Speranza
Mellor.
We now live in a world of academic “interdisciplinarity,” in which scholars
bring materials or methodologies from other fields to enrich their own.
But
it remains rare for a classicist to become so deeply learned in a remote
discipline that his or her work is taken seriously by scholars of that
discipline.
R. C. Ketterer, both in his earlier papers and in this
remarkable book, has shown himself such a
scholar.
I have been a regular,
even obsessive, opera-goer for the last
half-century and have attended more
than a dozen pre-Mozart operas—
often in multiple productions—but I am in awe
of Ketterer’s vast
knowledge of obscure works and his sensible judgments on
more
familiar operas.
This book will be of great interest both to
musicologists
and to historians of early modern European history
interested
in the subtleties of artistic patronage and imperial
ideology.
Perhaps fewer classicists will find "Ancient Rome in Early Opera" immediately
appealing.
It does not so much shed light on antiquity
as
demonstrate the enduring importance of antiquity in the cultural
and
political conversations of Europe between the Renaissance and
the Age of
Revolutions.
But many classicists in recent decades have
turned to Nachleben
to make our knowledge of ancient poetry and
drama, mythology and religion,
sculpture and architecture, philosophy
and political thought available to
modern historians and literary
critics.
Ketterer's essay is a splendid example of
that worthy enterprise.
Even classicists need to know how succeeding
centuries used, transformed
and sometimes abused ancient material.
Before we
bluster
about the fictional characters of Ben Hur or Maximus in Gladiator,
or
the inventions in I, Claudius or HBO Rome, it is useful to see how
the
librettists invented characters or devised happy endings:
Catone
spared
by Giulio Cesare in Vivaldi’s 1724 "Catone in Utica" --
much as
English
actor-directors in the 18th century tacked happy endings onto
Hamlet and King
Lear.
Hollywood is certainly inaccurate, but it is
no more disreputable
than centuries of Italian
librettists, who rewrote Ancient Roman history
to serve their own purposes.
We should
ask ourselves how and
why this material inspired both imitation and
innovation through
the centuries.
Ketterer examines Italian opera
during the two centuries from
its origins in Florence about 1600 until the
end of the 18th century.
The quadricentenary of opera was celebrated at the
Getty Center in
Los Angeles in October, 2000, with a
performance of the first surviving
opera, Peri’s Euridice.
Though those
Tuscan intellectuals claimed
to be recreating the declamation and music of
Greek tragedy, Ketterer argues
(as he has earlier) that it was "Ancient Rome" that
more truly inspired
the great majority of librettists and composers.
Not only
were
most of the subjects Roman, but the central themes (or Myths, as Ketterer prefers) of
"the
clement prince"
and the quest for
"liberty"
are more dependent on Roman
historians
and Stoic philosophy than on Athenian drama.
Ketterer rightly
identifies
the Stoic themes of constancy, clemency and friendship as
the
moral basis for eighteenth-century serious opera.
Even when
the
characters are Greeks, these and other Roman values and
attitudes —
"romanitas" — inform the operas.
To most classicists, early Italian
opera is relatively terra incognita —
and with good reason.
These works were
almost universally ignored
between 1800 and the middle of the 20th century.
New York’s Metropolitan
Opera’s excellent on-line archives reveal that in 125
years it
has offered one single performance of Monteverdi — a concert Orfeo
in
1912 with a New York Times headline: “Primitive Opera Heard” and
a
review that mentions the audience’s bewilderment.
The Metropolitan Opera has offered
no
Cavalli, and presented no Handel operas until its 1983–1984
centennial
season.
It has since offered four.
Even the revered Mozart’s
opere serie were
ignored until "Idomeneo" was offered (for Luciano
Pavarotti) in 1982 and "La
Clemenza di Tito" in 1984.
It was OTHER groups, such
as the Handel festival in Halle,
Drottingham, and, notably, the Glyndebourne
festival, that did much to bring Baroque opera
to wider attention, as have
the recording industry and diligent scholars such
as Winton Dean
(Handel) and Ellen Rosand (Monteverdi and Cavalli).
Rosand,
with
funding from the Mellon Foundation, now directs the Yale
Baroque
Opera Project, which presents several evenings of
Cavalli
excerpts.
Our aim in recounting this operatic history is to
demonstrate
that Ketterer is truly at the cutting edge of research, and I hope
that
his work will inspire even more attention and even
performances.
Musicologists and scholars of Italian literature will doubtless
focus
on Ketterer’s discussions of the scores and librettos of these operas.
