Militat omnis amans: Ovidian Elegy in "L'incoronazione di Poppea"

Author(s): Robert C. Ketterer

Source: International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Winter, 1998), pp.
381-395
Published by: Springer
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 Militat omnis amans: Ovidian
Elegy in L'incoronazione di Poppea
ROBERT C. KETTERER

G.F. Busenello's libretto for L'incoronazione di Poppea, first performed in Venice in 1643 to
music by Claudio Monteverdi, is based on material from Tacitus and the pseudo-Senecan
Octavia. It depicts the defeat of virtue, as embodied in the figures of Seneca and Octavia,
by the lust and ambition of Nero and Poppaea Sabina. This analysis examines how the
neostoic moralizing of the character Seneca is overcome by the use of an Ovidian sensibil-
ity which makes the affair of Nero and Poppaea into a lover's campaign, as described
most clearly in Amores 1.9. Monteverdi's music underlines the pattern suggested by
Busenello's text, using the distinctive agitated style (stile concitato) developed in his Book
VIII Madrigals of War and Love. This bold Ovidian triumph of vice was sanctioned by its
performance during Venetian Carnival, where the immoral was celebrated and abuse of
the old moral order was "erotic and life-giving."

L'incoronazione di Poppea, the first opera taken from an historiographical source, has
a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello (1598-1659) and music by Claudio
Monteverdi (1567-1643). It was first produced in 1643 during Carnival in Venice, and
revived at least once during the seventeenth century, in Naples in 1651. The opera
condenses several years of Roman history into one eventful day, as the scheming
Poppaea Sabina ('Poppea' in Italian) and her lover the emperor Nero rid themselves of
an annoyingly moralistic Seneca, Poppaea's lover Otho, and Nero's wife Octavia, after
which Poppaea is elevated to the position of empress. L'incoronazione is generally
regarded one of opera's outstanding specimens, but it nevertheless remains a problem
for everyone interested in it, including in its difficulties the question of who actually
wrote it. The answer to this last seems to-be "a committee dominated by Monteverdi";
for the purposes of this paper, "L'incoronazione di Poppea" means the opera as it is
printed in Curtis' 1989 edition, including the coronation scene, the theophany of Venere
and Amore, and the famous final duet of Poppea and Nerone, "Pur ti miro."'

1. A. Curtis, L'incoronazione di Poppea (London: Novello, 1989), pp. v-ix, and in more detail in
"La Poppea Impasticciata or, Who Wrote the Music to L'Incoronazione (1643)?," Journal of the
American Musicological Society 42 (1989), pp. 22-45, identifies the hands of Monteverdi's
younger contemporaries, Francesco Sacrati and Benedetto Ferrari. The issue is not settled.
See further discussion by E. Chafe, Monteverdi's Tonal Language (New York: Schirmer 1992),
Ch. 13. I do not believe that my conclusions are affected if, in an attempt to reconstruct a
version of the opera closer to the original performance, one eliminates the theophany and
duet, since these are really elaborate workings-out of dramatic conclusions already made in
the earlier scenes.

Robert C. Ketterer, University of Iowa, Department of Classics, 202 Schaeffer Hall, Iowa City,
IA52242, USA.

International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 4, No. 3, Winter 1998, pp. 381-395.

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382 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Winter 1998

The opera's very effective presentation of the defeat of Virtue and philosophy by
a glorified version of Lust has led critics to quite different interpretations. Robert
Donington writes, on the one hand, "We have every appearance of enjoying here a
vicarious gratification which the ordinary world outside would probably feel (and
under these murderous circumstances would rightly feel) too guilt-ridden to be en-
joyed at all.... We are, of course, touched by the cruel fortunes of the losing side. But
we still want Nero and Poppea to win." Nino Pirrotta takes a different view of the
opera's effects: "[T]he 'scandal' of L'incoronazione does not exist, because none of the
spectators of the 'historical' drama could fail to know that the ephemeral triumph of
Nero and of Poppea would soon be paid for .... The true triumph is that of the stoic
philosopher [Seneca] who joyously meets death, the deliverer from tribulations, and
from the blindness and toil of life on this earth."2 This more serious and moral inter-
pretation of the opera has continued to be asserted in various ways, based not only on
Monteverdi's own moral outlook as priest and maestro di capella at San Marco in Venice,
but also on its apparent debt to Tacitus, the pseudo-Senecan tragedy Octavia, and
genuine Senecan stoic philosophy.3 These arguments are on the whole much better
documented than Donington's, with thorough discussions of the cultural prejudices
and literary ideas surrounding the creation of the opera, particularly in connection
with the intellectual academy that called itself Gli Incogniti.4
The conclusions they reach, however, do not accurately describe the experience of
watching the opera through to its end, an experience which is finally much closer to
Donington's assessment.5 I therefore attempt to analyze here what it is (besides simply

