The Coronation of Poppea
Music by Claudio Monteverdi
Libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello
Kevin Murphy, Conductor
Candace Evans, Stage Director
Mark F. Smith, Set Designer
Dana Tzvetkov, Costume Designer
Alice Trent, Lighting Designer
Walter Huff, Chorus Master
Tatiana Lokhina, Associate Music Director
Lino Mioni, Italian Diction Coach
Cori Ellison, Supertitle Author
Program Notes
by Jacqueline Westerduin
Ph.D. Musicology Student
One of history’s most morally ambiguous operas, The Coronation of Poppea brims with contradiction. Together, librettist Giovanni Francesco Busenello and composer Claudio Monteverdi blur the boundaries between good and evil. In Poppea, desire clouds rational judgment. As a result, audiences may find themselves struggling with the dichotomy between the opera’s moral lessons and its music’s beauty. We recognize the protagonists’ actions as reprehensible yet are intoxicated by their music. Despite ourselves, we desire to see their love fulfilled and cannot help but feel satisfied by Nero and Poppea’s ultimate union, though we are also disconcerted by the devastation it has left in its wake. The Coronation of Poppea was written for the 1643 Venetian opera season. Monteverdi uses the combination of noble, speech-like recitative and lyrical, song-like aria to shape the personalities of the characters and to reveal intentions hidden behind the text. The dialogue between the opera’s main characters, Poppea and Nero, is almost exclusively in song, rather than recitative. The combination of lyricism, pacing, and chromaticism charges their musical themes with a sense of eroticism that emphasizes the lovers’, especially Poppea’s, sensuality. Thus, the audience is as entranced by song as Nero is by Poppea. We can contrast Poppea’s music with that of her rival, Nero’s wife, Octavia. Abandoned by love, she is one of the most complex characters in the opera. Her conflicting emotions and motivations express themselves almost exclusively in turbulent recitative. Unlike her historical counterpart, in the opera, she is both victim and villain. Recitative’s declamatory style best expresses her reaction to events outside her control. After being discarded by Nero, Octavia laments being a scorned queen and makes a shockingly blunt feminist statement against men’s tyranny. Later, she will plot to murder Poppea. Significantly, one of the few moments in which she sings lyrically occurs in the second stanza of “Disprezzata Regina.” While singing about Poppea, she embodies her rival’s intoxicating sensuality before returning to alternating states of despair and rage. Octavia is the dramatic opposite to the proactive and seductive Poppea, and so it follows that she is also the lyrical enchantress’s musical antithesis. The opera opens with a conflict between Cupid and rival gods Virtue and Fortune, and, initially, we are led to believe that the message of the opera is the triumph of love. However, we are soon met with the duplicity of love’s victory. At least four lives are taken during the course of the opera preceding Poppea and Nero’s marriage. Furthermore, seventeenth-century audiences would have known the cruel fate awaiting Poppea just a few years afterward. The confounding message of the opera is mostly the product of the librettist, Giovanni Francesco Busenello, an active member of the prominent Venetian intellectual group, the Academia degli Incogniti. The Incogniti maintained a philosophy of strict skepticism, interrogating the existence of God and Christian morality. Members of the Incogniti chose to live a libertine lifestyle, reveling in earthly pleasures and moral ambivalence. Reading the libretto from their perspective helps us to understand the opera’s unabashed, albeit contradictory, celebration of sensual passion. 16 One of the core conventions of the Incogniti was a mistrust of appearances, especially beauty, which masks a person’s true inner reality. To quote a member, the Venetian historian Simone Luzzatto, “The human soul is made up of a mosaic, which appears to form a single idea, and on closer inspection, shows itself to be made up of various fragments of small stones . . . .” Busenello employs the mosaic analogy in crafting the characters of Poppea. One such multifaceted character is Nero’s advisor, Seneca. Although supposedly the voice of virtue, other characters refer to him in negative or mocking terms; the guards describe him as a sly opportunist, and Nero dismisses him as a madman. Even more disparagingly, as an advisor, he is impotent, and his counsel is repeatedly ignored. Monteverdi’s music, however, reveals a certain sympathy for the philosopher. Seneca’s song in Act 2, Scene 1, “L’uscir di vita è una beata sorte,” is saturated with musical pathos. Musicologist Ellen Rosen says this song “shifts into triple meter and a beautifully arched stepwise melodic line of successively smaller curves descends to a cadence, sealing Seneca’s happy acceptance of his fate and emphasizing his union with the gods.” Furthermore, at his death, Seneca’s followers sing a lament so highly imbued with chromaticism, a musical trope traditionally associated with serious expressive intent, it communicates genuine mourning. Despite his reputation, by accepting his death, Seneca finally puts into practice the stoicism he preached. This music’s sincerity reflects an alignment between the philosopher and his philosophy. However, the ensuing trio, derived from an earlier madrigal, has an inappropriate canzonetta-like tone. His followers’ liveliness contradicts Seneca’s sincerity and repudiates his stoic teachings, implying that Seneca’s counsel for virtue over desire has once again gone unheeded. Early opera was a collaborative genre; evidence suggests that Monteverdi’s contemporaries contributed to the piece, treating it as a living document as opposed to an unchangeable work. To this point, although sources indicate it is not Monteverdi’s own composition, the opera closes with the deliciously sensuous duet between Poppea and Nero, “Pur ti miro, pur ti godo.” The yearning dissonances between the interweaving voices are set over a simple descending bass line, depicting their adoration for and erotic infatuation with one another. The duet encapsulates the essence of the opera: love is an intoxicating and sometimes disturbing force, which, when given power over reason, is capable of subjugating Virtue, Fortune, and in Poppea’s case, all of Rome.
