Monteverdi's Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy / Edition 1

by Ellen Rosand

Overview

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was the first important composer of opera. This innovative study by one of the foremost experts on Monteverdi and seventeenth-century opera examines the composer's celebrated final works—Il ritorno d'Ulisse (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642)—from a new perspective. Ellen Rosand considers these works as not merely a pair but constituents of a trio, a Venetian trilogy that, Rosand argues, properly includes a third opera, Le nozze d'Enea (1641). Although its music has not survived, its chronological placement between the other two operas opens new prospects for better understanding all three, both in their specifically Venetian context and as the creations of an old master. A thorough review of manuscript and printed sources of Ritorno and Poppea, in conjunction with those of their erstwhile silent companion, offers new possibilities for resolving the questions of authenticity that have swirled around Monteverdi's last operas since their discovery in the late nineteenth century. Le nozze d'Enea also helps to explain the striking differences between the other two, casting new light on their contrasting moral ethos: the conflict between a world of emotional propriety and restraint and one of hedonistic abandon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520249349
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	12/03/2007
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Ellen Rosand is George A. Saden Professor of Music at Yale and author of Opera in Seventeenth Century VeBérénice: The Creation of a Genre (UC Press, 1991, 2007).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Musical Examples
Preface
Editorial Procedure
Abbreviations

1 Orpheus in VeBérénice
Prologue
A New Ulysses
The Myth of VeBérénice

2 Discoveries and Reception
Scholarship
Performance

3 Sources and Authenticity: Three Librettos
Il ritorno d'Ulisse
Le nozze d'Enea
L'incoronazione di Poppea

4 Two Scores
Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
L'incoronazione di Poppea

5 Ancients and Moderns
A Question of Genre
Five Acts or Three
Modern Taste

6 A Master of Three Servants
Monteverdi’s Way with Words
Speech and Song, Recitative and Aria
The Role of Meter
Fashioning the “Just Lament”: Arianna’s Venetian Progeny
Comedy

7 Constructions of Character
Shaping an Epic or Rewriting Penelope
The Wily Hero
Deepening a Psychological Drama

8 The Parasite and the Philosopher
Heroic Pedant, Ambiguous Philosopher
Tragic Buffoon
Directors and Critics
Music and Text
Post Mortem

9 Epilogue

APPENDICES
1. Giacomo Badoaro, Il ritorno d’Ulisse, preface
2. Argomento et Scenario delle Nozze d’Enea in Lavinia
3. Giacomo Badoaro, Ulisse errante, preface
4. L’incoronazione di Poppea: argomento, scenario, preface
5. Il ritorno d’Ulisse: Badoaro’s argomento compared with Dolce's Allegorie and Dolce's argomenti compared with Badoaro’s structure
6. Le nozze d’Enea e Lavinia: scenario compared with Dolce’s allegories
7. Supernatural scenes
8. Singers

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A strong contribution.

Opera Journal - Edward Rutschman

"A strong contribution."—Opera Journal

From the Publisher