Table Of ContentClaudio Monteverdi’s Venetian Operas
Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian Operas features chapters by a group of scholars
and performers of varied backgrounds and specialties, who confront the various
questions raised by Monteverdi’s late operas from an interdisciplinary perspective.
The premise of the volume is the idea that constructive dialogue between
musicologists and musicians, stage directors and theater historians, as well as
philologists and literary critics can shed new light on Monteverdi’s two Venetian
operas (and their respective librettos, by Badoaro and Busenello), not only at the
levels of textual criticism, historical exegesis, and dramaturgy, but also with regard
to concrete choices of performance, staging, and mise-en-scène. Following an
Introduction setting up the interdisciplinary agenda, the volume comprises two main
parts: “Contexts and Sources” deals with the historical, philosophical, and aesthetic
contexts of the works–librettos, and scores; “Performance and Interpretation” offers
critical and historical insights regarding the casting, singing, reciting, staging, and
conducting of the two operas. This volume will appeal to scholars and researchers in
Opera Studies and Music History as well as be of interest to early music performers
and all those involved with presenting opera on stage.
Ellen Rosand, George A. Saden Professor of Music Emerita at Yale (1992–
2014), is the author of Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a
Genre (1991) and Monteverdi’s Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy (2007). She has
also edited Readying Cavalli’s Operas for the Stage (2013); is General Editor of
Cavalli Opere, a critical edition of the operas of Francesco Cavalli; and founded
the Yale Baroque Opera Project, an undergraduate opera company, in 2006, with
the support of a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation.
Stefano La Via is Professor of “Storia della Poesia per musica” and “Storia
della Canzone d’autore” at the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage
(Cremona) in the University of Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. Educated at the
Universities of Rome and Princeton, he has published essays on the relationship
between poetry and music in various historical periods, with particular refer-
ence to sixteenth-century Madrigal, seventeenth-/eighteenth-century Opera, and
Auteur Song in Europe and the Americas.
Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera
Series Editor: Roberta Montemorra Marvin, University of
Massachusetts, USA
The Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera series provides a centralized and
prominent forum for the presentation of cutting-edge scholarship that draws on
numerous disciplinary approaches to a wide range of subjects associated with the
creation, performance, and reception of opera (and related genres) in various historical
and social contexts. There is great need for a broader approach to scholarship about
opera. In recent years, the course of study has developed significantly, going beyond
traditional musicological approaches to reflect new perspectives from literary
criticism and comparative literature, cultural history, philosophy, art history, theatre
history, gender studies, film studies, political science, philology, psychoanalysis,
and medicine. The new brands of scholarship have allowed a more comprehensive
interrogation of the complex nexus of means of artistic expression operative in
opera, one that has meaningfully challenged prevalent historicist and formalist
musical approaches. This series continues to move this important trend forward by
including essay collections and monographs that reflect the ever-increasing interest
in opera in non-musical contexts. Books in the series are linked by their emphasis
on the study of a single genre – opera – yet are distinguished by their individualized
and novel approaches by scholars from various disciplines/fields of inquiry. The
remit of the series welcomes studies of seventeenth-century to contemporary opera
from all geographical locations, including non-Western topics.
