the song of the soul: understanding 'poppea'by iain fenlon; peter n. miller

The Song of the Soul: Understanding 'Poppea' by Iain Fenlon; Peter N. MillerReview by: Robert R. HolzerCambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 79-92Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/823751 .

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Cambridge Opera Journal, 5, 1, 79-92

Review

Iain Fenlon and Peter N. Miller. The Song of the Soul: Understanding 'Poppea'. London: Royal Musical Association, 1992. viii + 96 pp. (Royal Musical Association Monographs 5).

'L'incoronazione di Poppea', we are reminded in this fine study of Monteverdi's last stage work, 'was the first opera to be based upon an historical account of the lives of real people' (p. 6). Among these people is of course the philosopher Seneca, and it is he, the doctrine he professed, Stoicism, and the work of the historian who provided the most moving account of his death, Tacitus, that form the subjects of The Song of the Soul. The book results from the collaboration of a musicologist and an intellectual historian. Iain Fenlon wrote the introductory chapter and an extended commentary on the opera itself (Chapter 7, 'Opera musicale'), while Peter N. Miller's central and concluding chapters (2-6, 8) explore the sources, historical and philosophical, of Giovanni Francesco Busenello's libretto.

In the first of his chapters, 'Literary Sources', Miller lists the principal ancient accounts of the story at hand: Tacitus (Annals 13-15), Suetonius (The Lives of the Caesars 6 - Book 8, which is a biography of Otho, should also be noted), Dio Cassius (Roman History 61-2), and the anonymous tragedy - once attributed to Seneca himself - Octavia. He concludes that 'while the final libretto bears traces of all its literary sources, it is the imprint of Tacitus that is most strongly felt' (p. 10). Then, in Chapter 3, 'Tacitism', Miller surveys seventeenth-century historical writing inspired by the example of the author of the Annals. Having placed particular emphasis on the work of authors active in Venice, he declares that

Poppea is simply written the way the best history was written in the Venice of the first half of the seventeenth century, and, as a result, it needs to be read as a Tacitist text. Only then do some of its apparent contradictions and incoherencies become fully comprehensible. (p. 20) This is a large claim, and one that smacks of a reductionism very much at odds with Miller's sensitive account. I raise this point not to quibble (after all, one would question a critic who declared that only Holinshed's Chronicles could resolve some of the 'contradictions and incoherencies' of King Lear), but to suggest - based on Miller's own evidence - that 'Tacitism' and Busenello's approach to it were rather untidy affairs. Certainly, Busenello was far more cavalier in his use of the historian than Miller is willing to grant. As the librettist himself put it in the 'Argomento' to the 1656 edition of his work:

Nero, enamoured of Poppaea, who was the wife of Otho, sent the latter under pretext of embassy, to Lusitania, so that he could take his pleasure with her - this according to Cornelius Tacitus. But here the facts are represented differently.'

Though Miller quotes the second sentence, he maintains that 'these different facts do not contradict the Tacitean account, but rather operate within the confines of the tale' (p. 20). This is not true. Nero (r. AD 54-68) began his liaison with Poppaea Sabina and

I cite from the translation in Alan Curtis, ed., Claudio Monteverdi, L'incoronazione di Poppea (London, 1989), xxii. The passage has been cited before to make the same point about Busenello's departure from Tacitus; see Ellen Rosand, 'Seneca and the Interpretation of L'incoronazione di Poppea', Journal ofthe American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 41.



made Otho governor of Lusitania in AD 58 (Annals 13.46). The next year, at Poppaea's instigation, Nero had his mother Agrippina killed for her opposition to their illicit love (14.1-8). In AD 62 Nero divorced Octavia, married Poppaea and, after one false start, banished his former wife to the island of Pandateria, where he then had her killed (14.60-64). Three years later Seneca, Nero's erstwhile tutor and adviser, was forced to commit suicide for his supposed participation in a plot to overthrow the emperor (15.60-64; Miller mentions the first part of this passage on p. 9, though there is a misprint in n. 14: 'xiv. 50-52' instead of 'xiv.60-62'). Finally, in AD 66 Nero, in a fit of rage, kicked the pregnant Poppaea, accidentally killing her (16.6); he himself was overthrown and committed suicide in AD 68 (Lives of the Caesars 6.49).

Busenello's libretto makes a hash of this story. Otho appears throughout the opera, is not the dissolute figure portrayed by Tacitus, and is banished - not given a governorship - in the same scene in which Octavia's exile is announced (Poppea, Act III scene 4). Octavia quits Rome (Act III scene 6) before Poppaea becomes empress (Act III scene 8). Agrippina does not appear in the opera, and her fate is transferred to Seneca: it is the philosopher's opposition to Nero's marriage plans (Act I scene 9), not his presumed conspiracy, that brings about his downfall (Act II scenes 1-3), one instigated, as was Agrippina's, by Poppaea (Act I scene 10).

