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MONTEVERDI

The Coronation of Poppea

CONTENTS

THE CORONATION OF POPPEA: BACKGROUND

WHO’s WHO and WHAT’s WHAT

TALKING POINTS

Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Who really wrote the opera

The ‘birth’ of Opera

The real Nero

Seneca and the Stoics

The real Poppæa: a warning to wives and girlfriends

The castrati and the sounds made by the singers

Emotions and Characterisation

ACT BY ACT

Prologue

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

THE CORONATION OF POPPEA: BACKGROUND

Monteverdi was the most significant composer in late Renaissance and early baroque Italy. L’Incoronazione di Poppea, his final opera, was composed when he was a very old man, aged seventy-five. It was his ‘greatest masterpiece, and arguably the finest opera of the century’. Many would rank it as one of the finest ‘of all time’. It was produced in Venice in 1643¹ at a time when the art form was still in its infancy. It was the first historical opera.

We may imagine the backdrop, the sheer splendour of Venice, the Republic headed by its Doge, with around forty ducal processions each year, with the daily music in the state church, St Mark’s, the ‘Church of Gold’, the repository of the Evangelist’s body. Venice was at least as grand (in its own eyes) as St Peter’s in Rome. Yet citizens with Monteverdi’s intelligence will have been reminded by the pungent odours from their canals that rot had already set in and ‘La Serenissima’ could not last.

Monteverdi

So, the story of the opera, ‘dripping with decadence and sex’, is particularly relevant. It is set in the first century and tells of Nero, the Roman emperor, and his mistress, whom he made his empress. The opera depicts vaunting ambition and attempted murder. Some wish that this, ‘perhaps the least moral in all opera’, could have been more profound, and less irresponsible.

But maybe there is a deeper meaning. Like Machiavelli’s The Prince, the opera may represent a study of absolute monarchy. Through the medium of opera, and with expressive music, Monteverdi demonstrates that absolute power will brook no obstacle, political, legal or moral.

Here, the proxy for power is lust, even if a politer word would be ‘love’. Sex triumphs over all obstacles. It conquers virtue and defies even Reason, including self-preservation: the ‘good guys’ come to grief. The opera ends at the peak of Poppea’s success. Love (sex) has seemingly triumphed over Virtue and Fortune.

But lust is a brittle form of love. Unlike true love, the power which facilitates lust is unlikely to endure. A Venetian audience will have been more familiar with Roman history than we are today. Both Nero and Poppea came to a sticky end. As the Venetian patricians and people left the theatre after the exquisite Pur ti miro, many will have known of Poppea’s dreadful demise: ‘she died from a casual outburst of rage in her husband, who felled her with a kick in her pregnant belly’. Monteverdi is telling us that this is the outcome when the will is ‘controlled by love (sex), entranced by beauty and deprived of constancy.’ Despite its superficial perfection, that type of love will soon disintegrate. In addition, seemingly powerful protagonists generally come to grief.

Monteverdi’s librettist was Francesco Busenello, a lawyer in Venice, who was at one stage the ambassador to the Mantuan court. He was a highly experienced librettist.

Busenello based the opera principally on the story of Nero found in the ‘Annals’ of Tacitus. This famous Roman historian was born probably around 55-60 AD, at the time when Nero’s reign began. (Tacitus was the father-in-law of Agricola, ‘the humane and enlightened’ governor of Britain.)

Busenello was a prominent member of Venice’s ‘Accademia degli Incogniti’, a group of aristocrats and intellectuals interested in the ancient classical period. The group was closely involved in the early stages of Venetian public opera. The membership included many who were disillusioned and disenchanted with politics, who withdrew from public life: many were disappointed that the Renaissance had not led to a golden age;² it had brought the sword rather than peace; the Genevan Calvinists and their adherents were found to be as intolerant as the Roman Catholics and theirs; also, ‘the art of printing had multiplied rubbish as well as valuable matter’.

They were equally sceptical about love and women: for them, physical beauty was frequently just superficial. Busenello’s libretto contrasts the carnal pleasures of the imperial Roman couple, with the self-control and constancy of Nero’s tutor, the ‘Stoic’ philosopher Seneca. (The nineteenth century historian Lord Macaulay described reading Seneca as similar to dining on nothing but anchovy sauce - it’s heavy going except in very small helpings.)

L’Incoronazione di Poppea was given its first performance in Venice in the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo, a recently-constructed theatre. (Although the theatre belonged to a patrician family, the audience would have been several hundred people of various classes, not just aristocrats.) As was usual at the time, castrati were prominent in the cast, so today’s audience has to get used to counter-tenors singing the roles of the aggressively sexual Roman emperor and his lieutenant Ottone.³ The opera is long: one edition lasts nearly four hours; another, is cut to two and a half hours.

The manuscript of L’Incoronazione di Poppea was probably lost in the many fires suffered over the years by Venetian theatres in Venice. The opera has been considerably reconstructed. The surviving sources are principally two complete, or nearly complete, but ‘at times sharply differing’, scores, which date from after the first performance; together with around ten manuscript and printed versions of the libretto.

Unlike the operas of later centuries, in which the parts to be played and sung are fully written out in the orchestral score, note-by-note, manuscripts for this period largely consist of music for the voice part together with a continuous bass part known as ‘figured’ bass.⁴ It was up to musicians, probably located on both sides of the stage, to fill in the middle parts, and improvise as appropriate ‘on the night’, using the harmony dictated by shorthand numbers printed under the bass line.

The instrument providing the ‘continuo’ bass line had to be capable of sounding chords, several notes at once. So, today, we may see in the orchestra pit an unusual-looking lute with very long strings, such as the theorbo or chitarrone, as well as a portative organ or harpsichord. Whatever instrument is used, it has to be sufficient to provide a bright powerful tone suitable for supporting the voice.

The shorthand technique of writing down music has resulted in it being difficult, in recent times, to establish an authoritative text; and several different performing editions have been published. Every production is likely to be different. Besides, producers, who do not wish the audience to be excessively challenged by the length of the opera, will cut it considerably.

