L'incoronazione di Poppea facts for kids

Quick facts for kids L'incoronazione di Poppea
by Claudio Monteverdi
Title page of the 1656 publication of the libretto, with the variant spelling L'incoronatione

L'incoronazione di Poppea (SV 308, The Coronation of Poppaea) is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nero, is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times.

Composition

Two versions of the musical score of L'incoronazione exist, both from the 1650s. The first was rediscovered in Venice in 1888, the second in Naples in 1930. The Naples score is linked to the revival of the opera in that city in 1651. Both scores contain essentially the same music, though each differs from the printed libretto and has unique additions and omissions. In each score the vocal lines are shown with basso continuo accompaniment; the instrumental sections are written in three parts in the Venice score, four parts in the Naples version, without in either case specifying the instruments. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a leading Monteverdi interpreter, refers to the contemporary practice of leaving much of a score open, to allow for differing local performance conditions. Another convention made it unnecessary to write down detail that performers would take for granted. Neither the Venice nor Naples score can be linked to the original performance; although the Venice version is generally regarded as the more authentic, modern productions tend to use material from both.

Claudio Monteverdi

The question of authorship—essentially of how much of the music is Monteverdi's—is a contentious one, which Rosand acknowledges might never be entirely resolved. Virtually none of the contemporary documentation mentions Monteverdi, and music by other composers has been identified in the scores, including passages found in the score of Francesco Sacrati's opera La finta pazza. A particular style of metric notation used in some passages of the L'incoronazione scores suggests the work of younger composers. The most debated areas of authorship are parts of the prologue, Ottone's music, the flirtation scene between Valetto and Damigella, and the coronation scene including the final "Pur ti miro" duet.

Modern scholarship inclines to the view that L'incoronazione was the result of collaboration between Monteverdi and others, with the old composer playing a guiding role. Composers who may have assisted include Sacrati, Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Cavalli.

Roles

The score for L'incoronazione features 28 singing characters, including 7 ensemble parts, of which the two Amori may only have appeared in the 1651 Naples production. The original Venetian production evidently made use of extensive role-doubling, allowing the opera to be staged with no more than 11 singers: two female sopranos, three male sopranos, two contraltos, two tenors and two basses. Schneider has suggested the following reconstruction of the cast and the doubling plan from the 1643 premiere on the basis of an examination of, first, contemporary casting and doubling practices, secondly, the recently discovered correspondence of the impresario Marquess Cornelio Bentivoglio, and finally the libretto for La finta savia, which preceded Poppea on the stage of the Santi Giovanni e Paolo in the 1643 Carnival and was written for the same cast.

List of musical items

The table uses the numberings from the 1656 printed version of Busenello's libretto, and includes the two act 2 scenes for which no music exists in the surviving scores. Typically, "scenes" comprise recitative, arioso, aria and ensemble elements, with occasional instrumental (sinfonia) passages. The boundaries between these elements are often indistinct; Denis Arnold, commenting on the musical continuity, writes that "with few exceptions it is impossible to extricate the arias and duets from the fabric of the opera".

Recording history

The first recording of L'incoronazione, with Walter Goehr conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in a live stage performance, was issued in 1954. This LP version, which won a Grand Prix du Disque in 1954, is the only recording of the opera that predates the revival of the piece that began with the 1962 Glyndebourne Festival production. In 1963 Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Staatsoper issued a version described by Gramophone as "far from authentic", while the following year John Pritchard and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recorded an abridged version using Leppard's Glyndebourne orchestration. Leppard conducted a Sadler's Wells production, which was broadcast by the BBC and recorded on 27 November 1971. This is the only recording of the opera in English.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 1974 version, the first recording without cuts, used period instruments in an effort to achieve a more authentic sound, although Denis Arnold has criticised Harnoncourt's "over-ornamentation" of the score, particularly his use of oboe and trumpet flourishes. Arnold showed more enthusiasm for Alan Curtis's 1980 recording, live from La Fenice in Venice. Curtis uses a small band of strings, recorders and continuo, with a trumpets reserved for the final coronation scene. Subsequent recordings have tended to follow the path of authenticity, with versions from baroque specialists including Richard Hickox and the City of London Baroque Sinfonia (1988), René Jacobs and Concerto Vocale (1990), and John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists. Sergio Vartolo's production of the opera at Pigna, Corsica, was recorded for Brilliant Classics in 2004. A feature of this recording is the casting of a soprano Nerone in acts I and III, and a tenor Nerone in act II, to allow for the differing vocal requirements of the role in these acts. Vartolo accepts that "a staged performance would almost certainly require a different approach".

In more recent years, videotape and DVD versions have proliferated. The first was in 1979, a version directed by Harnoncourt with the Zürich Opera and chorus. Leppard's second Glyndebourne production, that of 1984, was released in DVD form in 2004. Since then, productions directed by Jacobs, Christophe Rousset and Marc Minkowski have all been released on DVD, along with Emmanuelle Haïm's 2008 Glyndebourne production in which the Festival finally rejects Leppard's big band version in favour of Haïm's period instruments, to give an experience closer to that of the original audience. The 2010 production at the Teatro Real in Madrid, conducted by William Christie, was released on DVD in 2012.

Editions

Since the beginning of the 20th century the score of L'incoronazione has been edited frequently. Some editions, prepared for particular performances (e.g. Westrup's for the 1927 Oxford Town Hall performance) have not been published. The following are the main published editions since 1904. Years of publication often postdate the first performances from these editions.

Images for kids

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  Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, Monteverdi's employer during his Mantua years when the composer wrote his early operas

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  Giovanni Francesco Busenello, librettist of L'incoronazione di Poppea

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  The Death of Seneca (Luca Giordano, 1684)

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  From the 1962 Glyndebourne production: Lucano, played by Hugues Cuénod, performs in his singing contest with Nerone (act 2, scene 6)

See also

In Spanish: La coronación de Popea para niños