Such poetic licence was of course the common practice of librettists, and Busenello openly defended it. In the 'Argomento' to his La Didone, he observed that since 'according to good doctrine it is permissible for poets not only to alter [fictional] stories, but even history, Dido takes Iarbas for her husband'.2 Busenello's tinkerings with Virgil have been said to 'verge on the absurd':3 to my mind his changes in Poppea likewise suggest an almost playful attitude towards his sources. That Lucan should rejoice with Nero over Seneca's death (Poppea, Act III scene 5) is virtually comic in its revisionism: in fact the young poet, Seneca's nephew, lost his life in the same purge of conspirators that carried off the philosopher, dying with a dignity to match his uncle's (see Annals 15.70). Indeed, Tacitus presented Lucan from the first as a foe of Nero (15.49), never as a 'familiar', as the 1643 scenario has it.4

In forcing Busenello back into the Tacitean mold from which he seemed only too eager to escape, Miller also downplays the importance of other sources and traditions in the making of Poppea. More than once the librettist seems to have turned to Suetonius for humorous touches. The action begins with Otho discovering Nero's soldiers guarding Poppaea's home. In The Lives of the Caesars 8.3 there is a similar description of such domestic low comedy, though with Otho barring the bedroom door to the randy emperor. In Act I scene 11, Poppaea makes fun of Otho's baldness. Similarly, we read in Lives 8.12 that 'a toupee covered his practically bald head'.5

As regards Octavia it is not true that 'only the confrontation between Nero and Seneca in the play finds a reflection in the opera' (p. 10). The play ends with a lament for Octavia punctuated by choral responses (lines 899-983); minus the chorus, this exodos is reflected in Octavia's great lament of the libretto's antepenultimate scene, 'Addio Roma'. Moreover, the episode for Nero and Seneca (lines 440-592) to which Miller refers is of enormous importance. It is here that the most sustained intellectual challenge to the eventual Triumph of Love is mounted, and here that the central conflict of reason and emotion, duty and desire - in Stoic terms constancy and inconstancy - is explored. 2 Quoted in Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley, 1991), 60. 3 Rosand, 57. 4 See Curtis, xxiii. 5 I quote from the translation by Robert Graves, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 1979).

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Busenello's use of Octavia also points up another way in which the librettist ignored Tacitus. The appearance of gods in Poppea is a convention of drama, not history. Pallas Athene, Mercury, Cupid and Venus are all protagonists, just as they might be in a tragedy. This practice is a far cry from the meagre role assigned to divine intervention in the Annals, where one finds but occasional general statements, such as when the rise of Tiber- ius's henchman Sejanus is attributed to 'heaven's anger against Rome' (4.1).6

Finally, as Miller himself notes in a perceptive aside (pp. 42-3), Busenello almost certainly turned to Ariosto for the character of Drusilla. No one of that name appears in Annals 13-16, but the Drusilla in Orlando furioso 37 was one of the great paragons of constancy, a virtue celebrated in Poppea. Miller compares descriptions of Drusilla in Orlando furioso 37.52 and 59 with those in Poppea, Act III scene 4, where even Nero praises her fortitude. I would second Miller's observations by noting that in this canto Ariosto also anticipated another of the central themes of Poppea, the loss of reason at the hands of love. He described the brothers Cilandro and Tanacro, each of whom attempted to possess Drusilla, as having 'always been truly worthy of praise and of every honour, had they not fallen prey to that desire we call love' ('sempre di laude degni e d'ogni onore, / s'in preda non fossino si dati / a quel desir che nominiamo amore' [37.47.2-4]). And in another parallel, Ariosto wrote that neither 'Nero or anyone else famed for cruelty was more iniquitous or villainous' ('Nerone, o s'altri e ch'abbia fama / di crudelta, non fu piu iniquo e fello' [37.43.3-4]) than their father Marganor. Finally, and paradoxically, the operatic Drusilla's constancy in the face of Nero's terrible threats is also Tacitean: Annals 14.60 recounts that one of Octavia's maids refused under torture to bear false witness against her mistress.

Miller's remarks on Tacitism itself also need to be qualified. Chapter 3 might better have been entitled 'Tacitisms', for in post-Tridentine Italy the historian was read in a variety of often opposing ways. As Miller hints (p. 11), many found Tacitus subversive in his continual attempts to unmask the true intentions that lay behind the fine words of tyrants. Here I would amplify Miller's point by citing the Jesuit Famiano Strada, who accused Tacitus of inspiring a historiography 'pernicious to religion ... pernicious to the state'.7 Another hostile reading saw in Tacitus an evil adviser to monarchs. Giovanni Botero bracketed the historian with Machiavelli in his highly influential Della ragion di stato (1589), in which he denounced 'the corruption fostered by these two men in the policy and counsel of princes'.8

Yet even some of those who applauded Tacitus did so in the same moralising spirit of Botero, simply by focusing on different passages in his work. This is true of the first of the works Miller cites, Virgilio Malvezzi's Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito (1622). In the preface to this collection of fifty-three essays on passages from Annals 1, the Bolognese writer (not Tuscan, pace Miller, p. 12) noted the transformation of Italy from a land of republican city states to one of principalities, a situation for which Tacitus provides the best guide to 'the convictions of Princes, the cunning of Courtiers'.9 Nevertheless,

6 I quote throughout from the translation by Michael Grant (Harmondsworth, 1989). 7 Prolusiones academicae (Rome, 1617), quoted in Kenneth C. Schellhase, Tacitus in Renaissance

Political Thought (Chicago, 1976), 150. 8 Quoted in Schellhase, 125.

Malvezzi, Discourses upon Cornelius Tacitus, trans. Richard Baker (London, 1642), sig. A5r (not A5v, as Miller has it on p. 12, n. 5). Miller also wrongly states that 'the first use of Tacitus as political theory was in a republication of Francesco Guicciardini's epigrammatic Ricordi with an accompanying commentary based on Tacitus' (pp. 11-12). That honour belongs to Leonardo Bruni's Laudatio Florentinae urbis (1403); see Schellhase, 16-23.