There are differing views even about how much of the music was composed by Monteverdi, himself. The gorgeous final love duet, Pur ti miro, I adore you, was almost certainly not composed by him. Neither score is from Monteverdi’s lifetime; neither mention the composer’s name; both conclude with Pur ti miro. There is much for musicologists to argue and speculate about.

Although it was performed elsewhere at the time, the opera went into abeyance. But it was revived just before World War I. However, it really only began to be heard frequently in the 1960s. Then, presented by the Cambridge musician Raymond Leppard, it was generally recognised as a supremely beautiful and important work. This was around four hundred years after Monteverdi’s birth. In the past half-century, the increasing interest in period instruments has given the baroque composer a considerable boost.

1 This was around the time of the start of the English Civil War, between the King and Parliament, the cavaliers and roundheads, which led eventually to the execution of King Charles I and the Protectorate of Cromwell.

2 This pessimism, with the consequent scepticism, was encapsulated in the Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), the French thinker. He described the vanity of life, ‘the vanity of human reason, wishes, thoughts and action’. It has been said that Montaigne began ‘the age of disenchantment’ with the Renaissance.

3 As Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream can show, a countertenor can find it hard to balance a dramatic soprano. This weakness also manifests itself in ensembles in Monteverdi’s well-known Vespers of 1610.

4 Brass is occasionally used for festive moments such as Poppea’s coronation.

WHO’S WHO AND WHAT’S WHAT

This summary is based on the libretto. As mentioned in the Warning! at the end of this eBook, certain directors may amend opera stories to suit their production.

The goddess of Love (Venus) wins an argument with Fortune and Virtue about which of them is the greatest.

The opera takes place in Rome in AD 58, on a single day (a requirement of classical drama). Ottone, a noble lord, visits Poppea, the courtesan, and finds that the Emperor Nero has got there first, as is evidenced by the presence of two of his bodyguards asleep outside.⁵

Poppea’s nurse Arnalta is particularly worried about how Nero’s wife Ottavia will react to the affair. Ottavia rejects her nurse’s suggestion that she find another man. Seneca, the stoical philosopher and Nero’s former tutor, suggests that she should be indifferent to the pain it causes her. This annoys Valletto, Ottavia’s page, who is chasing the lady-in-waiting, Damigella.

Seneca, a proponent of Virtue, philosophises. But he is warned by Athene, the goddess of Wisdom, that his end is nigh. Nero is determined to divorce Ottavia, and is displeased with Seneca’s forthright warnings. Poppea’s sex-appeal induces Nero to promise to crown her empress. She then claims that Seneca is ‘too big for his boots’ and needs to be got rid of.

Meanwhile, Ottone, having remonstrated unsuccessfully with Poppea, gives himself to a somewhat wary Drusilla, a lady of the court whom he spurned in the past.

Mercury, the messenger of the gods, warns Seneca, who is philosophising in his garden, that he is about to die. Nero’s Captain of the Guard tells him to commit suicide.⁶

In complete contrast, Valletto, the page, succeeds in seducing the lady-in-waiting, Damigella. Together with Lucano, the poet, Nero rejoices that Seneca is dead. Ottavia orders the reluctant Ottone to disguise himself as Drusilla and kill Poppea.

Arnalta lulls Poppea to sleep. Love, like the ‘deus ex machina’ who arrives just in time in an ancient Greek tragedy, intervenes to warn her that Ottone, dressed as Drusilla, is about to strike.

Arnalta denounces Drusilla who, after being caught, is sentenced to torture and death. But Ottone intervenes and gives himself up. Nero exiles Ottone, whom Drusilla chooses to follow, and he banishes Ottavia.

Arnalta rejoices in the success of her mistress, in her consequent promotion and the power of patronage which she will enjoy. After the Coronation, Nero and Poppea sing the love duet Pur ti miro, Love has indeed triumphed.

There are twenty-one characters in the opera: some singers will perform more than one part, or their music may be cut.

5 The soldiers, Arnalta, and Octavia’s nurse and page are derived from stock comic types in the ancient Commedia dell'arte. In their outdoor performances in temporary venues, these were often masked, like Harlequin. Their shows involved ribald humour, often featuring sex, disease, cuckolds, geriatrics and so forth. Here, they introduce the characters and comment on the action of which they are not actually part.

6 The librettist used some poetic license. He brought Seneca’s death forward by about three years. But here, where it is the fulcrum of the story, it is re-located in the middle of the opera. His death ‘unleashed the tide of immorality that is so shocking’ in the opera.

TALKING POINTS

Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Claudio Monteverdi, son of a chemist, was one of the most influential figures in the history of music. He was born on 15 May, 1567 in Cremona in Northern Italy. He was a contemporary of the astronomer Galileo, who was slightly older. By the age of twenty, Monteverdi had published a book of secular songs (called madrigals). In the 1590s, he moved to Mantua as a string player in the ducal court of the ruling Gonzaga family. He was also in the duke’s retinue when he went to Hungary to fight the Turk, and to take the waters in Flanders.

By 1600, Monteverdi was established as a composer. In subsequent centuries, his successful Orfeo, which was produced in 1607, has been regarded ‘by common consent’ as the first great opera. At the time, it made him ‘famous with one stroke’.

Only two sons survived from his marriage with one of the court singers. After his wife’s death, feeling undervalued and over-criticised, and overworked by an order to provide music for the festivities at a ducal wedding, he became disenchanted. He left Mantua in 1608. He had a nervous breakdown, and was eventually dismissed.

When he was still employed by Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, he assembled the music which he later had published as The Vespers of 1610, possibly to demonstrate his credentials as an expert composer of church music, even though in Mantua it seems that he was mainly employed to compose secular music.

In 1613, Monteverdi was appointed to the supremely prestigious position of master of music at St Mark’s in Venice. There, music was at a low ebb and his administrative skill improved the quality considerably. Monteverdi’s long life included surviving the Venice plague of 1630-31, and extricating his son from the Inquisition.