2. R. Donington, The Rise of Opera (London and Boston: Faber 1981), pp. 233-234. N. Pirrotta,
"Monteverdi's Poetic Choices," in: Id., Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the
Baroque (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 316. My attention was drawn
to this judgment of the opera by R. Holzer's review of Fenlon and Miller (see n. 3 below) in
the Cambridge Opera Journal 5 (1993), pp. 79-92.
3. See, for example, I. Fenlon and P.N. Miller, The Song of the Soul: Understanding 'Poppea'
(London: Royal Music Association, 1992), who conclude (p. 93), "On the surface the Tri-
umph of Love, [the opera] is in reality a celebration of [neostoic] constantia .... "See also the
excellent analysis of E. Rosand, "Seneca and the Interpretation of L'Incoronazione di Poppea,"
Journal of the American Musicological Society 38 (1985), pp. 34-71. Rosand establishes the
libretto's debt to the Octavia; available to Busenello both in the original Latin and in an
Italian translation by Hettore Nini, published in 1622 (Rosand, n. 20). She provides relevant
parallels between Nini's translation and Busenello's libretto in her footnotes to pages 42-44,
but does not firmly establish which text Busenello was consulting. Rosand believes that a
positive view of the character Seneca is a key to the meaning of the opera, and concludes
that Monteverdi's music transcends the libretto's cynicism and ambivalence and asserts a
"more credulous but nobler vision of human nature."
4. The apparent moral reversal has been ascribed to the influence of the Accademia degli Incogniti,
an intellectual circle to which Busenello belonged, which prided itself in its scepticism and
denial of conventional standards of all sorts. For the Venetian librettists as members of
L'Accademia degli Incogniti, see E. Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991), pp. 37-40. Fenlon and Miller (see previous note) deal
in detail with Gli Incogniti in Chapter 5, "Neostoicism and the Incogniti."
5. Even Pirrotta elsewhere qualifies his certainty of the moral content: "The moral, if there is
one, is in Seneca's detachment in contemplating such vain desire and raving .... " [empha-
sis mine] ("Monteverdi and the Problems of Opera," in: Id., Music and Culture [n. 2 above],
p. 252). Compare also the uneasiness about the Tacitist reading of Fenlon and Miller in the

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 Ketterer 383

the glory of t
opera's center.
used and trans
in Ovid's Amo
hours of actio
dramatic patt
message.
The very accurate metaphor which equates hearts and flowers with death and
mayhem is at least as old as the story of Penthesilea and Achilles. It finds its way into
Latin literature through comedy, where Plautus and his contemporaries associated
love'with war in a general way, as forlorn lovers competed with amorous soldiers for
their beloved, and slaves lay metaphorical sieges against masters to get money to pay
for the girls.6 Latin elegy picked up the metaphor, and Ovid crystallized the tradition
with his Amores 1.9, "Militat omnis amans."7 Especially relevant here are lines 1-2, 7-8,
and 17-30:

Militat omnis amans, et habet sua castra Cupido;

Attice, crede mihi, militat omnis amans.

I...1
pervigilant ambo; terra requiescit uterque-
illefores dominae servat, at ille ducis.
I...]
mittitur infestos alter speculator in hostes;
in rivale oculos alter, ut hoste, tenet.
ille graves urbes, hic durae limen amicae
obsidet; hic portasfrangit, at illefores.
saepe soporatos invadere profuit hostes
caedere et armata vulgus inerme manu;

review by M. Ossi, Journal of the American Musicological Society 48 (199

ers of the piece are also less certain of the moral lesson. Peter Hall, w
taped production for Glyndebourne (New York: Thorn EMI/HBO, 1984
amoral play," to be compared in this respect with Marlowe's Tamerlai
Pierre Ponnelle's production (1981) takes a thoroughly cynical view of a
ters, including Seneca. (The effort was condemned by Ellen Rosand as
"Seneca" [n. 3 above], p. 35, n. 1.) Tim Carter, in liner notes for the 199
Eliot Gardiner (Archiv) wonders "whether such arguments [explaining
do not run the danger of taking things a mite too seriously, reflecti
concept of the morally unimpeachable artist and art work. Perhaps on
the devil after all has the best tunes." Carter now has elaborated this view
"Rereading Poppea: Some Thoughts on Music and Meaning in Mont
Journal of the Royal Musical Association 122, no. 2 (1997), pp. 173-204,
that "the notion of a musically serious Seneca steering Poppea on
problematic."
6. Comic beginnings of a poetic diction for love-as-war are decribed, inter
"Militia Amoris and the Roman Elegists," Latomus 34 (1975), pp. 59-79
Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery (Toronto and London: U
Press, 1979), pp. 26-33.
7. See further J.C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores, vol. II (Liverpool: F. Cairns
especially pp. 257-60 for the development of the idea of love as war.