Curating Opera
Reinventing the Past Through Museums of Opera and Art
Stephen Mould
Digital Scenography in Opera in the Twenty-First Century
Caitlin Vincent
The Operas of Rameau
Genesis, Staging, Reception
Edited by Graham Sadler, Shirley Thompson and Jonathan Williams
Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian Operas
Sources, Performance, Interpretation
Edited by Ellen Rosand and Stefano La Via
For more information about this series, please visit: www. routledge. com /music /
series /AISO
Claudio Monteverdi’s
Venetian Operas
Sources, Performance, Interpretation
Edited by Ellen Rosand and Stefano La Via
Cover image: Musée d’art et d’histoire, Ville de Genève, photographe:
Flora Bevilacqua
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Ellen Rosand and Stefano La Via;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Ellen Rosand and Stefano La Via to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-19196-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-29192-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-20097-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429200977
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by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian Operas: Sources, Performance,
Interpretation edited by Ellen Rosand and Stefano La Via 1
PART I
Context and sources 7
1 Libertinism and politics: Notes for an Incognito reading of
L’Incoronazione di Poppea 9
MARIO INFELISE
2 L’incoronazione di Poppea within the context of Le Ore
ociose (1656) 32
JEAN-FRANÇOIS LATTARICO
3 Busenello and Monteverdi: Toward the liaison des scenes 45
MERITA MARTINO
4 Editing Poppea: Source Provenance, Performance Practice,
and Authorship 72
HENDRIK SCHULZE
5 Monteverdi the Aristotelian dramatist: The “cheerful
reversal” of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria 80
STEFANO LA VIA
6 Notes on the music manuscript for Il ritorno d’Ulisse
in patria in the music collection of Leopold I in Vienna 115
NICOLA USULA
vi Contents
PART II
Performance and interpretation 147
7 “Una lingua sciolta” Listening to the voice of Anna Renzi 149
WENDY HELLER
8 Reciting Monteverdi’s operas: Sources, practices, and
shifting paradigms 178
GUILLAUME BERNARDI
9 Heavenly masquerades: On doubling in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in
patria 194
MAGNUS TESSING SCHNEIDER
10 Monteverdi in the garden: L’incoronazione di Poppea in
Fascist Florence 212
ANNA TEDESCO
11 Otho’s perspective, Seneca’s lesson: On recent stagings of
L’incoronazione di Poppea 258
MAURO CALCAGNO
12 Conducting Monteverdi’s Venetian operas 274
JANE GLOVER
Index 279
Notes on contributors
Guillaume Bernardi, Associate Professor in Drama Studies at York University,
Toronto, is a stage director and dramaturge. His directorial work covers a wide
range of genres, from theater and opera to movement pieces. Directorial pro-
jects include the staging of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and La Giuditta, a
Baroque Oratorio by Almeida, for the Frankfurt Oper. He has collaborated
with early music artists René Jacobs and Stephen Stubbs, singers Andreas
Scholl and Suzie LeBlanc, and ensembles, such as Il Pomo d’Oro, Pacific
Musicworks, and the Festival Barocco Alessandro Stradella. He regularly con-
ducts workshops on Italian recitative, particularly in the operas of Francesco
Cavalli (Yale Baroque Opera Project, Festival d’Aix en Provence), and has
published on the contemporary performance of Baroque opera and on intercul-
tural issues in performance.
Mauro Calcagno teaches musicology at the University of Pennsylvania, where
he directs the Center for Italian Studies. His work focuses on opera and per-
formance studies, early modern music, and digital humanities. He is the author
of From Madrigal to Opera: Monteverdi’s Staging of the Self (University of
California Press, 2012) and the co-director of the Marenzio Online Digital
Edition (MODE). His book-in-progress is provisionally entitled Post-Dramatic
Orpheus: Baroque Opera on Today’s Stages.
Dame Jane Glover, Music Director of Chicago’s Music of the Baroque since
2002, is a conductor for opera companies and orchestras around the world. She
is also the author of Cavalli, Mozart’s Women, and Handel in London, as well
as the forthcoming Mozart in Italy.
Wendy Heller, Scheide Professor of Music History and Chair of the Department
of Music at Princeton University, specializes in the study of Baroque opera
from interdisciplinary perspectives, with emphasis on gender and sexuality,
art history, and the classical tradition. The winner of numerous grants and fel-
lowships, her extensive publications include the award-winning Emblems of
Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (2003)
and Music in the Baroque (2014). She is currently completing a book entitled
Animating Ovid: Opera and the Metamorphoses of Antiquity in Early Modern
viii Notes on contributors
Italy, as well as critical editions of Handel’s Admeto and Francesco Cavalli’s
Veremonda L’Amazzone d’Aragona.
Mario Infelise, Professor of Modern History at the Università Ca’ Foscari of
Venice, has been working extensively on book history, censorship, and the
politics of information in Early Modern Europe. His more recent books include
I padroni dei libri. Il controllo sulla stampa nella prima età moderna (2014);
Aldo Manuzio. La costruzione del mito (2016); and Gazzetta. Storia di una
parola (2017).