Despite his status and his position at St Mark’s, where he had taken holy orders, Monteverdi was prepared to get involved with the theatres. In his final years, he composed three operas, only two of which have survived, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1640) and L’Incoronazione di Poppea (1643). He died on 29 November, 1643.

Who really wrote the opera?

Both of the surviving complete scores date from around ten years after the first performance. Both conclude with the duet Pur ti miro.

Composers at this time often collaborated in producing an opera. To conclude an opera with a love duet also became common.

Maybe most of the L’Incoronazione di Poppea is Monteverdi’s, but, among other changes, it seems likely that the role of Ottone was re-written after his death. The whole of the final scene is a later addition, probably provided by a highly regarded composer operating in Venice in the 1640s, Francesco Sacrati (1605-1650). He was probably assisted by Benedetto Ferrari (c. 1603-1681) who, a few years previously, had brought public opera to Venice. Experts consider that it is likely that one of these, or some younger composer, composed Pur ti miro. Ferrari was an impresario and lute player. His Andromeda was the earliest Venetian opera to which the paying public was admitted. Pur ti miro also appeared in his Il pastor regio.

Unless we wish to hear ‘a single composer’s voice in this work’, we should not allow the question about who composed it to distract us or reduce our enjoyment of it.

The ‘birth’ of Opera

For many years, courtly entertainment had included pastoral dramas. Musical interludes were inserted into plays, for example, when scenery was being shifted. But the music of the Renaissance, multi-part and with long vocal lines, was not suitable for the performance of drama itself.

Towards the end of the 1500s, a group of Florentine dilettanti, noblemen and singers, known as the Camerata, in which the father of the great Galileo took a leading role, experimented in ‘new music’. For them, the old Renaissance music, where the sequence of notes follow one another according to strict and supposedly ancient Greek rules, had the effect of lacerating the words. Anyway, the rules were a recent invention, and were far from being derived from the ancient classical sources, as was claimed.

The Camerata argued heatedly that the words should determine and predominate over the music, not vice versa. Their music, although it had shorter singable phrases, was a somewhat monotonous and dry product, which was derided by the conservative musicians, but it evolved into the first operas, with continuous music.

Some works by Cavalieri, a member of the Camerata, were included in the 1589 lavishly extravagant celebrations for the marriage of Ferdinando de Medici⁷ and Christine of Lorraine. It was a short step for Jacopo Peri to produce the first opera, Dafne. His second opera was performed at the celebrations in 1600 for the wedding of Henry IV and Ferdinando’s niece, the beautiful Marie de Medici (later, Regent of France). Monteverdi probably attended this event in the retinue of Duke Vincenzo di Gonzaga.

However, the operatic part of the celebrations was deemed not to have been a success: the recitative style was declared ‘boring’ and ‘like the chanting of the Passion’. Opera was not repeated at another Medici wedding in 1608. Meanwhile Monteverdi had composed Orfeo, which showed ‘wonderful fluidity of purpose, slipping from recitative to arioso and even aria, without the strict division which later stultified so much seventeenth and eighteenth century opera’. In a nutshell, Monteverdi picked up the forms and techniques of his predecessors and rendered them ‘viable for lesser men’.

The Venetian carnival, held between Christmas and Shrove Tuesday, provided a setting in which this form of opera could prosper. The boxes and private dining rooms became a centre of Venetian social and political life for the prosperous patrician class. Opera became a business, and began to supplant the popularity of spoken drama. Public enthusiasm for it was evidenced by the development of new purpose-built opera houses. Five new operas were performed in the three seasons following the opening of the Teatro S. Cassiano in 1637. The craze for opera soon spread to other cities such as Rome and to Naples, which was Europe’s fourth largest city.

The real Nero

Nero (37-68 AD) was the great-nephew, step-son and adopted-son of Claudius whom he succeeded in AD 54. This descent was through his mother, who was married to Claudius - after she despatched her predecessor, and before she despatched him. So the precedents were not promising. Nero was dominated by two very determined women, his mother Agrippina and his second wife Poppæa.

At first, Nero was ‘young, generous and genial’, possibly owing to the influence of his tutor, Seneca, who became one of his top civil servants. The first five years of his reign, during which his unscrupulous mother still maintained power, were stable. His ‘childish vanity and savage temper, and wild-beast streak’ were as yet undisclosed. Nero married Claudius’s daughter Octavia.

Nero became increasingly profligate and unstable. In a slave’s disguise, he would wander through the streets of Rome to visit brothels and taverns, beating up the place together with his cronies such as Otho (Ottone), a ‘young man of fashion and high rank’.⁸ In AD 58, Nero started an affair with Poppæa. The couple attempted to drown his mother by luring her into a boat which then fell to pieces. But Agrippina could swim; so his soldiers had to murder her in her house, instead.

Nero soon devoted his time to popular sports such as chariot racing, games, and musical and artistic exhibitions. Poppæa tightened her grip: Seneca was retired and potential opponents of Nero were eliminated. Octavia was divorced, banished and soon murdered. Poppæa was supreme.

Poppaea

The earthquake at Pompeii in AD 63 and the great fire of Rome in the following year (while Nero ‘fiddled’ as the city burnt) were interpreted as the wrath of the gods, despite Christians being used as scapegoats. Nero built an enormous Golden Palace for himself, its walls blazed with gold and precious stones. The provinces were pillaged to pay for it.

In AD 65, the year of Poppæa’s death, a failed coup resulted in Seneca’s suicide. Nero became panic-stricken about conspiracies. In late 66, he went to Greece where he wanted to display his artistic gifts to an audience more appreciative than that in Rome. Conspiracies in Rome continued against him. There were risings in the provinces such as Gaul. Nero returned from Greece. When the conspiracies looked like succeeding, he committed suicide, aged thirty-one. Even as late as the eleventh century, his ghost was seen in Rome.

Seneca and the Stoics

Seneca (c.3 BC – 65 AD) was virtually a contemporary of Jesus Christ. He came from Cordoba in Spain. He was ‘the most eminent among Latin writers of his time’, and was expert in rhetoric like his father. After ups and downs, at a time when intrigue and ‘backing the right horse’ was so important, he became the confidential adviser to Nero’s mother Agrippina. As the top civil servant, he steered Nero through his successful early years.

