Venetian Masque in Piazza Santo Stefano during Carnival, detail. From Giacomo Franco, Abiti d’uomini e donne veneziani (Venice, 1610). Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.
Claudio Monteverdi, L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643)
Claudio Monteverdi, “Signor, sempre mi vedi” from L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643), Act 1, scene 3. Follow the Venice manuscript from the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice (I-Vnm, IT 4. 439 (==9963):
1. Performed by Concerto Vocale, conducted by René Jacobs, Danielle Borst and Guillemette Laurens (audio only with libretto):
Example 6.1, mm. 94-98 (example begins at 3:35)
2. Performed by Le Concert d’Astrée, conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm, Max emanuel Cencic and Sonya Yoncheva (video and French subtitles):
Example 6.1, mm. 94-98 (example begins at 3:57
“Non morir, Seneca,” Act 2, scene 3, mm. 1–7, performed at the Festival International d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence (1999) by Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble, conducted by Marc Minkowski; Denis Sedov, Thierry Gregoire, Michael Bennett, Ulas Inan Inaç (Video with English subtitles):
Example 6.2 (example begins at 1:10)
“Or che Seneca è motto,” Act 2, scene 6. Les Arts Florissants, William Christie (conductor), Philippe Jaroussky (Nerone) and Mathias Vidal (Lucano); Pier Luigi Pizzi (stage director):
“Pur ti miro,” Act 3, scene 8, mm. 14–18, Les Arts Florissants, William Christie (conductor), Philippe Jaroussky (Nerone) and Danielle De Niese (Poppea); Pier Luigi Pizzi (stage director)::
Example 6.3 (example begins at 0:36)
Francesco Cavalli, Il Giasone (1649)
Cavalli’s Giasone was one of the most widely disseminated operas of the period, and the one for which we have the most surviving manuscripts. Download one at the IMSLP.
“Delitie e contenti,” Act 1, scene 2, mm. 1–6, performed by the Symphony orchestra of Vlaamse opera Antwerp/Ghent, conducted by Federico Maria Sardelli and Christophe Dumaux (Giasone):
Example 6.4 (example begins at 0:45)
“Dell’antro magico,” Act 1, scene 14, mm. 4–5, performed by Concerto Vocale, directed by René Jacobs:
Example 6.5 (example begins at 0:56)
“Infelice, ch’ascolto?” Act 3, scene 21, Elizabeth Dubbin, soprano; from Auf Wiener Art: Music from the Habsburg Imperial Court, by Le Jardin Secret
Anthology 12 (example begins at 0:00)
Venetian Masque in Piazza Santo Stefano during Carnival. From Giacomo Franco, Abiti d’uomini e donne veneziani (Venice, 1610). Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.
Figure 6.1
Additional Digital Resources
- Read the reports about Venice from the English traveler Thomas Coryate in Coryat’s Crudities, reprinted from the edition of 1611. To which are now added, his letters from India, &c. and extracts relating to him, from various authors… (London, 1776), beginning at p. 194.
- Mapping Art and Architecture of of Renaissance Venice. Take a closer look at Venice with these interactive maps from Columbia University, where you will have the opportunity to look at the extraordinary detail in Jacopo de’ Barbari’s map from the year 1500; also see Venice today through google earth.
- Browse drawings and prints from Renaissance Venice from the Morgan Library.
- Explore the hundreds of Italian opera libretti—many from Venice—available for download from the Biblioteca Braidense in Milan.
Get to know how baroque stage machinery worked from the Drottningholm Court Opera Theater:
Global Resources for Chapter 6
Further Reading
Alm, Irene. “Winged Feet and Mute Eloquence: Dance in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera,” ed. Wendy Heller and Rebecca Harris-Warrick. Cambridge Opera Journal 15, no. 3 (November 2003): 216–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3878252
Brown, Jennifer Williams. “On the Road with the ‘Suitcase Aria’: The Transmission of Borrowed Arias in Late Seventeenth-Century Italian Opera Revivals.” Journal of Musicological Research 15, no. 1–2 (1995): 3–23. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/87580293
Carter, Tim. “Re-Reading Poppea: Some Thoughts on Music and Meaning in Monteverdi’s Last Opera.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 122, no. 2 (1997): 173–204. http://www.jstor.org/stable/766293
De Lucca, Valeria. “L’Alcasta and the Emergence of Collective Patronage in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Rome.” Journal of Musicology 28, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 195–230. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2011.28.2.195
Glixon, Beth L. “Private Lives of Public Women: Prima Donnas in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Venice.” Music & Letters 76, no. 4 (November 1995): 509–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/737466
Glixon, Beth L. “Scenes from the Life of Silvia Gailarti Manni, a Seventeenth-Century Virtuosa.” Early Music History 15 (1996): 97–146. http://www.jstor.org/stable/853910
Glixon, Beth L, and Jonathan E. Glixon. Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impressario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/61228604
Ketterer, Robert C. “Militat omnis amans: Ovidian Elegy in L’incoronazione di Poppea.” International Journal for the Classical Tradition 4, no. 3 (Winter 1998): 381–95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30222379
Heller, Wendy. “Daphne’s Dilemma: Desire as Metamorphoses in Early Modern Opera.” In Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression, ed. Susan McClary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. http://www.worldcat.org/title/structures-of-feeling-in-seventeenth-century-cultural-expression/oclc/823506307
Heller, Wendy. Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth- Century Venetian Opera. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51566365
Heller, Wendy. “Pleasurable Passions on the Modern Stage: Cavalli on Video.” Journal of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music 27 (1): 2017.
Heller, Wendy. “The Queen as King: Refashioning Semiramide for Seicento Venice.” Cambridge Opera Journal 5, no. 2 (July 1993): 93–114. http://www.jstor.org/stable/823797
Heller, Wendy. “Tacitus Incognito: Opera as History in L’incoronazione di Poppea.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 52, no. 1 (Spring Œ1999): 39–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/832024
Martin, John Jeffries, and Dennis Romano, eds. Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43317452
Rabb, Theodore, ed. “Seventeenth-Century Venice” (articles by Edward Muir, Mauro Calcagno, Wendy Heller, Dennis Romano, and Ellen Rosand). Journal of Interdisciplinary History 36 (2006): 331–417. http://www.jstor.org/stable/i370493
Rosand, Ellen. Monteverdi’s Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/80020015
Rosand, Ellen. “Monteverdi’s Mimetic Art: L’incoronazione di Poppea.” Cambridge Opera Journal 1, no. 2 (July 1989): 113–37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/823587
Rosand, Ellen. Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45732734
Rosand, Ellen, ed. Readying Cavalli’s Operas for the Stage: Manuscript, Edition, Production. Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera. Aldershot, Hants, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/815758042
Rosand, Ellen. “Il ritorno a Seneca.” Cambridge Opera Journal 21, no. 2 (July 2009): 119–37. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-opera-journal/article/abs/il-ritorno-a-seneca/E30D49F12421E835EA4C76BEA4E91BB8
Stein, Louise. “A Viceroy Behind the Scenes: Opera, Production, Politics, and Financing in 1680s Naples.” In Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression, ed. Susan McClary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. http://www.worldcat.org/title/structures-of-feeling-in-seventeenth-century-cultural-expression/oclc/823506307
Music in the Baroque: Companion Website by Wendy Heller 