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384 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Winter 1998

sic fera Threicii ceciderunt agmina Rhesi,

et dominum capti deseruistis equi:
nempe maritorum somnis utuntur amantes
et sua sopitis hostibus arma movent.
custodum transire manus vigilumque catervas
militis et miseri semper amantis opus.
Mars dubius nec certa Venus; victique resurgunt,
quosque neges umquam posse iacere, cadunt.

Every lover is a soldier, and Cupid has his own camp; believe me, Atticus,
every lover is a soldier. [... ] Both watch through the night, each takes his
rest on the ground; one guards his mistress's doors, the other his general's.
[... ]. The one is sent against the dangerous foe as a spy; the other keeps his
eyes upon his rival as his foe. One besieges mighty cities, the other a cruel
girlfriend's threshold; one breaks down gates, the other doors. It is often a
good plan to attack a sleeping enemy and with armed hand to slaughter an
unarmed host (so it was that the fierce troops of Thracian Rhesus fell, and
you, captured horses, deserted your master); and lovers of course make use
of the slumbers of husbands and take up their arms while the enemy is
asleep. To pass through bands of guards and troops of watchmen is ever
the soldier's task and the poor lover's. Mars is uncertain and Venus unpre-
dictable: the conquered rise again, and those who you would say could
never be brought down fall.8

The first three words very effectively juxtapose phenomena which ought to be mutu-
ally exclusive and, ironically, are not. In the same line Cupid is noted as an active
participant in the campaign. Lines 7-8 and 19-22 note the necessity of watching before
the door of a lover, a watch which in its full dramatic form becomes the paraclausithyron,
or lover's song before the closed door.9 Lines 25-28 equate crossing through a picket
and the attack on a sleeping enemy with sneaking in and meeting the beloved while
her husband sleeps. Finally, lines 29-30 emphasize the uncertain nature of the whole
enterprise.
Monteverdi's awareness of this elegy and its equation of love and war is easily
demonstrable. His eighth book of madrigals, published in 1638, five years before the
composition of L'incoronazione, was titled "Madrigali Guerrieri, et Amorosi" ("Madrigals
of War and Love"). This collection is a set of poems on unwanted or unrequited love
by various authors, from Petrarch to Monteverdi's own contemporaries, which ex-
ploited the elegiac theme of love as battle. Among these pieces is a setting of Ottavio
Rinuccini's adaptation of Amores 1.9, which he titled "Ogni amante b guerrier."'0

8. J.A. Barsby, trans., Ovid's Amores, Book One (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 106-112.
9. The definitive study of the form is F.O. Copley, Exclusus Amator: A Study in Latin Love
Poetry, Philological Monographs 17 (Madison, Wisc.: American Philological Association,
1956).
10. For the text, translation, and score of "Ogni amante e guerrier," number 6 in the Book VIII
collection, see G.F. Malipiero and S. Applebaum, Claudio Monteverdi: Madrigals, Book VIII
(New York: Dover 1991), pp. xx-xxii and 99-117. Ottavio Rinuccini (1562-1621), in addition
to writing shorter lyrics, was essentially the inventor of the opera libretto, producing the
poetic texts for Peri's Dafne (1598) and Euridice (1600), as well as Monteverdi's Arianna

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 Ketterer 385

Monteverdi c
ful means of
excitement of
set of musica
consisted of r
distinctively
reproduced th
The stile con
madrigals, is
"I1 Combattim
the piece for
XII of Gerusa
bines the themes of love and war with Monteverdi's musical effects like the other

madrigals in the collection, but also is set in a dramatic structure which it is useful to
observe for purposes of comparison with L'incoronazione.
In "I1 Combattimento," Tancredi, a Christian knight, fights with Clorinda, a fe-
male Muslim warrior whose character owes something both to Camilla in Aeneid XI
and Charikleia in Heliodorus' Aithiopika'3 and who has done enormous damage to