Jean-François Lattarico, Professor at the University of Lyon, and a specialist in
literature and opera of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has written on
Marino, Ferrante Pallavicino, Rospigliosi, Busenello, and Metastasio. He has
translated the works of Goldoni, Ariosto, and Metastasio, as well as various
Venetian opera librettos. In addition to his translation of La Messalina, a novel
by the infamous Incognito author Francesco Pona (2009), he has published
Venise incognita. Essai sur l’académie libertine au XVIIe siècle (2012), and
Busenello. Un théâtre de la rhétorique (2013), as well as the first critical edi-
tion of Busenello’s collected librettos, Delle ore ociose (2016). His current
projects include a book on animals in opera (Le chant des bêtes. L’animalité et
la scène lyrique) and an essay on Utopia in the writings of the Incogniti (Venise
atlante. Essai sur l’utopie politique des Incogniti).
Merita Martino completed her doctoral dissertation, entitled Le Ore Ociose
di G. F. Busenello: uno studio analitico e filologico, in the Department of
Musicology at the University of Pavia in 2009. In addition to her ongoing
research activities in the field of early seventeenth-century opera, she teaches
flute in the Italian public schools.
Magnus Tessing Schneider (Stockholm University) is a Danish–Swedish theater
and opera scholar specializing in the dramaturgy and performance practice of
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian opera. A cofounder of the Nordic
Network for Early Opera, he directed operas by Monteverdi and Cavalli in
Copenhagen. He is the author of The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don
Giovanni (2021) and editor of Felicity Baker’s essay collection Don Giovanni’s
Reasons: Thoughts on a Masterpiece (both 2021). With Ruth Tatlow, he edited
Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito: A Reappraisal (2018).
Hendrik Schulze, Associate Professor of Music History at the University of
North Texas, is the author of Odysseus in Venedig (2004) and Französischer
Tanz und Tanzmusik in Europa zur Zeit Ludwigs XIV (2012), as well as numer-
ous articles pertaining to Italian baroque opera and instrumental music, and
French baroque dance. Together with students from the University of North
Texas, he edited Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 (2013), as well as Monteverdi’s
Incoronazione di Poppea (2017). With his wife Sara Elisa Stangalino he edited
Cavalli’s operas Artemisia (2013) and Xerse (2019). He is presently at work on
a study of Aristotelianism in Venetian Opera.
Notes on contributors ix
Anna Tedesco, Associate Professor at the University of Palermo, also teaches in
the doctoral program at the University La Sapienza, Rome. Author of Il Teatro
Santa Cecilia e il Seicento Musicale Palermitano (1992), her research interests
include the reception of French Grand Opera in Italy, the musical patronage
of the Spanish aristocracy in modern Italy, and Giacinto Andrea Cicognini’s
librettos, with a focus on the influence of Spanish theater on his works. She
co-edited with Fausta Antonucci La Comedia Nueva e le scene italiane nel
Seicento. Trame, Drammaturgie, Contesti a confronto (2016). Her current pro-
ject focuses on the Baroque opera renaissance in Italy at the beginning of the
twentieth century.
Nicola Usula is a post-doctoral researcher specializing in Italian Opera and
Oratorio in Italy and Vienna in the 17th and 18th centuries. He focuses on the
dramaturgy of music and the philology of music and libretto, as well as codi-
cology and musical iconography. His main publications are philological stud-
ies of 17th-century Italian operas, including L’Orione by Francesco Cavalli, La
finta pazza by Francesco Sacrati, Il novello Giasone by Francesco Cavalli and
Alessandro Stradella, and Il Carceriere di se medesimo by Lodovico Admari
and Alessandro Melani. In 2020 he was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli
Giovani prize in “Storia e Cultura della musica” by the Accademia Nazionale
dei Lincei in Rome.
Stefano La Via is Professor of “Storia della Poesia per musica” and “Storia della
Canzone d’autore” at the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage
(Cremona) in the University of Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. Educated at the
Universities of Rome and Princeton, he has published essays on the relation-
ship between poetry and music in various historical periods, with particular
reference to sixteenth-century Madrigal, seventeenth-/eighteenth-century
Opera, and Auteur Song in Europe and the Americas.