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Review

Malvezzi did not, as Miller puts it, see in Tacitus a 'grim "mirror for princes" for a grim time' (p. 12). Mirror for princes, yes, but in the traditional sense of providing the ruler with moral precepts: the very opposite of the Machiavellian project. Indeed, the work was originally written for the moral education of a child, the twelve-year-old Ferdi- nand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had succeeded to the throne the year before. The original Italian edition, which Miller does not cite, contains a thirteen-page 'Tavola de' luoghi della Sacra scrittura interpretati ne' Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito' not included in the English edition, a selection of passages from every book in the Bible which Tacitus's work is said to illustrate.10

Later in the preface, after the section Miller does cite, Malvezzi (who celebrated the institution of monarchy by noting its resemblance to God's rule over the universe) explained the historian's moral utility in terms of catharsis by turning to the story of Nero:

Finding their tragical accident, they [Tacitus's accounts] work in us the like effect, as a Trageody is wont to doe: which is to purge (as ones calls it) the affections of terror and compassion. ... When we read, that Nero through lust and cruelty, came to a miserable end; this by terrifying us, will make us resolve, to the end we may not incurre the like misery, to keep our selves from the like qualities."

The example of Malvezzi sets Miller's main point concerning Tacitus's more cynical side in sharper relief. In Venice figures such as Paolo Sarpi and Enrico Caterino Davila took quite different lessons from the historians, ones that would have fulfilled Strada's worst fears. Though neither wrote a commentary on Tacitus's work, they both share its spirit of unmasking the lust for power veiled in the language of religion. Thus Sarpi's Istoria del concilio di Trento (1619) and Davila's Istoria delle querre civili in Francia (1630) are the opposite of Malvezzi's Discorsi.

Sarpi and Davila were open about the aims of their work - Scarpi so much so that the Istoria was first published in England. Not so some of the other Venetian-based writers Miller mentions, Traiano Boccalini and Giovanni Francesco Loredano. Certainly, as Miller notes, both took a similarly subversive reading of Tacitus. Indeed, I would second the point by observing that Boccalini noted in his own posthumously published commentary on Annals 1-6 that 'in republics one finds men of greater worth than in monarchies'.12 But if one turns to the work Miller cites, Boccalini's masterpiece De' ragguagli di Parnaso (1612-13), the situation is less clear cut. As Miller notes, this collection of satirical 'reports' from Mt Parnassus presents contrasting views of Tacitus, at times denouncing him as a counsellor of evil to princes, at others praising him for his diagnoses of the errors that reduce free peoples to tyranny.

Boccalini expressed himself in this more cryptic fashion, I think, for two reasons. One is that the author, though he fled to Venice in 1612 after a lifetime of service to the Papal State, was still very much attached to the Roman scene. The first volume of the Ragguagli was dedicated to none other than Cardinal Scipione Caffarrelli Borghese, the nephew of Venice's arch-adversary Pope Paul V, the second to another highly placed personage of the Curia, Cardinal Bonifacio Caetani (these dedications are missing from the English 0

Malvezzi, Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito (Venice, 1622), sig. ttt2-tttt4r. Malvezzi, sig. A5v.

12 'Nelle Republiche si trovano huomini di maggior vaglia che nelle Monarchie, poiche la concorenza de' soggetti, che aspirano a Magistrati supremi, opera che chiascheduno procura di avanzar il Compagno di merito, per trapassarlo nella conquista della dignita.' Traiano Boccalini, La bilancia politica, vol. 1: Osservazioni politiche sopra i sei libri degli Annali di Cornelio Tacito, 2nd edn (Castellana [Geneva], 1678), 508. On Boccalini's Tacitism see Schellhase (n. 7), 146-9, 226-7.

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translation Miller cites).13 Both dedicatees represented a world in which the open use of Tacitus for republican ends was impossible. By offering contrasting opinions in a humorous setting, Boccalini could mask his own views amidst a welter of conflicting voices.

A second source of Boccalini's multiple points of view grows out of this need for caution. De' ragguagli di Parnaso is neither history nor commentary. It is a work of fiction. As such, it not only renders its author's true sentiments less apparent, but by its very nature is more elusive in its meanings than are those of chronicle or exegesis. A work of literature defies reduction to a single set of propositions; the art of delighting cannot be entirely subsumed under the need to teach. And L'incoronazione di Poppea, like the Ragguagli a work of fantasy, displays a similar striving of discordant voices, where parody and satire co-exist with more serious statements.

The same tendencies can also be found in the work of Loredano, founder of the celebrated Accademia degli Incogniti of which Busenello was a member. Miller refers to one of his letters (p. 20) in which he endorsed the same sort of incisive historiography practised by Sarpi and Davila. I would add that in his works of fantasy Loredano could be just as irreverent as Boccalini. The second volume of his Bizzarrie accademiche contains a section of 'Ragguagli di Parnaso' openly modelled on Boccalini's volumes. In the first 'ragguaglio' Apollo refuses Anna Renzi (the first Octavia) admission to Parnassus, not for lack of merit, but because her presence would render the Muses jealous. The action is applauded because 'reason of state [must] prevail, sometimes at the expense of the virtues, and over- come the laws of justice themselves': a delightful send-up of Botero's anti-Machiavellian, anti-Tacitean critique.'4

