Mozart: Documentary versus Stylistic Evidence . By Jillian Andersen. University of Puget Sound. Sound Ideas. Summer Research 2012. 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". The musicologist Alan Curtis believes that only a single collaborator was involved, and published his 1989 edition of L'incoronazione under the joint authorship of Monteverdi and Sacrati. The American musical analyst Eric Chafe's study of Monteverdi's tonal language supports the collaboration theory and postulates that some of the sections in question, including the prologue, the coronation scene and the final duet, reflect Monteverdi's intentions and may have been written under his direct supervision.
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",Carter (2002) p. 263 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". quoted in Ringer, p. 216. 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 the pregnant Poppea would die either in childbirth or at the hands of Nerone. They would have known, too, that Nerone himself committed suicide a few years later, and that others—Ottavia, Lucano, Ottone—also met untimely deaths.