Robert C. Ketterer. Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea.
in Early Opera.
Champaign: University of Illinois Press
The University of Illinois Press (UIP), is a major American university press and part of the University of Illinois. Overview
2009. Pp. xi + 253.
Ketterer's essay discusses
operas based on themes drawn
from Roman history over the period
from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643) to
1800, after which operatic taste moved away from this subject
matter, till it was brought back intermittently
by composers like Boito and Mascagni.
Ketterer demonstrates that "Roma antica" provided
early modern Europe with impressive visual
and aural presentations of two
important myths.
Ketterer calls these:
(1) the myth of the clement prince
(2) the myth of liberty
These myths reflected central preoccupations of educated, opera-going audiences during the period before and up to shortly after the French Revolution.
Ketterer traces the development of ideas, and therefore of the preoccupations of opera librettists and composers, throughout this period, after which there are virtually no more Roman operas.
Granted, Berlioz's mid-nineteenth-century masterpiece "Les Troyens" should have received at least an honorable mention, even if it is based on epic rather than history.
Ketterer's essay is primarily a study in what some scholars refer to as "librettologia."
Ketterer rightly observes that libretti were in this period important in their own right, and the most popular ones were set many times by different composers.
The average contemporary opera-goer is likely to have actually seen only three of the many operas discussed by Ketterer:
L'incoronazione di Poppea,
Handel's Giulio Cesare, and
Mozart's setting of an adapted version of Metastasio's highly popular La clemenza di Tito
La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus), K. 621, is an opera seria composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with text after Metastasio.
It was, in fact, his very last opera, being started after the bulk of Die Zauberflöte , as the opera seria to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II as king of Bohemia in 1791.
As a further result, consideration of the music of opera is comparatively rare in Ketterer's essay, and considerably circumscribed.
Almost the only aspect of Monteverdi's great opera to be discussed is the use of the "stile concertato", and elsewhere, comment on musical settings is largely confined to value judgments on the quality of the settings of particular passages of the text.
However, this limitation is more than adequately compensated for by the quality of Ketterer's consideration of texts.
In each case, a concise exposition of the Roman source
material and the essence of the original
story precedes the discussion of the uses for which
operatic librettists employed it to reflect the concerns of their contemporaries.
Ketterer deftly separates various aspects of
classical thought and the
extent to which they influenced the
content of opera texts -- in particular Neoplatonism,
from which the Renaissance gained a sense of
yearning to return to "the upper spheres of fire and light"
Also Stoicism, a school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium (in Cyprus) c.300 B.C. The first Stoics were so called because they met in the Stoa Poecile [Gr. stoa]
Stoicism influences the portrayal of Seneca in L'incoronazione di Poppea.
Nonetheless, Ketterer rightly argues that the triumph of Amor in the union of Nerone and Poppea is gloriously celebrated, and is therefore central to the opera.
Stoicism then becomes a principal theme in operas based on the stories of Scipione Africano and Catone in Uttica.
An extended and excellent analysis of Minato's text for Scipione affricano
foregrounds the continence
of Scipione, and his struggles against his erotic feelings and the temptation to abuse his power.
We are not at all sure about the discussion of the closing scenes of Handel's Agrippina.
Ketterer has to juggle complex factors, including the wealth of associations surrounding the character of Ottone, the possibility that Handel's music undermines the final reconciliation of Ottone and Poppea, and the heavy shadow of actual subsequent Roman history, which hangs over the happy ending for the couple.
Agrippina was supposed to have poisoned Claudio, Nerone pursued Poppea, exiled Ottone, and killed both Agrippina and Poppea herself.
Scipio returns as the leading character in Zeno's libretto for "Scipione nelle Spagne" (1710), in which the clement prince myth is first seen fully developed.
Ketterer argues that in this libretto (as in Poppea) there is a Stoic character-- Luceio as a surrogate Catone, conquering his own desires and able to renounce his passion for Sophonisba, and accept his own death, so his sworn friend Scipione may take her as his wife.
Apart from Luceio, this libretto also contains the striking figure of Elvira, who becomes an incarnation of Justice and Clemency, as she makes her judgment, choosing to let Luceio and Sophonisba be united, and so creating the necessary lieto fine.
One of the most interesting
chapters is devoted to the highly
ambiguous character of "Giulio Cesare", who
was an enlightened, clement general -- but also
the tyrant who brought down the Roman Republic.
Ketterer draws for essential background on
Joseph Addison's spoken drama "Catone" (1710) and
its political agenda in the contest between Whigs and Tories.
Handel's famous opera of 1724 is often revived but presents a problem to the postmodern stage.
Whether we like it or not, overtly, at least, the opera celebrates imperialism, trades on racist stereotypes, and buries issues of incest and adultery to create an adventure story with a happy ending.
But Ketterer is rightly unhappy about modern "de-constructive" production strategies.
Ketterer notes how Haym's libretto downplays the conflict between Giulio Cesare's military obligations and his passion for Cleopatra by depicting a growth in the sincerity of their passion, drawing on classical texts which allowed the opera to blame the excesses of the war in Alexandria, and the death and beheading of Pompeo, NOT on Giulio Cesare but on the Ptolemies.
The problem of Caesar is simply ignored in the lieto fine, where there is no hint that he will be assassinated for attempting to establish tyranny in Rome.
At least in Metastasio's Il Catone in Utica (1728), set among others by Vivaldi, Pompey's widow warns that vengeance may come.
"Il Catone" is one of the first
operas to open up overtly republican themes,
which are furthered by more eighteenth-century operas devoted to the rebellion against Rome by the German leader Arminius (Arminio).
Like Tacitus, who devoted several powerful pages of the Annals to Arminius and German virtues, the librettists who treated this theme increasingly celebrated German (barbarian) virtue as outshining even Roman heroism--though the magnanimity of the imperial power ensures that liberty exists only in a context circumscribed by the powers of the imperial monarch.
Ketterer closes with a discussion of how the myth of the clement prince reached its use-by date after the French Revolution.
Mozart's La clemenza di Tito received a lukewarm reception before an audience which -- although still living in an imperial society -- had responded far more warmly to the revolutionary sentiments of Le nozze di Figaro.
This is a very fine book, recommended to all who are interested in opera before (and including) Mozart.
We have three presentational cavils: the Italian in the musical examples is not translated; the music of example 3 breaks off before the climactic phrase discussed in the text (54-55); and the proofreading is at times unsteady (e.g., "Poppae" for "Poppea" no fewer than three times, twice on one page [22], and "Claudios" for "Claudio" [75]). Otherwise, the University of Illinois Press has produced the book attractively and handsomely.
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