Busenello's 'Tacitism' is not unlike that of Boccalini and Loredano. Like them, the librettist both used and abused his source, concocting a tale that defies reduction to a single idea. On the one hand, Busenello parodied Tacitus by contradicting the historian's narrative at every turn. At the same time he followed Tacitus's portrayal of the depravity of the last Julio-Claudian emperor and his mistress, only to confound history once more by ending the libretto with -evil triumphant. Another aspect of his Tacitism also resembles Malvezzi's, if we accept Nino Pirrotta's contention that

the '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 Poppaea would soon be paid for.... The true triumph is that of the stoic philosopher who joyously meets death.15

Indeed, 'the looming figure of the operatic Seneca', as Miller calls him (p. 10), is presented with a seriousness that is all the more striking for its presence within a network of parody and distortion. The philosopher is the work's moral centre, noble in word and deed. His death not only clears the way for the realisation of Nero's amorous intrigues, but also seems to unleash murderous tendencies in such supposedly 'good' characters as Otho and Octavia.'6 Miller explores the philosopher's teachings and their reception in Venice in Chapters 4-6. The first of these, 'Senecan Neostoicism' (pp. 21-31), reminds us how closely linked Seneca and Tacitus were in the minds of educated Europeans of the early 13 The dedications are found in Luigi Firpo, ed., Traiano Boccalini, Ragguagli di Parnaso e

scritti minori, 3 vols. (Bari, 1948), I, 3-4, II, 3-6. 14 'La ragion di stato prevalere alcune volte al merito delle virtu, e superare etiandio le stesse

leggi della Giustitia.' Loredano, Della bizzarrie academiche.... parte seconda (Bologna, 1646), 199. The passage is also cited in Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, 'Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda: Storie di febiarmonici', Rivista italiana di musicologia, 10 (1975), 418n164.

15 'Monteverdi's Poetic Choices', in Pirrotta, Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 316.

16 The second point is made in Rosand, 'Seneca' (see n. 1.), 39-40.

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Review

modern period. This link was based on more than just the chronicling of the philosopher's misfortunes in the Annals: thanks to the writings of the great Flemish scholar Justus Lipsius, Tacitus and Seneca were seen as kindred spirits. For Lipsius not only produced what were then definitive editions of their works - his Tacitus first appeared in 1574 (not 1581, pace Miller, p. 45), his Seneca in 1605 - he wrote treatises that made their relationship clear. As a result, according to Miller

Tacitus' approach to public life gave historical support to Seneca's teachings, while familiarity with Seneca's moralizing led readers of Tacitus to look for similar didacticism. A life required neither political participation nor speculative thought. Prudence, not Justice, was the paramount Virtue. (p. 22)

Miller also points out that Lipsius summarised Senecan notions in his treatise De constantia (1584). Once a European-wide bestseller, this now-forgotten work deals with a central virtue of the Stoic programme. It 'presented [a] view of constancy that was a synthesis of Stoic dispassion towards pain (apatheia) and Epicurian avoidance of pain (ataraxia)' (p. 23; though ataraxia actually means 'tranquillity').'7 To attain this steadfastness one needed to subject passion to reason and the pleasures of the flesh to those of the mind: friendship, not love, was for Lipsius (as it had been for Seneca) the supreme human relationship.18 Miller complements his lucid summary of Senecan-inspired thought with generous quotations from Lipsius and from his better-remembered contemporary Montaigne.

In Chapter 5, 'Neostoicism and the Incogniti', Miller charts the reception of Senecan ideas in Venice. Returning to Boccalini, he notes the withering critiques of the philosopher found in the Ragguagli di Parnaso: 'If Tacitus is the hero of the Ragguagli, Seneca is the villain. He is repeatedly mocked, scorned and attacked, often in the very terms of Dio Cassius' (p. 32). By the 1630s, however, the situation had changed, as the Serenissima began to decline as a political power. Members of Loredano's newly founded Accademia degli Incogniti started to take Stoicism seriously, and their writings echo certain Stoic ideas on love. Miller finds in the discourses of Loredano and Giovanni Battista Doglioni, and the novels of Giovanni Francesco Biondi, the same emphasis on the illusory nature of beauty and on the falsity of love that inform Stoic thought. He also notes a highly suggestive insistence on the beauty of the voice, as opposed to that of the body, as a sign of true inner beauty (pp. 37-40).

In Chapter 6, 'Venetians and Romans' (pp. 45-54), Miller explores writings by the Incog- niti that deal with characters found in Poppea. At the same time he examines further their ideas concerning love and physical beauty. Thus Loredano, in a discourse laced with citations of Tacitus, observed how physical beauty could be an instrument of political power (pp. 45-6; unfortunately, Miller errs in claiming that Nero's beauty 'held the loyalty of the Roman patriciate long enough for him to develop the means of dominating it by force': Loredano was referring to Annals 4.15, which recounts an appearance before the Senate in AD 24 by Nero Caesar, the future emperor's uncle). In another piece Loredano reworked one of Poppaea's speeches to Nero as reported by Tacitus: again beauty served a dishonourable end, strengthening her call for Octavia's final exile (pp. 47-8). The chapter closes with a look at the artwork in books by Loredano and others, a sampling of the iconography of love's falsehood.

17 Seneca discussed apatheia in Epistulae morales 9.2; avoidance of pain is treated in Epistulae morales 66.

18 Another error: on p. 30 Miller mentions 'the incorporation of the Epicurean concept of friendship' in the Neostoic programme. However, in Epistulae morales 9.8 Seneca distinguished between his idea of friendship and that of Epicurus.