But
for
classicists the primary interest remains how these works make use
of
ancient literary models and, indeed, ancient Roman history.
We are well
aware
of the dangerous erotic power of Didone and Cleopatra in Roman
literature.
But
the other North African femme fatale and suicide,
Sophonisba, wife of King
Masinissa, features in spoken tragedies in
Italian as
well as a number of operas.
This
shows how the early modern dramatists might
prefer relatively minor
figues from Roman history — Ottone, Berenice,
Britannico, Ottavia—
to create powerful protagonists.
Ketterer argues well that Ovid’s
image of love as a battle
pervades
Busenello's and Monteverdi’s
treatment of Nerone and Poppea in his 1636 "L’incoronazione
di
Poppea".
Ketterer's claim of a Stoic program in that seemingly
a-moral opera
may not be entirely convincing.
Yet one of Ketterer's interesting
threads is
the initial appearance of comic, even Plautine
elements in 17th-century
Venetian public opera, before such elements
were reduced in the operas for
the Hapsburg court of the Holy Roman
Empire, which preferred to see its
forbears as moral and
clement rulers.
Still later, in Handel’s Italian
operas for the London
stage, comedy returns, with Claudio depicted in "Agrippina" as the
stereotypical foolish Roman senex.
Since the librettists
were regarded as dramatists, Ketterer reasonably links
the spoken plays with
libretti on the same topics.
An enormously
popular Roman on the 18th-century
stage was Catone.
Joseph
Addison’s 1713 Catone divided the Whigs and
Tories at the London
performances — each regarded Catone as reflecting their
views and
the tyrannical Caesarians as their opponents.
The Whig
interpretation
prevailed, and the play became popular among
revolutionaries
in Europe and America.
Washington’s officers even performed
it at
Valley Forge.
Metastasio’s 1723 libretto "Catone in Utica" was set
by
more than a half-dozen composers, including J. C. Bach, and played
in
dozens of opera houses.
The temper of the time can be gauged by
which Romans
became popular on the stage.
We can hardly correct Ketterer’s impressive knowledge
of the libretti and
operas, though we might have liked more discussion of the
music.
His
most extended musical discussion—of Sartorio's and Handel’s "Giulio
Cesare in Egitto"—is
excellent.
There are also occasional slips.
The defeat of Annibale
at
Zama is twice given as 203 BCE (p. 42) instead of 202 BCE.
The
suicide of Cleopatra and the end of her reign is placed in 31 BCE
(p.
43) instead of 30 BCE.
Ketterer’s desire to differentiate between the
historical
figure (“Nerone” and “Poppea”) and the operatic role
(“Nerone”
and “Poppea”) can be confusing.
On pp. 74–5, he refers to
“Claudio,”
“Claudius,” and (twice) “Claudios” — We take these last to be
typos.
When writing for two groups of readers, it might have been
clearer
to regularize the nomenclature.
In an Epilogue, Ketterer offers some
testy comments about the 2005 Salzburg
production of Mozart’s Lucio Silla.
It
is in the grand tradition
of operaphiles to complain about unconventional
stagings.
We did not
see Silla, but at the same Festival we were revolted by a
production of
The Magic Flute in which the Queen of the Night was good,
and
Sarastro seemed to be presiding over an old age home for former
Nazis.
So much for Mozart’s devotion to freemasonry.
We only wish
Ketterer
had told us more about other contemporary productions, especially
those
available on DVD.
He briefly mentions Peter Sellars’ "Giulio
Cesare in Egitto", but
several other excellent directors (Hytner, Negrin) have
updated that work to
the 19th (Napoleon) or 20th centuries.
The
themes of European imperialism,
orientalism and racism certainly
merit this sort of reexamination, and I
imagine that Ketterer would have
interesting things to say.
In conclusion, this
is a marvelous book and by no means a simple
survey of obscure material.
Wehave mentioned Ketterer’s arguments about
the effect of Stoicism.
Particularly
interesting is his discussion of how
two popular themes — the myth of the
clement prince and the myth
of liberty— both contradict and reinforce each
other.
This dramatic
conflict was often reconciled by imperial generosity.
Dramatists and
composers moved between tragedy and happy endings as
changing
aesthetics and political developments challenged the older
conventions
of opera seria.
Ketterer shows how the rise of the chorus is an
indication
of democratic stirrings as the Age of Revolutions approached.
Ketterer has performed a signal service in bringing his classical knowledge
to
the attention of musicologists, and his musical perceptiveness to
the
community of classicists.
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