He was at one time the most prominent of the Roman Stoics. Stoicism was a comprehensive system of philosophy. It was called after the ‘stoa’ (the Greek word for porch) in Athens in which Zeno, its founder in around 300 BC, used to lecture. In contrast to the adherents of Epicurus, who taught that pleasure, luxury was the chief good, the Stoics regarded virtue as the highest good and were indifferent to pleasure, pain and austerity. Stoicism was subsequently adopted in Rome, where for two centuries or more it was ‘the creed of all the best of the Romans’. It perhaps owed its success to the fact that it was a practical philosophy, ‘a rallying point for strong and noble spirits contending against the odds’.

After Agrippina’s murder, Seneca duly provided Nero with a defence. He amassed enormous wealth. He possessed great talent and suppleness, and some, but not all, of his themes (e.g. forgiveness, and universal benevolence) are suggestive of Christian themes.

Of his tragedies it has been said that ‘as specimens of pompous rant they are probably unequalled’. He was a vegetarian and water drinker.

The real Poppæa: a warning to wives and girlfriends

Tacitus is the main source for information about Sabina Poppæa, and this period. The granddaughter of a distinguished former Consul of Rome, she was an aristocrat. He summed her up:

She ‘had everything but a right mind. Her mother, who surpassed in personal attractions all the ladies of her day, had bequeathed her both fame and beauty. Her fortune adequately corresponded to the nobility of her descent. Her conversation was charming, and her wit anything but dull. She professed virtue, while she practised laxity. Seldom did she appear in public. When she did, her face was always partly veiled, either to disappoint men’s gaze or to set off her beauty. Her character, she never spared. She made no distinction between a husband and a paramour. She never allowed herself to be a slave to her own passion or to that of her lover. As soon as there was a prospect of advantage, she just transferred her favours.’

She deserted a Roman aristocrat by whom she had a son, and married Otho (Ottone), who foolishly boasted to Nero about her charms: ‘often, as he rose from the emperor’s table’, Tacitus writes, ‘Otho was heard to say that he was going to her, to the high birth and beauty which had fallen to his lot, to that which all men pray for, the joy of the fortunate’.

With Nero, Poppæa played ‘hard-to-get’: ‘As soon as his love grew ardent, she would change and be supercilious, and, even if she were ‘detained’ more than one or two nights, would say again and again that she was a married woman and could not give up her husband.’

Nero, who loathed his wife Octavia, had previously got his pleasure with Acte, a ‘freedwoman’. But he was ‘tied down by this slave-girl mistress from whom he had derived nothing but what was low and degrading’. This behaviour had been tolerated, because, had she not satisfied his needs, ‘he might have rushed into outrages on noble ladies’. He longed to possess an aristocratic beauty like Poppæa.

Nero sent Otho away to be governor of Lusitania (part of Spain and Portugal). He alleged that Octavia was barren; and then he married Poppæa. So as to facilitate Nero’s divorce from Octavia, Poppæa arranged for a slave, an Egyptian, ‘skilled at singing to the flute’ to be accused of having an affair with Octavia. But this was a palpable lie; and because of Octavia’s popularity, Nero had to take her back.

Poppæa, although she was unpopular and the people destroyed the statues of her, fought back. So Nero arranged for a more prominent figure, his own ‘fixer’, who had already murdered his mother, to admit to having an affair with Octavia. Despite having alleged that Octavia was barren, Nero now accused her of having an abortion. When she was murdered by slitting her veins, Octavia was so frozen with terror that the blood would not flow. So they put her in a hot bath. Her severed head was sent to Poppæa.

The castrati and the sounds made by the singers

The part of Nero was sung by a male soprano; those of Ottone and Arnalta were sung by male altos. Modern counterparts could not possibly sound the same, so, however much the performance may aspire to be authentic, it will not be. Usually the castrato grew exceptionally tall and large, and reputedly could provide immense power, while sounding like a choirboy. This sounded very different from the youthful softness of the female voice, whose technique of vocal production at this period was probably different, lighter and less powerful, than that to which audiences have been familiar from the nineteenth century onwards.

The origins of the castrati were ecclesiastical. Small boys had not sufficiently powerful voices to deliver the ornamented Church music that was expected of them. Because St Paul had forbidden women to perform in churches⁹ - the only church choirs with women were in convents - it became necessary to employ eunuchs. So castration was permitted, provided it was declared to be necessary for medical reasons, or was undertaken with consent of the boy. For three hundred years until 1898, there were castrati in St Peter’s in Rome. The soprano-male concept endured in roles such as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, Prince Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier.

Like footballers today, good performers were exceptionally hard to find and were in great demand. So the few successful castrati were very highly paid. Cafarelli purchased a dukedom. ¹⁰ The less successful led a life of drudgery.

Emotions and Characterisation

Monteverdi wanted the music to bond with the word: together they should communicate the emotions of the characters that he wished to depict on the stage. This is what the great opera composers subsequently sought to do, to a greater or lesser degree - lesser, when opera became a mass-production business in the first half of the nineteenth century, at the time of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, to pick a random example.

The extent to which music supports word, and has primacy, or vice versa, has been a matter of contention down the years and was even central to Richard Strauss’s opera Capriccio. But it is astonishing that, at the outset of the history of opera, Monteverdi recognised this issue: his final operas ‘illuminate almost every aspect of human emotional experience: laughter, weeping, raging, waking up and falling asleep’.

Monteverdi, following tenets of the Greek dramatists, believed that music should express the three main emotional states, namely ‘anger, moderation, and humility/supplication’. For him, music therefore should have three equivalent styles, the agitated/aroused (concitato), the soft (molle) and the moderate (temperato). There should be little doubt which emotion is being expressed: the agitated style is used when war or the like is mentioned.¹¹

It is not just a matter of dividing music into categories. Monteverdi’s genius was his ‘penetrating expression of human psychology’. In his operas, the drama is enhanced, and characters appropriately differentiated and described, by means of music suffusing the words of the libretto, using lyricism where appropriate, but withholding it where a more austere emotion is being expressed, for example. Had he not done this, the art-form would have been unsatisfying, dull and undramatic, and possibly would not have endured.