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This chapter also contains Miller's last word on Seneca and his characterisation in Poppea. Noting that one of the characters in Biondi's novels was surprised by the discrepancy between philosopher's words and their way of life, Miller comments:

The hypocrisy of the historical Seneca inevitably made him vulnerable both to Tacitist and neostoic critique. It was precisely his attachment to luxury, while simultaneously declaring his opposition to it, that put him in the same category with the sybaritic Nero. Nevertheless, a distinction must be drawn between this historical Seneca and the Seneca of early modern neostoicism, a figure largely designed to right the wrongs of the original. Both Senecas appear in Poppea; the ghost of the historical figure is attacked by the soldiers, Octavia and the Page, while the actual operatic character is the embodiment of neostoic philosophy, whose words and deeds are completely conso- nant. (p. 47)

This is a provocative position, but I think it at odds both with Busenello's libretto and with the vision of Seneca presented in the material Miller cites. Seneca may well have been a hypocrite, but to contrast a 'Tacitist critique' of the philosopher with a cleaned-up version concocted by the Neostoics is to create a duality where none exists. When Neostoics defended Seneca, they did so by turning to, not away from, Tacitus. Montaigne's 'Defence of Seneca and Plutarch' (Essais 2.32), for example, sets Tacitus's account against that of Dio Cassius. Lipsius, for his part, also used Tacitus to defend the philosopher. In his Manuductio ad stoicam philosophiam (1604) he cited Seneca's 'retirement speech' of AD 62 as reported in Annals 14.53-4.19 In Tacitus's account, Seneca tried unsuccessfully to return the many gifts he had received from the emperor (Nero's refusal of this offer is reported in 14.55-6). Lipsius also turned to Tacitus, quoting the death scene in Annals 15.62-4, in which Seneca left his friends 'my one remaining possession, and my best: the pattern of my life' as further proof of the philosopher's integrity.20 The historian's own comments at these points also show him as a sympathetic chronicler of the philosopher's conduct. In retirement, Seneca 'abandoned the customs of his former ascendancy. Terminating his large receptions, he dismissed his entourage' (Annals 14.56). Similarly, Seneca's suicide was rendered more difficult because his 'aged body, lean from austere living, released the blood too slowly' (Annals 15.63).

It is also wrong to speak of a 'Tacitist critique' of Seneca's 'former ascendancy', when he enjoyed enormous power as Nero's tutor. The historian treated the question of Seneca's wealth with great delicacy, reporting it in such a way as to put the philosopher in the best possible light. The most extensive attack on Seneca's wealth in the Annals comes not from Tacitus, but from Publius Suillius Rufus, a corrupt prosecutor (see Annals 11.1-6) who 'revile[d] Seneca with characteristic ferocity and senile outspokeness' (13.42). Finally, Seneca's offer to return his gifts to the emperor was inspired in part by the fact that Nero now 'listened to more disreputable advisers [who] attacked Seneca ... for his wealth' (14.52).

By placing such critiques in the mouths of unsavoury characters, Tacitus also seemed to have seconded Seneca's own self defence. In his dialogue De vita beata, believed to have been written in response to Suillius's charges, the philosopher addressed the issue of those who would criticise him for not living in strict accordance with his doctrines. This was the work of 'creatures most spiteful' (18.1), and hatred and envy had caused the same to have been said of Plato, Epicurus and Zeno. (Lipsius also turned to this

19 See Mark Morford, Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius (Princeton, 1991), 179.

20 See Morford, 179.

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dialogue in the Manuductio, where he noted passages at 21.4 and 23.4 in which Seneca claimed to be imperfect, merely on the road to wisdom.)21

Among the Venetians Miller cites, I think it also mistaken to speak of a Tacitist critique of Seneca. Boccalini, like any good satirist, treated the philosopher as a figure of fun, but Seneca is hardly the 'villain' of the Ragguagli di Parnaso. Indeed, the passage Miller cites on p. 33, where Tacitus rather than Seneca assumes the place of honour at Lipsius's right hand, actually praises the philosopher, noting that his ethics are less useful than the historian's cynicism to 'the present Age, which is composed of Interest and Violence'. As for Loredano's attitudes to Seneca, there is the piece 'Seneca prudente' (note the adjective, a term of praise in the Tacitean-Lipsian lexicon) from his Scherzi geniali (1632), which Miller notes 'is based on Tacitus' account of the philosopher's response to the accusations brought against him in the presence of Nero' (p. 46). Specifically, the work is an elaboration of the retirement speech in Annals 14.53-4, the same one Lipsius seized on to justify Seneca's integrity. Loredano even prefaced his piece with an 'argomento' that notes how Seneca's riches 'were envied by the malignity of his rivals'.22

Busenello's own attitude to Seneca on the one hand resembled this Tacitean-Lipsian endorsement of the philosopher's prudence. In the argument to his La prosperita infelice di Giulio Cesare the librettist justified his accommodations to popular taste by citing Tacitus on Seneca's 'pleasant talent, which admirably suited contemporary taste' (Annals 13.3).23 This phrase, moreover, comes from the very beginning of Seneca's attempt to use prudence to ameliorate tyranny, describing the philosopher's authorship of Nero's funeral oration for his predecessor Claudius. In Poppea, by contrast, Busenello gave us a Seneca consistent with the sterner morality of the philosopher's writings. If anything, Busenello presented the critics of Seneca as did Tacitus.24 The soldiers in Act I scene 2, the Page in Act I scene 6 (Ottavia's critique is of a different sort, which I shall discuss later) are as untrust- worthy as Suillius or Nero's 'disreputable advisers'. Instead of a 'ghost of the historical figure ... attacked by the soldiers, Ottavia and the Page', we find, for reasons that I shall make clear later, a Tacitean emplotment that relegates such critique to inferior characters.