(1608). All these libretti show a serious interest in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Heroides. (See
F.W. Sternfeld, The Birth of Opera [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993], especially Chapter 1,
"Orpheus, Ovid and Opera.") The full debt of Rinuccini and the other poets in the Book
VIII madrigals to Ovidian elegyhas not, as far as I know, yet been fully explored. For some
considerations of their Ovidian character, see R. Holzer (below, p. 393, and n. 24 ). Certainly
Ovid's Amores was being read and used by Italian love poets in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries; an elaboration of Amores 1.5, Marino's "Trastulli estivi" ("Summer
Pastimes"), was put on the Index of Forbidden Books for its raciness. (G. Tomlinson,
Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1987], p. 250.)
11. Monteverdi, "Foreword" to the Book VIII Madrigals, conveniently translated in O. Strunk,
Source Readings in Music History: The Baroque Era (New York: Norton, 1965), pp. 53-55; also
S. Applebaum and G.F. Malipiero (n. 10 above), p. xiv. All examples from "Il Combattimento"
are from G.P. Malipiero, ed., Tutte le Opere di Claudio Monteverdi, vol. 8, part 1 (Vienna:
Universal, 1967). For the general question of the adaptation of classical meters to Italian
verse in Late Renaissance dramatic music, see C.V. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance
Musical Thought (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), chapters 12-14.
12. C.V. Palisca, Baroque Music, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1991), pp. 132-34; D.
Arnold and N. Fortune, eds., The New Monteverdi Companion (London & Boston: Faber,
1985), pp. 244-45. For more detail on the problems involved, see G. Drebes, "Monteverdis
'Kontrastprinzip', die Vorrede zu seinem 8. Madrigalbuch und das 'Genere concitato,'"
Musiktheorie 6 (1991), pp. 29-42, and Chafe, Tonal Language (n. 1 above), pp. 234-42. Gener-
ally the style was more varied and flexible than Monteverdi described in his preface (see n.
11 above), and by the time of L'incoronazione could include a large variety of "warlike"
effects, as will be described below. Chafe seems to prefer the terms stile incitato or guerriero.
13. Torquato Tasso, Opere, vol. 1, ed. E. Mazzali (Napoli: Rossi, 1969), p. 620, n. 21. For an
analysis of Tasso's Clorinda in regard to her classical forebears, see M. Migiel, "Clorinda's
Fathers," Stanford Italian Review 10.1 (1991), pp. 93-94, 98-103. Ultimately, of course, the
character goes back to Penthesileia, the Amazon loved and killed by Achilles. The story is in
various authors including Proclus' summary of the Aithiopis; Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica
I; (Pseudo-)Dictys of Crete, Bellum Troianum, IV; and Diodorus Siculus, II.46.5. On the

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386 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Winter 1998

Christian troops. Tancredi had previously seen Clorinda without her helmet and fallen
in love with her (Canto I, stanzas 45-47); in this episode it is night, and he does not
recognize her because of her armor. He overtakes her on horseback and challenges
her. The challenge accepted, the battle begins.'4

L'onta irrita lo sdegno a la vendetta, Shame spurs anger into vengeance,

E la vendetta poi l'onta rinova: And vengeance then renews the shame,
Onde sempre alferir, sempre allafretta So that constantly they strike, constantly
as they hasten,
Stimol novo s'aggiunge e piaga nova. new stimulus is added and new wounds.
D'hor in hor piic si mesce e piis ristretta They close more and more, and more
confined,
Sifa la pugna, e spada oprar non giova: becomes the fight, so that their blades
are of no use;
Dansi con pomi, e infelloniti e crudi, they hit each other with the pommels
roughly and cruelly,
Cozzan con gli elmi insieme e con gli scudi. they butt each other with their helmets
and shields.

Tre volte il cavalier la donna stringe Three times the knight squeezes the
woman,

Con le robuste braccia, e altrettante in his mighty arms and each time
Poi da quei nodi tenaci ella si scinge, she frees herself from those binding
knots,
Nodi difier nemico e non d'amante. knots of a fierce enemy and not a lover.
Tornano alferro,... They return to their steel,...

Monteverdi's music provides a graphic aural accompaniment to the battle narrative.

(See figure 1.) Rapid stutters accompany the first six lines. Pizzicato emphasizes alter-
nating blows in the lines beginning "Dansi con pomi ... ".
But underlying these martial effects are erotic elements.'5s There is, of course,
explicit dramatic tension caused by the fact that Tancredi is trying to kill the woman
he loves; there are also undertones of violent sex in the poetry, the poet's own knowl-
edge of that fact implicit in the denial that the combatants' actions are like lovers'
embraces. Monteverdi understood this, and underscored the fact with the music. A
vigorous concitato passage (mm. 163-174) accompanying the battle grinds to a halt
with the seven measures of pizzicato mentioned above, as sword hilts, helmets and
shields crash together. Then, the passage that begins, "Tre volte il cavalier... ", slows