Poppea’s impetuosity, characterised by a rapid succession of quickly paced musical ideas, contrasts with the writing for Arnalta, which is generally slow moving and calm. One can hear different types of love-making portrayed: the sexuality of Nero and Poppea; and the flirtatious valet and ladies-maid. Conversely, the marital row between Poppea and Ottone, towards the end of act 1, is particularly realistic.

The characterisation is perhaps most obvious with Nero, who is hysterical and besotted with his own power and Poppea’s body. Other examples of well-drawn characterisation are when Valletto, one of Ottavia’s servants, tries to pick a quarrel with the old Seneca. And when Drusilla fantasises about making love with Ottone: while her heart is as light as air, Ottone is rather less enthusiastic and claims that he has feet of lead.

Ottavia’s failing voice in Addio, Roma depicts, in a highly realistic manner, her Farewell. And Seneca’s ode Amici, è giunta l’ora, as he prepares for death, is one of the most famous pieces, not just for its beauty but also for its dignity and realism.

7 Ferdinando, who loved classical sculpture, was made a cardinal when he was aged fourteen. His villa in Rome was the location where, some centuries later, the recipients of the coveted Prix de Rome, such as Berlioz and Gounod, studied. Despite his extravagance, he hoarded cash and had a room built which may be regarded as the first bank vault. The wedding celebrations included a mock naval battle in a flooded courtyard of a palazzo.

8 Otho, Nero’s predecessor with Poppæa, became Emperor in the year after Nero’s death, a year known as ‘The Year of the Four Emperors’. Otho ruled for three months and came to grief in a battle near Cremona, Monteverdi’s birthplace.

9 This is found in the Bible, 1 Corinthians ch 14, v. 34. A CD has been produced of ‘The Last Castrato’, Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1922) based on recordings made in 1902 and 1904.

10 Castrati could ejaculate but were infertile – the fact that they were ‘risk-free’ made them attractive to women concerned about unwanted pregnancies. Caffarelli (1710-1783) was surprised, in flagrante delicto, by a husband returning home unexpectedly. The castrato had to take refuge in a disused water tank, causing considerable damage to his health.

11 Anger, it was said, should be like a brave man who is engaged in warfare or is neurotic. Then we may hear the strictly measured repeated notes (a kind of ‘goat’s trill’) of the stile concitato. Much of this embellishment had however gone out of fashion by the time of Monteverdi’s final operas, although relics of it may be heard when Nero rages with Seneca, and when Ottavia’s servant mocks Seneca.

ACT BY ACT

Prologue

In the Prologue, the goddesses of Fortune, Virtue and Love bicker. Fortune tells Virtue she should ‘get lost’, she is second-rate, and even sells honours for a living. Virtue retorts that she is the essence of godhead, and is the ladder by which one can climb up to heaven. Love claims to be supreme (and even transcends eternity, Time). She has the merits of both virtue and fortune. The other two agree that no god dares to challenge the power of Love. The opera will show that they are right.

Act 1

The action takes place in Rome on a single day in AD 58. It begins at dawn outside the house of the courtesan Poppea. Ottone (a castrato) has returned to his beloved Poppea, like iron to a magnet, like a brook to the ocean. He finds a couple of Emperor Nero’s bodyguards asleep outside.

Unfortunately, this means that the emperor is in bed with Poppea. The loutish and comic guards wake up, one rather sleepily. They curse Love, and complain that Empress Ottavia¹² wrings her hands while Nero enjoys Poppea instead of suppressing a rebellion in Armenia. But, ‘Be careful! Do not risk being overheard!’

In the bedroom, Poppea pleads with Nero (another castrato) not to leave.¹³ He wants their affair to remain secret until the empress is told. They sing a passionate love duet.

Poppea rejoices in her upward mobility: the throne is not just a dream but a reality. Her wise and constant nurse Arnalta is less confident, and is particularly worried about Ottavia’s reaction. But Poppea has Love and Fortune on her side.

Ottavia laments her fall and is outraged at the way Man treats Woman: Disprezzata regina. She imagines Nero at work with Poppea and calls on Jove, the king of the gods, to strike him down. She firmly rejects her Nurse’s suggestion that she find another man for herself.

Seneca, the philosopher and Nero’s former tutor, is sorry to find the empress in tears. He stoically suggests that she should be pleased: the more Fortune beats you, the greater the glory; if nobody strikes the anvil, no sparks will fly. Ottavia tells him that his advice is so much hot air. Valletto, one of Ottavia’s servants, tries to pick a quarrel and threatens to set light to his library and his beard.

Pallas Athene, the Godess of Wisdom, warns Seneca that things do not look good. He has a premonition of death. When Nero tells Seneca that he is going to desert Ottavia, who is both barren and frigid, the rationalist philosopher warns the emperor, to his considerable annoyance. Nero however does not care tuppence for public opinion.

Poppea trusts that she, the possessor of breasts like ripe apples, has given Nero pleasure. The besotted emperor proposes to divide his kingdom with her, although he believes that his power and kingdom are unworthy of her. She tells him that Seneca claims that he is the power behind the throne, and needs to be got out of the way. Nero, in a rage, orders Seneca’s death.

Meanwhile Ottone laments being a cuckold, and remonstrates forcefully with Poppea, who is contemptuous. He curses her; and, in an apparent quick change of heart, he gives himself to the slightly wary Drusilla.

Act 2

The scene changes to Seneca’s garden - deliberately a place far from public life - where he philosophises. He is glad to be far from the superficial court. The Captain of the Guard arrives to tell him to commit suicide.