These reservations aside, Miller does a fine job of presenting the Incogniti's critique of love and the tyranny of physical beauty. Here he quotes Loredano and Doglioni to good effect: the latter even seconded one of the themes of Poppea, that 'not every bellezza is a real and true proclamation of the beauty of the soul' (quoted on p. 37). Here I would only point out the links between such views and those of Seneca. In Epistulae morales 66.2 the philosopher declared:

The poet who sang 'Worth shows more pleasing in a form that's fair' [Virgil, Aeneid 5.344] is, in my opinion, mistaken. For virtue needs nothing to set it off; it is its own great glory, and it hallows the body in which it dwells.25

Similarly, in 115.3:

If we had the privilege of looking into a good man's soul, oh what a fair, holy, magnificent, gracious, and shining face should we behold! 21 See Morford, 178. 22 'Invidiate dalla malignita de gli emoli.' I quote from Degli scherzi geniali del Loredano parte

prima (Venice, 1637), 234. 23 Busenello's use of Seneca is pointed out in Rosand, Opera (see n. 2), 40n12. 24 Here I part company with Rosand, 'Seneca' (see n. 1), 41n18, who argues that 'Busenello's

characterizations seem in some ways closest to those of Dio Cassius'. 25 Here and throughout I quote the translation of Richard M. Gummere, Seneca, Ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1917-25).

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For Poppaea's use of beauty Miller turns to another Tacitean paraphrase in Loredano's Scherzi geniali. 'Poppea supplichevole' is a reworking of the speech in Annals 14.61, where Poppaea begs Nero to send Octavia back into exile after he yielded to popular calls for her return. In describing the speech, however, Miller downplays one point that actually strengthens the connection between Loredano and Busenello. He notes that Poppaea appealed to Nero's libido as well as to 'the political threat to [him] posed by Ottavia', but adds that her second argument 'can be ignored for our purposes' (p. 47). In fact, Poppaea's appeal in Tacitus is based entirely on political threats; it was Loredano who added the enticements of love and beauty. His reworking nicely anticipates Act I scene 10 of Poppea, where the usurping consort employs a similarly mixed approach to goad Nero to another vile action, the execution of Seneca.

I end my remarks on Miller's contribution with a comment on what is perhaps his most intriguing point. The writings of Doglioni and Loredano that call for 'reliance upon the musicality of the human voice to ascertain the true disposition of the soul' (p. 38) are profoundly stimulating, coming as they do at precisely the moment that opera was taking hold in Venice. I question, though, how much these notions relate to Stoicism. Seneca did not particularly like music:

Those who have attended a concert carry about in their heads the melodies and the charm of the songs they have heard - a proceeding which interferes with their thinking and does not allow them to concentrate upon serious subjects. (Epistulae morales 123.9)

He even set music against the beauty of the voice:

What of those who are engaged in composing, hearing, and learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best and simplest movement Nature designed to be straightforward, into the meander- ings of some indolent tune? (De brevitate vitae 12.4)26

Nor did Lipsius have much good to say about music. 'Musicke, wine, and sleepe have oftentimes quenched the first enkindled sparkes of anger, sorrow, and love: But never weeded out any setled or deepe rooted griefe' (De constantia 1.2).27

As to opera itself, Miller will have to deal with the problem of an artwork that aspires to beautiful musical voices for all characters, good (Anna Renzi as Octavia) and evil (Anna di Valerio as Poppaea). Miller has announced plans for a future study on 'the relationship between neoplatonism and neostoicism' (p. 40, n. 41); given the work he has done here, we should all be eager to read his future insights on 'the song of the soul'.

Fenlon's contribution opens with a helpful review of the secondary literature on Poppea (Chapter 1, 'Introduction', pp. 1-5). The author notes that he and Miller are not concerned 'with the question of [musical] authorship' (p. 4), since it is not clear which parts, if any, Monteverdi actually composed. However, Fenlon insists on this point a bit too zeal- ously, declaring that

many previous critical examinations of the opera have been hampered by the task of fitting [Poppea] in to preconceived notions of Monteverdi's late style and of what can be deduced, particularly from the composer's letters, of his aesthetic preconceptions. (p. 4)

I am not sure whose work Fenlon has in mind; here he cites only Leo Schrade's 1950 biography, written long before doubts about Monteverdi's authorship arose. Moreover, in Chapter 7, 'Opera musicale', Fenlon uses precisely such 'aesthetic preconceptions',

26 For the dialogue I quote the translation of John W. Basore, Seneca, Moral Essays, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1928-35).

27 I quote the 1595 translation of Sir John Stradling, Two Bookes of Constancie Written in Latine by lustus Lipsius, ed. Rudolf Kirk (New Brunswick, NJ, 1939).

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invoking 'the composer's point of view' (p. 59) and quoting from Monteverdi's preface to his Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi on the relation between music and the passions (p. 60).

