Monteverdi: L'Incronazione di Poppea

The first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, was opened in Venice in 1637. With this new facility, opera became more accessible and wildly popular. Claudio Monteverdi’s opera,L’Incoronazione Di Poppea , was composed in 1642 to be performed in a public opera house like this one, during the carnival season in Venice. It was premiered in 1643 with Anna Renzi, a famous singer of the time, singing the role of Octavia (Fabbri, 269).

Unlike Monteverdi’s popular opera, L’Orfeo, which was composed in 1607 under the patronage system, L’Incoronazione Di Poppea calls for a small performing force. InL’Orfeo, Monteverdi denotes a very (omit very) specific instrumentation, including a great number and variety of instruments. L’Incoronazione Di Poppea was written with a much smaller budget(a smaller budget in comparison to what? I would put an example in here), and therefore uses fewer instruments (Beat, 277-281). Basso continuo is used to accompany dialogue and a very small instrumental ensemble plays the ritornellos. The low budget is only one reason for this light instrumental scoring.(This sentence about the budget being the only reason seems a little redundant) The 17^th Century Venetian opera focused on the singers and the storytelling, and Monteverdi’s orchestration allows the instruments to be subordinate and supportive.

L’Incoronazione Di Poppea was one of the first operas in which the plot is not based on Greek mythology, but rather historical events and people. Librettist Gian Francesco Busenello based much of his libretto on Suetonius’ biographies of Roman emperors. The opera tells the story of the Roman emperor Nero’s mistress, Poppea (illustrated above), and her quest to be crowned empress. Mythology does play its part in the production, with Fortune, Virtue and Cupid as main characters (Carter, 263-264).

The opera begins with a very short instrumental prelude. This introduction is in two sections. The first is slow, and uses only strings. One violin plays the role of soloist, playing a more virtuosic line with fast runs and embellishments, accompanied by two other treble stringed instruments, viola de gamba, and of course, harpsichord. The second part of the introduction is fast and dancelike, and a flute doubles the top violin voice. This type of instrumental interlude, or ritornello, appears in short segments throughout the opera.

I was surprised to hear flutes and violins accompanying the dialogue on this recording. In reading the liner notes, I found an interesting discussion on the topic by the conductor, René Jacobs. It is his opinion that the performance practice of the time would have been for instrumentalists to improvise over the basso continuo, as musicians of the time were well-versed in improvisation. He also argues that with only about ten minutes of ritornello for the entire show, it would not make sense to pay instrumentalist to sit and relax during the remaining three hours of the opera, especially on this kind of a tight budget (Jacobs 34-35). I found his argument compelling, and the addition of instrumentalists to the dialogue enhancing to the text rather than distracting.

This opera displays several of Monteverdi’s compositional characteristics. He demonstrates the effectiveness of dissonance in service to certain texts. In Act I, during a farewell scene between Poppea and Nero, Poppea says, “It is such a bitter word that from one hint of it, ah, dying, I feel my soul expiring.” Monteverdi composes at minor second between the voice and continuo to portray the “bitter word” and allows the line to descend slowly to illustrate the feeling of her soul expiring. Occasionally, he alters the libretto slightly to enhance the drama, allowing texts to overlap and interrupt one another, and sometimes repeating lines for emphasis (Burkholder, 444).

I very much enjoyed listening to this recording of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione Di Poppea. I found it particularly interesting to uncover some of the details of performance practice. Listening to and researching this opera helped me gain a better perspective on the context within which Baroque opera composers were working, and provided me with a better foundation for understanding all opera.

Works Cited

Beat, Janet E. The Monteverdi Companion. New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1972.

Burkholder, J. Peter, and Claude V. Palisca. Norton Anthology of Western Music: Volume 1: Ancient to Baroque; Sixth Edition. New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2010

Carter, Tim. Monteverdi's Musical Theatre. London: Yale University Press, 2002.

Fabbri, Paolo. Monteverdi. Translated by Tim Carter. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Jacobs, René. Liner Notes from Monteverdi: L’Incoronazione Di Poppea. Harmonia Mundi. 901330.32, 1990. CD.