ancient sources and some modern uses see W. Schadewaldt, "Goethes Achilleis," in: Idem,
Goethestudien. Natur und Altertum (Ziurich & Stuttgart: Artemis, 1963), pp. 301-395.
14. The translations reproduced here of "Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda" are from S.
Applebaum and G.F. Malipiero (n. 10 above), pp. xxiii and xxiv.
15. G. Moses, "Tasso to Monteverdi: Intertextual Poetics" in: G. P. Biasin, et al., eds., Studies in
the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Memory of Arnolfo B. Femrolo (Naples: Societh Editrice
Napoletana, 1985), pp. 251-53, notes that already in Tasso's original poem there is direct
positioning of the episode in relation to the Ovidian metaphor of love as war in Amores 1.9
and II.12, but observes how Tasso "unmetaphors" the topos by presenting the man and
woman engaged in a real battle.

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Ketterer 387

TESTO

no.va d'hor iahorpiusimae . msopl L ri.stret . t sri lspu . yr

paano orke

Qul ci lapc1s 1'arco, e si strappano

le corde con duoi ditl

ups
". da "__i_...
oprar on lgiova; dani'i dn pomli *LteiLni,
._ i a cru., !
i

Figure 1: Monteverdi: "II Comba

and becomes more sensuous, with

narrative, particularly in accompa
"Nodi difier nemico e non d'amante
battle is emphasised particularly b
the words "Tornano alferro... " (m

ano di di fier

ne.mui coc non da~man te tor..nsao lferro tor~nano aLferro

Figure 2: Monteverdi, "II Combattimento," mm. 194-200

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388 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Winter 1998

The "Combattimento" ends with the death of Clorinda and a transformation in

the way in which the love theme is expressed. Tancredi discovers that he has killed his
beloved only after he deals her a mortal blow. She forgives him and asks for baptism,
which he administers as she dies.

Mentre egli il suon de' sacri detti sciolse, While he uttered the words of the holy
rite,
Colei di gioia trasmutossi, e rise: she was transfigured with joy and
smiled,
E in atto di morir lieta e vivace, and at the point of death, happy and
animated,
Dir parea: 'S'apre il ciel: io vado in pace.' she seemed to say: 'Heaven is opening,
I depart in peace.'

The music consists of a comparatively simple accompanying line in the strings

under the narrator's voice, followed by a rise, in unison now with Clorinda's voice,
supporting her rise to heaven, ending in an arresting cadence that was to become a
regular way to mark important resolutions and which appears again in the finale of
L'incoronazione.16 The battle has ended therefore not in the conflation of violence with
love, but with love as the vector for spiritual elevation of the soul to higher realms.
Softer strains describe the opening of heaven and the ascent of the soul. The Baroque
tendency to describe spiritual ecstasy in terms of physical ecstasy-famous examples
are Bemrnini's "Santa Teresa" or Caravaggio's "Conversion of St. Paul"-has here both
neoplatonic and Christian overtones. In Plato, love of body leads to love of truth. In
the context of Tasso's poetry, the symbolic battle of love leads to an ecstasy which is
Christian salvation."
In L'incoronazione di Poppea we may observe a similar elegiac combination of love
and war which turns finally to transfiguration. The pattern is in Busenello's libretto;
Monteverdi emphasized it by using similar musical techniques as in the "Combat-
timento," but with different results.
The agonistic approach to a love story begins in the allegorical prologue, in which
Fortuna and Virtii quarrel over which of them dominates human life. Fortune says
that Virtue is neglected and useless; Virtue claims that she is the only means to get to
Olympus, "the one true ladder to reach highest goals" ("lo son la vera scala / Per cui
natura al sommo ben ascende"). The debate is interrupted by Amore, who says that both
Fortune and Virtue are helpless before him, that he will defeat them both that very day
in a contest, and will put Poppea on the throne. As in Amores I.9 he is to be an active
combatant, but here he will defeat the vagaries of Fortuna rather than be subject to
them.
The contest on earth which mirrors the contest among the deities takes the form
of a series of connected rivalries: Poppea and the empress Ottavia are rivals for the

16. Curtis labels this final cadence the "Clorinda cadence," which was taken up especially by
later composers as a mark of special moments (L'incoronazione [n. 1 above], p. vii).
17. See also G. Moses, "Tasso to Monteverdi" (n. 15 above), p. 254, on Tasso and the translation
of heroic love to love of God. For the general pervasiveness of Renaissance neoplatonism on
the musical stage at this period, see Donington, Opera (n. 2 above), Chapters II, V, et passim.
See also H. Leclerc, "Du Mythe Platonicien aux Fetes de la Renaissance," Revue d'Histoire du
Theitre 11.2 (1959), pp. 106-171, for neoplatonism on the late-sixteenth-century stage.