Seneca sings an ode to his friends, as he prepares for death: Amici, è giunta l’ora, the time has come when they must follow the principles which he has always espoused. The three-voiced chorus of Seneca’s friends tries to persuade him that life is too sweet to die: there are pleasures to be had. (In the contrast between the chorus and Seneca’s speech, we can hear the confrontation through ‘musical means, of the virtues of stoicism with the transitory pleasures of earthly existence’. Seneca, the mouthpiece of Roman stoicism, draws attention to the anxiety and hardship of public life. Those called to public service must expect this, and to suffer.)

Back in the city of Rome, in total contrast, Valetto seduces Damigella, Octavia’s lady-in-waiting. Nero rejoices with his friend Lucano, the poet, that Seneca is dead. In a lively ribald duet, they sing a licentious song about the pleasures of sex, about lips of coral.

Ottavia demands Ottone’s help: he must disguise himself as a woman and kill Poppea. She is surprised that he baulks at the suggestion. He had better get on with it, or she will accuse him of trying to rape her: in which case, he will come to a grisly end.

Ottone has come reluctantly to borrow Drusilla’s cloak. She fantasises about making love with him. While her heart is as light as air, he is less enthusiastic and claims he has feet of lead. Meanwhile, Valletto teases the nurse about becoming young and attractive again, and enjoying the pleasures of sex; but she is ‘past it’.

Poppea is obsessed with love, sex and power - and becoming empress. Arnalta chides her, but will protect her. She lulls her to sleep in a berceuse. Love (Venus) warns that she would be unwise to sleep.

Ottone dressed as Drusilla, is about to strike, when Love, like the ‘deus ex machina’ of ancient Greek tragedy, intervenes at the last minute. There is a general alarm and a hunt for Drusilla.

Act 3

Drusilla rejoices that Poppea is to die. But Arnalta, with a Lictor, a ‘Roman policechief’, catches up with her and denounces her for attempted murder of Poppea. Out of love for Ottone, and in the interests of Seneca-like constancy, and Stoic respect for destiny, she confesses. Nero sentences her to torture and death. But then Ottone intervenes and gives himself up. Nero exiles Ottone, who Drusilla chooses to follow.

Poppea tells Nero that he can now justify divorcing Octavia and crowning her, Poppea, empress. He does so. Before her coronation, Poppea sings of her love in a magnificent love duet with Nero. Nero announces that he repudiates Ottavia. He condemns her to be launched out to sea in a boat. Octavia bids her homeland farewell as she leaves for exile: Addio, Roma, addio patria, amici addio. (This is made of short phrases, making great use of dissonance.)

Arnalta is delighted with her promotion and with the power of patronage which it will confer. But, it is illusory. Better be born a lady and die a servant!

The Coronation takes place. After this, Nero and Poppea sing the love duet Pur ti miro, My beloved, I adore you.¹⁴ Love has indeed triumphed – even if it is love of the unenduring, fragile, brittle variety that will soon be shattered.

12 The part of Ottavia was written for Anna Renzi, who was one of the most celebrated singers of the time. She was exceptionally good at acting the part which she was singing.

13 Once, in Glasgow, the bed was not properly anchored and kept rolling around the stage. At the end of the scene, the bed refused to leave the stage. Two ostensibly nude bodies were stuck in it and were unable to get off-stage. The sensuous scene descended into farce.

14 Sometime a relatively small succession of notes in the bass will be repeated many times successively, as in the duet at the end of the opera, Pur ti miro, when a five-note bass is repeated, while the glorious music is ‘realised’ above it.

GLUCK

Orfeo ed Euridice

Orphée et Eurydice

CONTENTS

Orfeo ed Euridice, Orphée et Eurydice: BACKGROUND

WHO’s WHO and WHAT’s WHAT

TALKING POINTS

Gluck

The story of Orpheus

More about Reform opera

The Querelle des Bouffons and Gluck’s Paris version

The Berlioz version

ACT BY ACT

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

ORFEO ED EURIDICE, ORPHÉE ET EURYDICE: BACKGROUND

Until the revival of baroque opera after World War II, Gluck was the earliest composer to hold a place in the operatic repertoire. His Orfeo was regarded as ‘the great-great-grandfather of operas’.

At that time, radio listeners became familiar with its individual ‘best tunes’, particularly Che far’ó senza Euridice?¹ recorded by so many of the great, notably Kathleen Ferrier; and later, Maria Callas and Janet Baker.

This Italian aria dates back to Gluck’s original Orfeo ed Euridice which was premièred in the Court theatre in Vienna on 5 October, 1762. This was a moment in musical history three and a half years after Handel died: and it took place just a few days before the six year-old Mozart jumped on the broad lap of Empress Maria Theresa, navigated her ample bosom and gave her a juicy kiss.

Orphée et Eurydice, in French, which Gluck adapted and extended for his production in Paris almost twelve years later, included today’s favourites such as his Dance of the Blessed Spirits and Eurydice’s Cet asile aimable et tranquille.² The elaborately ornamented Amour, viens rendre à mon âme, which concludes act 1, derives from an edition prepared nearly a hundred years later by Berlioz, the French composer. Of all the versions of the opera, it is the ‘Berlioz’ one which is generally heard today.

Meanwhile, Orfeo had been performed around Europe. In London, in 1770, it was extended with music provided by J. C. Bach, the ‘English Bach’, the son of J. S. Bach.

The original Orfeo ed Euridice, which is notable for its simplicity but particularly for its briefness - hence the Bach additions - provides a musical milestone between the elaborate Italian operas recently exemplified by the followers of Handel, and the operas of Mozart: between, say, Giulio Cesare and Don Giovanni.

Gluck

Gluck himself had previously composed operas in the lengthy,³ ornate, baroque style with which he was familiar from his time spent in London in the mid-1740s. Those operas were designed to show off the celebrity singer’s voice. Continuity was broken because the opening section of an aria had to be repeated and ornamented; the strutting peacock (or hen) could then exit to thunderous applause while the chorus stood on the sidelines looking like two rows of organ pipes. This stilted style had reached its sell-by date. It had become absurd.

