Seeing the Empress Again On Doubling inL'incoronazione di Poppea

Abstract

This article presents a reading of Gian Francesco Busenello's and Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'incoronazione di Poppea in light of seventeenth-century theatrical practices. Reconstructing the doubling plan from the opera's premiere in 1643 on the basis of contemporary doubling practices and the correspondence of the Ferrarese music patron Marquess Cornelio Bentivoglio, the author argues, adducing circumstantial evidence, that Ottavia and Drusilla were conceived as a double role for the operatic quick-change artist Anna Renzi. While Renzi is known to have created Ottavia, this part is half the size of all other roles written for her, which invariably involve dramatic, emotional and musical variety to a much greater extent than does Monteverdi's tragic Empress. Renzi was admired for her command of both tragedy and comedy, and the essay develops the hypothesis of the double role as an intertextual interpenetration of the title heroines from the pseudo-Senecan tragedy Octavia and Girolamo Bargagli's sixteenth-century comedy La pellegrina.

Performing Celebrity and Anna Renzi's Cross-Dressed Performance as Ergindo

“…43 Disguise and cross-dressing in their "deception of the senses" was an integral dramatic device. 44 The gender reversals at carnival, where, as James Johnson maintains, "men in dresses act[ ] coyly, women in trousers act[ ] mannishly," likely encouraged women to "rebuke priests," confront "local administrators," to chastise their husbands, and to step out of line in "more serious moments." 45 The cognitive dissonance of witnessing, or even hearing about, highly paid and popular women singer-actors could embolden women in the city to rethink their everyday social status, perhaps even to dream of alternatives.…”

“…At Innsbruck, she also sang in Cesti's opera L'Argia (1655) and performed for the cross-dressing Queen Christina, who was on her way to Rome after abdicating her throne. 107 She did not, however, remain at Innsbruck to become a court musician but returned to Venice to sing in its commercial theatres.…”

Reimagine to Revitalise

“…249-260). Approaches such as new historicism (considering original historical concerns; e.g., Carter, 2002;Tomlinson 1981); new criticism (reading the poetry sans context; see Tomlinson, 1987); feminist critique (e.g., Cusick, 1994;Gordon, 2004;Heller, 2003Heller, , 2014MacNeil, 2003;McClary, 1991); and historically informed performance practice (e.g., Calcagno, 2002Calcagno, , 2012Schneider, 2012;Wistreich, 1994Wistreich, , 2013 are only a few of the various lenses that scholars have adopted, from the 1990s through to the present, in examining Monteverdi's musical choices, and the implications for research and performance in the present.…”