The final sentence of the introduction contains another curious declaration. Fenlon writes that he and Miller have put forth an 'alternative' to the 'generally-accepted and surely implausible view that, in the end, the opera is no more than a celebration of the triumph of Amor' (p. 5). Similarly, he ends Chapter 7 with

there could hardly have been any doubt in the mind of any contemporary Venetian, familiar with subsequent events and in particular with Poppea's death at Nero's hands three [actually, four] years after their marriage, of the illusory character of this seeming Triumph of Love. (p. 92) That point was already made by Nino Pirrotta long ago, in the essay cited above (p. 12). Moreover, as Pirrotta pointed out in a later essay, Poppea can be read on two levels, for the opera is indeed [a] triumph of Love, but [is] also [about] the higher values of virtue and wisdom. Love's victory is, historically as well, an unstable and temporary victory, and perhaps Monteverdi had a second drama in mind to show its transitory nature. ... L'incoronazione shows us a humanity blinded by the madness of love.28

Fenlon's eagerness to downplay the Triumph of Love in Poppea also leads him to a rather curious statement about the final scene:

There is no dramatic need for the coronation scene (III.viii) since the lovers have already celebrated their victory [in Act III scene 5]. Thus, thematically, the actual coronation of Poppea cannot be seen as a triumph. (pp. 89-90)

I cannot see how 'there is no dramatic need' for a coronation scene in an opera entitled L'incoronazione di Poppea. Moreover, that coronation is a double triumph: Poppaea is crowned both empress by the Consuls and Tribunes (bars 145-76) and goddess by Venus herself (bars 287-306).

In a similar vein, Fenlon also underestimates Poppaea, noting her 'lack of self-discipline' (p. 72). Yet though she worships love, she very much knows what she is about. In discussing the scene between her and her nurse Arnalta (Act I scene 4) Fenlon (p. 59) places more weight on the latter's warning of the dangers of court than on Poppaea's assertion that 'Love and Fortune fight for me' ('per me guerreggia Amor e la Fortuna', bars 78-86). Arnalta may be a good Tacitist - and Fenlon is very good on the cynicism of her soliloquy in Act III scene 7 (p. 90) - but so is Poppaea, ably mixing ragion di stato and sex appeal to manipulate Nero in Act I scene 10 and to reject Otho in Act I scene 11, where she uses 'the exact imagery used by Arnalta' (p. 72). Indeed, Love will quite literally fight for her in Act II scene 11 when he turns back Otho's attempt to murder her. (Fenlon himself notes [p. 83] the Dantean parody here in Love's claim that he 'moves the sun and the other stars' ['move il sol e l'altre stelle', bars 60-7].)

Elsewhere in Chapter 7 Fenlon has some fine things to say about the structure of the first two acts. Each, he observes, begins and ends with similar material. Act I concludes with 'Ottone still in thrall to Poppea, a neat mirror image of its opening scene' (p. 79). Act II displays an even more elaborate framing strategy. Fenlon cleverly deduces (p. 79) that scenes 1-3, described as taking place in Seneca's villa, are located specifically in its garden, a favourite image of Lipsian Neostoicism. The last three scenes, 10-12, take place once again in a garden, but now in Poppaea's, one of inconstancy and love (p. 82).

28 'Theater, Sets, and Music in Monteverdi's Operas', in Pirrotta (see n. 15), 267.

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Fenlon also says wise things about the characterisation of Otho and Drusilla. He points out that in Act I Otho 'starts off with the "wrong" notion of love ... [but] by the end of the work Drusilla's constancy will complete his moral education' (p. 74). By Act III scene 5 he embraces 'Drusilla's virtue' (p. 88) as his 'wealth and glory' ('ricchezza e gloria'). Drusilla, Fenlon argues, is a parallel character to Seneca. Her behaviour in Act III scenes 1-4 is analogous to that of the philosopher in Act II scenes 1-3, as 'the soliloquies, challenges, trials and, above all, firm declarations of constantia characterize both sets of scenes' (p. 89).

Despite these keen observations, Fenlon is, I think, wide of the mark on some other points. Commenting on Act I scene 2 when the soldiers criticise Seneca, he writes:

it is from this that the audience gains its first impression of the philosopher, long before he actually appears on the stage. Behind these attacks lies the account of Dio Cassius, which pointedly remarks on the discrepancy between Seneca's philosophy and his behaviour, and from which, in general, all of Busenello's assaults on the character of the historical Seneca are derived. (p. 58)

This observation should have been credited to Ellen Rosand, who first made it.29 Moreover, as I have argued, these attacks are delivered, as in Tacitus, by unreliable figures. In the first of these scenes Busenello made that unreliability clear by having the First Soldier claim 'I didn't sleep the whole night' ('Non ho dormito in tutta la notte mai', bars 20-2), while the audience has just seen him sleep through the whole of Act I scene 1.30 In addition both soldiers, in claiming not to be deceived by Seneca repeat 'let us learn from our eyes not to be fools ('Impariamo dagl'occhi / A non trattar da sciocchi', bars 84-98): the one way, for an accademico incognito, not to learn about the character of others. Certainly, the soldiers can make us laugh at Seneca's expense, but in the terms laid out by Miller himself, they are not very credible witnesses.

In discussing the opera's musical language Fenlon observes that the frequently used stile concitato is 'associated with a lack of control. ... [it is] one of the main musical means by which the central message of constancy is highlighted in the opera' (pp. 60-1). As he notes (p. 69) the style is put to good use in Act I scene 9, where Nero claims Seneca has driven him 'to anger' ('allo sdegno', bars 108-10). However, both Fenlon and Miller overlook the obvious links to Senecan thought. In Epistulae morales 18.14 Seneca quoted Epicurus, 'ungoverned anger begets madness', adding that 'this emotion blazes out against all sorts of persons; it springs from love as much as from hate'. Seneca also wrote a long dialogue on this emotion, De ira, in which he states that 'no plague has cost the human race more dear [than anger]' (1.2.1).