With the reform of opera in mind, the influential nobleman in charge of the Viennese theatres brought together Gluck with Raniero Calzabigi, a remarkable librettist. Together, librettist and composer declared that they wanted the ‘greatest effort to be devoted to seeking a beautiful simplicity’.

The librettist Raniero Calzabigi (1714-1795)

The colourful life of Calzabigi was first centred on Naples. He was involved in a poisoning, so he decamped to Paris. There, he ran a lottery in partnership with Casanova, who described him as ‘a great opportunist, well versed in financial operations, familiar with the commerce of all nations, learned in history, a wit, a poet and a great lover of women’. Possibly because he was implicated in a fraud, he moved on to Vienna.

But the subject matter of Orfeo, which Calzabigi based on the poems of Virgil, the classical Roman poet, was still mythological. It was desirably so not least because the authorities regarded classical Graeco-Roman subject matter as sufficiently distant and unreal that it would not be subversive. It took Mozart to humanise opera, as we know so well from The Marriage of Figaro. His characters were real, even subversively so.

Gluck own adaptation, Orphée et Eurydice adjusted for the Paris ‘market’,⁴ and to a text by Moline,⁵ was staged very successfully in August 1774, a few months after the death of King Louis XV. (Gluck worked on the sepulchral opera during the period of court mourning.) He turned his intimate court opera into full length entertainment suitable for a bigger auditorium, and the ‘butterfly-minded’ Parisians of the eighteenth century. It was ‘a slacker, more disseminated opera than the concise original’. He virtually rewrote the recitative, and, among other changes, he replaced the old-fashioned instruments with modern ones - clarinets and oboes replaced cornetti and chalumeaux.

Whichever version is used today, a modern opera house may not replicate the ‘authentic’ Orfeo which Gluck had in mind. The part of Orfeo in Vienna had been written specifically for a leading castrato, Gaetano Guadagni. For Paris, where castrati were despised, Gluck revised it for a different male. Joseph Le Gros, although considerably more fortunate than Guadagni, also came from an unusual species: he was neither castrato nor falsetto, but was the high tenor known as ‘haut-contre’. Both castrato and the ‘haut-contre’ provided a different timbre and volume from the English counter-tenor ‘whose gentler and more ecclesiastical falsetto would be ineffective, if not inaudible’, in a dramatic role in a large theatre.

Berlioz’s subsequent version, first performed in November 1859, was specifically tailored to the show off style of Pauline Viardot, the distinguished mezzo-soprano,⁶ and had input from Camille Saint-Saëns, who would later compose Samson et Dalila.⁷

Stars and ‘beautiful simplicity’ are rarely compatible. Viardot sang a long and elaborate cadenza at the end of the already highly-ornamented Amour, viens rendre à mon âme which concludes act 1. It is certainly beautiful, and ‘bravura’, but it hardly constituted the ‘simplicity’ which was Gluck’s objective.

The first stars

Handel composed the part of Didimus in Theodora for the castrato Gaetano Guadagni (1725-1792). Although regarded as a very great actor - he had been greatly influenced by David Garrick - the English public disliked him because of his reluctance to interrupt the stage action by taking applause.

Joseph Le Gros (1739-1793) came from the north-east of Paris, about forty miles from Rheims. His ‘haut-contre’ was the principal male solo voice heard in French opera between Lully and Rameau. He had a particularly good higher register from to F to B flat while his lower notes were weak. He was prominent in French musical circles and directed the ‘Concerts spirituels’ until they were dissolved at the time of the Revolution. His obesity led to his retirement in 1783.

Today, with three major versions of the opera available, there are as many compromises between them as there are publishers and conductors who have chosen to present the opera to the public. As the late Sir Charles Mackerras observed: ‘Not to use the Paris version would be to lose some of the best-loved and most theatrically effective music Gluck ever composed.’

The playwright and music critic George Bernard Shaw called Gluck ‘the Wagner of his day’. ‘Listen to Orfeo and you hear that perfect union of the poem and the music which you have only heard before in the cantatas of J. S Bach and the music dramas of Wagner. Instead of the mere opera-making musician, tied to his poem as to a stake, and breaking loose whenever it gives him an excuse for a soldier’s chorus, or a waltz, or a crashing finale, we have the poet musician who has no lower use for music than the expression of poetry’.

A hundred years earlier, a Paris salon hostess had found the music so profound, so moving, so agonising, so absorbing’ that more than twenty times she was ‘impelled to shut herself away so as to renew the pleasure’. For her, these voices, melodies, and accents ‘made very grief a substance of delight’: she felt felt herself ‘for ever haunted by those tender and lamentable strains: I have lost thee, my Eurydice’.

Similarly, many in the middle of the twentieth century experienced a deep emotional experience when they listened to Kathleen Ferrier’s ‘deep maternal contralto, of a particularly English and quite untheatrical quality’.

A later Orpheus

Kathleen Ferrier (1912-1953), a telephone operator, emerged from World War II factory recitals to be one of the finest singers of her time; she died from breast cancer aged forty-one in October 1953. In the previous February, the première of her Covent Garden Orpheus under Barbirolli ‘touched the sublime’. However, by then, her left femur had disintegrated under the treatment following a mastectomy. Three nights later, her leg collapsed after the bone broke during act 2. She managed to finish the performance. For the audience, ‘there was no hint of any catastrophe’, according to Dame Eva Turner, the soprano, also from Lancashire: ‘we were just mesmerised by her beautiful singing’.

1 Che far’ó senza Euridice? translates as ‘What shall I do without Eurydice’, ‘J’ai perdu mon Eurydice’.

2 Cet asile aimable et tranquille ,‘Happiness is to be found in this delightful and peaceful place’. Amour, viens rendre à mon âme, ‘Amor (Cupid, Love), restore to my soul its passion most ardent’.

3 For example, Handel’s Giulio Cesare lasts over three and a half hours. The ‘Vienna’, the original, version of Orfeo lasts around an hour. Berlioz’s ‘Paris’ adaptation lasts about an hour and three-quarters. To fill an evening, Gluck’s original opera is sometimes combined with his ballet Don Juan. It has even been presented in a double bill with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (1892), with Caruso and Lotte Lehmann in action!