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 Ketterer 389

emperor Nero
Ottone divid
Drusilla.19 Bu
as it is the str
restraint, obs
action on ear
difficulty is i
thus represen
chose to elabo
sides of the is
The metapho
Poppea outsid
discovers tha
guards. The g
human persp
(Act I, scene 2

1.S.: Sorgono
2.S.: SCi, resvigliati tosto... Get up, wake up at once!
1.S.: Non ho dormito in questa notte mai. I haven't slept a wink all night.
2.S.: ... sil, risvigliati tosto, Up! wake up at once,
Guardiamo il nostro posto. Let's return to our watch.
1.S.: Sia maledetto Amor, Poppea, Nerone, Be damned to Love, Poppea, Nero
E Roma, e la milizia: Rome, and the army.
Sodisfar io non posso alla pigrizia I cannot give way to idleness
Un giorno, un ora sola. for a day or even for a single hour.
2.S.: La nostra imperatrice Our empress
Stilla se stessa in pianti, dissolves herself in weeping,
E Neron per Poppea la vilipende; and Nero for Poppea rejects her.
L'Armenia si ribella, Armenia is rebelling,
Ed egli non ci pensa, and he gives it no thought;
La Pannonia da all' armi, ei se ne ride, Pannonia takes up arms and he laughs;
Cost, per quanto veggio, and thus, as you see,
L'impero se ne va di male in peggio. the empire goes from bad to worse.

In this scene there are interesting variations on the elements we noted in Amores
1.9. This is of course Ottone's paraclausithyron, as he is closed out and complaining
before the door, "keeping an eye on his rival the way a soldier does."2' But the mili-
tary theme is actually made explicit by real soldiers, who, though they are not the

18. From this point I employ the Italian versions of the characters' names used in the libretto.
19. The character may derive from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso rather than from a classical source.
Fenlon and Miller, Song (n. 3 above), p. 43. However, Wendy Heller, in an article forthcom-
ing in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, argues she is named after the sister of
Agrippina and Caligula.
20. Nerone's formal rejection of Virtue is signalled by the forced suicide of Seneca in mid-
opera. Ottone and Ottavia themselves supply Nerone with the means of getting rid of them
when they conspire to murder Poppea and are caught in the act.
21. See also Ottone's lines in I.11: "Aperte stan le porte / A Neron, ed Otton fuori A rimaso." ("The
doors stand open for Nerone, and Ottone is left outside.")

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390 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Winter 1998

lovers, must nevertheless share the lover Ottone's duty of lying on the cold ground
outside the beloved's door. Their agitated music turns into an insistent quarter note
marching rhythm adapted from the concitato style as they discuss military matters,
they point out that Nerone's affair has caused the emperor to neglect real battles in
Armenia and Pannonia while he fights love's campaign in Rome (musical example no. 3).22

La Pann-ro-ala daIr-I'arrmI, daal-'ar-mni, ed

Figure 3: Monteverdi, L'incoronazione 1.2, mm. 45-46

Hence a schism is established between Nerone's duties as emperor and his per-
sonal interest in Poppea by the contrast between the real and elegiac battles. That
schism is emphasized by the word order of the first soldier's curse on all the members
of the drama, "Sia maledetto Amor, Poppea, Nerone e Roma e la milizia," in which he
brackets the names of Poppea, Nerone and Rome with the two elements of the elegiac
metaphor, Amor and milizia.
Ottone retreats and there follows a passionate farewell between Poppea and
Nerone. Poppea's nurse Arnalta then undertakes to warn Poppea that playing with
royalty is playing with fire. Poppea defends her ambitions, and now it is she who
speaks of Love's battle; she says, "No, no, I fear no trouble." The concitato marching
rhythm returns, this time to illustrate her assertion, "per me guerreggia Amor e la Fortuna,"
"Love fights for me, and so does Fortune" (fig. 4).23
At last a real armed conflict does occur. Ottavia, deprived of all support by
Seneca's suicide at the opera's center, resorts to blackmail and violence, forcing Ottone
to attempt murder on Poppea. Ottone comes to Poppea's garden disguised in the
clothes of his admirer Drusilla, and finds Poppea asleep. It is another variation on the
elegiac motifs-this time the exclusus amator sneaks in, but it is the beloved, not her
husband, who is asleep, and Ottone's intent is a malicious and absurd inversion of
Tancredi's attack on Clorinda (Act II, scene 12; adopted from translation by A. Bardoni).