4 Gluck said it would have been easier to have written six new operas than to fashion Orfeo in the way in which he felt obliged to do.

5 Gluck had worked with Pierre-Louis Moline (1740-1820) in the 1750s. Moline later served the French Revolution and wrote the epitaph for Marat, the radical journalist of the Revolution.

6 It has been suggested that she ‘might well be claimed as one of the most influential women in the history of music’. Her long life spanned most of the nineteenth century. Her friendship with the Russian novelist Turgenev, and the composer Gounod, is told in the author’s Enchantress of Nations, Pauline Viardot: Soprano, Muse and Lover.

7 Eurydice’s famous Cet asile aimable et tranquille was sung by a Happy Shade, an ‘ombre heureuse’, in this production.

WHO’S WHO AND WHAT’S WHAT

This summary is based on the libretto. As mentioned in the Warning! at the end of this eBook, certain directors may amend opera stories to suit their production.

In antiquity, Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus was killed by a serpent on her wedding night. She died leaving Orpheus distraught: he called to her, but all he heard was an echo.

Amor (Cupid, Love) intervened and allowed him to fetch her back from Hades, but with two conditions. Firstly, he was not to turn and look at her until they were back from the Underworld. And secondly, he was not to tell her why he was being so unloving.

With his music, Orpheus charmed the fearsome Furies and entered Hades, where Eurydice was happy among the Blessed Spirits. He led her back to Earth. On the way, she was upset because he would not look at her and admire her. Yet he would not tell her why. Eventually, he succumbed to her objections, and looked at her, whereupon she promptly died again.

He was horrified; and tried to revive her. What will he do without her? Che farò senza Euridice? But Amor came to his assistance again; and, as a reward for his constancy and fidelity, revived her. The chorus concludes the opera by singing the praise of Love.

The opera includes a large amount of ballet. The chorus and dancers represent Furies, Shades, Monsters, Elysian Heroes and Heroines, Shepherds and Shepherdesses, and Nymphs.

Who’s who and what’s what in the Underworld

(Passing reference is made to the following, depending on the version of the opera. In mythology, these characters and places developed as the notion of afterlife developed.)

Hades is ‘a dark and dreadful abode deep down in the earth’. It is the name which the ancients gave to those ‘infernal regions’ ruled by Pluto, the brother of Zeus (Jove, Jupiter) and Poseidon (Neptune). Having deposed their parents Chronus and Rhea, these three gods cast lots for the kingdoms of heaven, the seas and Hades.

Elysium is the abode of the good after they have died.Tartarus is the part of the infernal regions where the wicked are punished by the Furies, who are characterised by relentless hatred, jealousy and revenge. (In a surprising anticipation of modern techniques of communication, they are called ‘the Eumenides’, ‘the good tempered goddesses’, because it would be unwise to call them by their right name.)

The entry to Hades is Avernus, named after a lake whose sulphurous odours kill any birds that inhale them. It is guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus, who the strong-hero Hercules dragged to earth, and then released. (In the libretto, Hercules is coupled with Pirithous, who is also known for his strength.)

Erebus is the gloomy passage to Hades through which the Shades, the souls of the dead, have to walk, a valley of the shadow of death. They are obliged to drink from Lethe (the River of Forgetfulness) so that they forget everything said and done on earth. The other rivers include Acheron (the River of Sorrows) and Cocytus (the River of Lamentation). Charon is the boatman who ferries the dead across the Styx (the river of Hate) which flows nine times around Hades; its caves are the Stygian caves.

TALKING POINTS

Gluck

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was virtually just an opera-composer. He composed forty-two of them. He was born about thirty-five miles south of Nuremberg in the direction of Munich. His father, ‘a rather grim, hard, charmless man’, was a cut above the peasantry. He was a successful forester and gamekeeper who served a succession of noblemen.

After schooling under the Jesuits, where he learnt the violin, cello and organ, Gluck went, against his father’s wishes, to Prague University. After that, he studied in Italy. After his successful début as an opera composer in Milan in 1741 (with Artaserse), he went to work at the King’s Theatre in London’s Haymarket.⁸ There, he met Handel who took a dim view of his professional abilities, saying that he ‘knows no more of contrapunto as mein cock’. However, Gluck venerated Handel and had a portrait of him in his bedroom.

He moved back to the continent. His marriage to a prosperous merchant’s daughter provided him with financial security, although no children. He served in the household of the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen, who entertained the music-loving Viennese nobility with magnificent concerts. Gluck was recruited by Count Durazzo, ⁹ the enlightened but beleaguered head of the imperial theatres, who wanted to move forward from the fossilised, old-fashioned style of opera, and to cross-fertilise the best aspects of French and Italian music. It was in this period of his life that Gluck composed Orfeo ed Euridice. In the early 1770s, he went to Paris in the wake of Empress Maria Theresa’s daughter, Marie Antoinette. There, his two Iphigénie operas, Iphigénie en Aulide and ‘the crowning music drama of his career Iphigénie en Tauride’, were first staged.

Gluck was painstaking in his work and set very high standards: his routine in Paris was to have twenty or thirty rehearsals. He put ‘the fear of God’ into the actors: if there was any sign of insubordination, he would threaten to call the Queen.

After Gluck died in Vienna following a series of strokes, Mozart, another recipient of the Papal title the Order of the Golden Spur, succeeded to his position as Imperial and Royal Chamber composer, although at a considerably reduced salary. This reflected Mozart’s relatively junior position in the pecking order.

The story of Orpheus

The story of Orpheus goes back to the seventh century BC. The Greek mythological figure was the son of the river god and Calliope (the beautiful-voiced Muse of epic and heroic poetry). He played so divinely on his lyre that all nature stopped to listen to his music.

This was an obvious topic for early opera composers to seize upon; and it is therefore not surprising that a poem about Orpheus was set to music in Mantua as early as 1472. In 1607, to celebrate the marriage of the French King Henri IV and Marie de Medici,