Ottone: [... ] Poppea, Poppea, t'uccido: [... . ] Poppea, I shall kill you:
Amor, rispetti, a Dio! Love, Regard, farewell!

22. All musical examples from L'incoronazione are taken from Curtis' edition (note 1).
23. Cf. Rosand, Opera, p. 329-30 and n. 13: "In Poppea's aria 'Speranza tu mi vai' (I.5) a vivid
trumpet figure is heard several times in association with the refrain 'Per me guerreggia Amor'
and thus becomes thematic of the aria." I would add further that it is thematic of the opera.
Chafe, Tonal Language (n. 1 above), p. 325, points out the tonal similarities of Nerone's
passages with those of Poppea in 1.4 ("Per me guerreggia Amor"), a linkage which suggests
that Nerone's concitato passages are also meant to be part of the "campaign of Love" I am
describing.

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 Ketterer 391

33

Figure 4: Monteverdi, L'incoronazione 1.4, mm. 33-42

Amore: Forsennato, scelerato, Madman! Villain!

inimico del mio nume! Enemy of my divine power!
tanto dunque si presume? How dare you so presume?
Fulminarti io dovrei. I should strike you with lightening!
Ma non merti di morire But you do not deserve to die
Per la mano degli dei. By the hand of a god.
Illeso va da questi strali acuti, Go, unhurt by these sharp arrows;
Non tolgo al manigoldo i suoi I won't rob the hangman of his due.
tributi.

Poppea: Drusilla! in questo modo Drusilla! Why did she come

con l'armi ignude in mano with a drawn sword in her hand
mentre nel giardino dormo soletta? while I was sleeping alone in the garden?
Arnalta: Accorrete, accorrete, Come quickly,
o servi, o damigelle! Servants, ladies!
Inseguir Drusilla, Follow Drusilla,
dalli, dalli, tanto monstro aferir! quick, quick, get the monster!
Non sia chifalli, Don't let her escape,
dalli, dalli, dalli! after her, after her!
Amore: Ho difesa Poppea! I have defended Poppea!
Vuofarla imperatrice! Now I shall make her empress!

He moves to strike with the words, "Love and Regard, farewell." But he is, in the
event, restrained by Love, the god Amore, who has arrived (as he explains in the
previous scene) to save Poppea "from others' rebellious weapons" ("Ti salvert dagl'
armi altrui rubelle"). The action of this scene continues the allegory of the prologue, of
course: Love quite literally prevents Ottone from killing Poppea. The nurse Arnalta
awakes, and calls for reinforcements in marching eighth notes which turn into the

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392 International Journal of the Classical Tradition /Winter 1998

Figure 5: Monteverdi, L'incoronazione II.12, mm. 103-107

sixteenths of the original stile concitato as her excitement builds (figure 5).
Amore then celebrates his victory: Love is indeed "fighting for" Poppea as she
said-and "defending" her against the rebellious exclusus amator, as it turns out. The
insurrections that troubled Armenia and Pannonia in the soldier's complaint now
have been transferred to Poppea's household.
In the scene's last lines, Amore has interpreted his victory as the final step to his
elevation of Poppea to the position of empress. The transfiguration of the heroine is
now possible. But the exaltation is not of the spirit to heaven, as in the case of Clorinda
that is the destination of Seneca, the devotee of Virtue. Instead it is to the position o
empress and blessings by Amore and Venus. Musically, military fanfare becomes the
fanfare of court ritual, which ushers Poppea to her coronation and into her new realm

126 Sinfonia )

- - -,f I I . . . .. . " '

IB:J ., i

Figure 6: Monteverdi, L'incoronazione III.8, mm. 126-29

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 Ketterer 393

(fig. 6). Amor

front, and su
observed by t
In an article
ert Holzer ha
Monteverdi's
VIII madrigal
writing about
Nerone's refu
Monteverdi a
rial-stories of
that, they ass
and the lover
proclaim that
But as in th
from the agit
Poppea once a

Poppea & Ne
Pur ti stri
PiiC non p
O mia vita, o mio tesoro. oh my life, oh my beloved.

Whether this final duet was part of the original conception of the opera or not-the
evidence is against it2-it is fully appropriate as the final subversion of the more
elevated conceptions embodied in the figures of Virtii and Seneca which has been
going on throughout this opera. Like Clorinda, Poppea's final bliss is signalled by the
sweetest music. Unlike Clorinda, she has committed adultery, caused a suicide, and
effected the exile of three people. The ravishing music signals not a spiritual
tranfiguration but a return to physical pleasure. The effect is ironic at the least, and we
may very well concur with the first soldier when he says, "Sia maledetto Amor, Poppea,
Nerone, e Roma, e la milizia."
And yet, Seneca and Ottavia are gone; Ottone is happily paired with Drusilla and
then exiled. The sordid historical deaths of both Poppea and Nerone remain in the
unmentioned future. It is difficult not to become lost in the triumph of eroticism at the
end of the opera, however we may feel that its celebrants are awful people. They have
lovely words and beautiful music to sing.26 The other voices-the sepulchral bass of
Seneca, the mezzo of Ottone and the competing soprano Ottavia-have been banished
from the scene, and as in the "Combattimento," we are left at last with the two so-
prano voices rising to a welcoming heaven.
This view of Nero and Poppea flies in the face of what the seventeenth century

24. R. Holzer, "'Ma invan la tento et impossibil parmi,' or How guerrieri are Monteverdi's madrigali
guerrieri?" in: F. Guardiani, ed., The Sense of Marino: Literature, Fine Arts and Music of the
Italian Baroque, Literary Criticism Series vol. 5 (New York and Ottawa: Legas, 1994), pp.
429-450.

25. See Curtis, L'incoronazione (n. 1 above), pp.vii-ix.

26. Even discounting the final duet "Pur ti miro": a preceding duet for Poppea and Nerone in
III.5 is a triumph of eroticism. "Pur ti miro" merely restates its conclusions.

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394 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / Winter 1998

knew of Nero's reputation as the worst of the Julio-Claudians. The audience came to
the theater bringing that knowledge with them, and prefaces to later libretti on the
subject of Nero insist on the negative view. Thus, for example, Giulio Cesare Corradi
in the preface to his 1679 11 Nerone (Venice: Nicolini):

Asceso Nerone sul trono di Roma, sife credere i suoi Popoli per il Solone di que'
tempi; msi cadutagli di mano la bilancia d'Astrea, in breve converti il nome di
Giusto in quello del maggior Tiranno del Mondo. Lo spogliare di sostanze la plebe
per vestire la superbia dei suoi caprici fit il minore d'ogni delitto. Stupri, morti, e
ruine continui trionfi di quell'anima indegna.

Nero, having ascended to the throne of Rome, made his peoples believe he
was the Solon of those times. But Astraea's scales having fallen from his
hand, soon his name of "The Just" changed into "the Greatest Tyrant in the
World." The despoiling of the people's material goods to clothe the arro-
gance of his whims was the least of all his offenses. Rapes, murders and
acts of violence were the continual triumphs of that wicked soul.

It therefore seems perverse, and perhaps impossible, for Busenello and Monteverdi to
celebrate such behavior uncritically, and from this source, I think, come the efforts by
scholars to read the opera as moral tale by negative example.
But there is an immediate social context for this triumph of the immoral. Such a
reversal of moral order is very much in the spirit of the Carnival season in Venice, the
context for the performance of L'incoronazione. Edward Muir has described the social
inversions that occurred during Venetian Carnival, the period before Lent which also
hosted the regular opera season:27 "Most masqueraders identified themselves ritually
or dramatically with their social opposites: popolani dressed themselves as officials,
nobles as peasants, men as women, harlots as men; likewise destruction led to birth
and sex to death; the old became young and the crippled potent. Carnival was always
topsy-turvy but never mindless; [... . ] . Even at its most abandoned moments the
crowd behaved in a structured fashion, following patterns sometimes adopted from
other places and other times, such as when Troy burned and knights jousted, but
usually derived from a rich local tradition. [...] The authorities tolerated and some-
times supported even the most orgiastic and sadistic displays...." Muir goes on to
quote Bakhtin on Rabelaisian Carnival of cruelty:28 "'The representatives of the old but
generating world are beaten and abused. Therefore, the punishment is transformed
into festive laughter.' Death and abuse are thus erotic and life-giving."
The action of L'incoronazione fits directly into this world of Venetian Carnival.
Ottone the warrior is cuckolded and dons female clothing. The old tutor, the old wife,
the old lover, the old ways of governing are killed, exiled, repudiated, and in their
place is put the eroticism of the new. The raw material may be Tacitean and Senecan,
but the drama is carnivalesque, comic, and Ovidian.
Plato had wanted to eliminate certain kinds of poetry from his Republic, "because
its power to corrupt, with rare exceptions, even the better sort is surely the chief cause
for alarm. [For] the best of us feel pleasure, and abandon ourselves and accompany the

27. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 177.
28. Muir, p. 178, quoting Bakhtin's Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1968), p. 202.

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Ketterer 395

representatio
one who mos
messages Bu
Seneca's ascen
nearly perfe
produce such
musical meta
ably for immo

29. Translation
Harvard Unive

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