With the appearance of Octavia in Act I scene 5, Fenlon provides sharp commentary on Monteverdi's musical depiction of 'a mind in emotional torment' (p. 63). But I cannot agree that Octavia's is 'a mind in disarray' as Fenlon writes several sentences later. Busenello and Monteverdi worked out of the lament tradition, in which noble characters respond to such catastrophes as abandonment or imminent death. Octavia, moreover, is still very much in control of herself. As Fenlon notes, she turns down her nurse's suggestion to take a lover. (For some reason Fenlon later [p. 74] numbers this refusal among the defeats of constantia.)

In the scene that follows for Octavia, her page and Seneca, Fenlon characterises the philosopher as 'the mouthpiece of neostoicism' (p. 63). More precisely, Busenello filled the character's speeches with ideas found in the works of the real Seneca. In his opening address to Octavia the phrase 'the vanity of tears is unworthy of imperial eyes' (bars 29 Rosand, 'Seneca' (see n. 1), 41n18, 46. 30 I thank Paul Ferrara of Queens College, who pointed out this contradiction to me.

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16-19) resembles a passage in the Consolatio ad Polybium, where the philosopher counselled Emperor Claudius's powerful adviser not to cry for his dead brother:

Though you have equal grief, you do not have the same liberty as your brothers; there are many things that the opinion which others have formed of your learning and your character does not permit you to do - men demand much of you, expect much. ... You may not weep beyond measure. (6.3-4)

Seneca's remark that Octavia should 'thank fortune who with its strokes increases your ornaments: an unstruck flint cannot give sparks' ('Ringrazia la Fortuna / Che con i colpi suoi / Ti cresce gl'ornamenti. / La cote non percossa / Non puo mandar faville', bars 20-31) recalls another work. In De providentia Seneca enquired of his friend Lucilius: 'You are a great man; but how do I know it if Fortune gives you no opportunity of showing your worth?' (4.2).

Octavia's reply, that Seneca's words are 'specious vanities, studied artifices, useless reme- dies to the unhappy' ('Vanita speciose, / Studiati artifici, / Inutili rimedi a gl'infelici', bars 75-81) prompts Fenlon to reply that 'her view that Senecan philosophy could provide no comfort for human sorrow would have been undercut for an audience familiar with the fabulous literary success of Lipsius' De constantia' (p. 67). Nevertheless, Octavia's complaint also recalls a longstanding objection to Stoicism in both its original and Lipsian versions. As William Bouwsma has pointed out, Stoicism was frequently denounced by both Catho- lics and Protestants for its inability to offer true consolation, its indifference to suffering: Erasmus denounced Stoic apathy in the Praise of Folly, as did the young Calvin, citing Augustine; the older Calvin also attacked 'the foolish description given by the ancient Stoics of "the great-souled man"' and also denounced 'new Stoics who count it depraved not only to groan and weep but also to be sad and tear-ridden'. We, he declared, citing Christ's tears, 'have nothing to do with this iron-hearted philosophy'.31

Seen in this light, Poppea is also a tragedy, the tragedy of Seneca, a great man whose incomplete wisdom cannot change events, and the tragedy of Octavia, whose only solace is an imperfect doctrine. Still, Octavia remains a noble figure in Act I. At the end of her first soliloquy in scene 5 she calls on heaven to extinguish the anger she had invoked earlier ('l'ira tua s'estingua', bars 90-2); by the end of the scene 6 she has even composed herself enough to arrive at her own constantia: 'I will relegate myself to making offerings in the temple' ('Chi'io mi riduco a porger voti al tempio', bars 198-202).

However, anger has got the best of Octavia when she reappears in Act II scene 7, terrorising Otho into attempting the assassination of Poppaea. So sudden a shift to what Fenlon rightly calls a 'language of perverted ragion di stato' (p. 81) is, I think, a lapse in Busenello's dramaturgy (not to mention another radical departure from Tacitus, who portrayed Octavia as a victim throughout). Indeed, Octavia's only other scene, the farewell soliloquy in Act III scene 6, is more consistent with the character seen in Act I. Fenlon describes her lament as another sign of 'her philosophical immaturity' (p. 90), but it is also a reminder of Stoicism's inadequacy. Moreover, Fenlon misses an important point by misreading the text:

Despite her situation, she anticipates her future longing 'to kiss the walls of her native land' ('a baciar le patrie mura'). This is in turn matched by her inability to find any consolation in her

31 William J. Bouwsma, in 'The Two Faces of Humanism: Stoicism and Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought', in A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley, 1990), 48. Miller and Fenlon do not cite this essay. On Calvin's point see also Morford (n. 19), 160-1.

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land of exile, not even in nature: 'Ed io staro solinga, / Alterando le mosse ai pianti, ai passi'. (p. 90)

The libretto actually reads:

L'aria, che d'ora in ora Ricevera i miei fiati, Li portera, per nome del cor mio, A veder, a baciar le patrie mura, Ed io, staro solinga, Alternando le mosse ai pianti, ai passi, Insegnando pietade ai tronchi, e ai sassi [bars 19-32]

[The air that will continuously receive my breath will in the name of my heart, bring it to see, to kiss my native walls, and I will remain alone, moving between crying and walking, teaching pity to the trees and stones.]

The image of sending her breath to Rome, moreover, approaches the sentiment of one of Seneca's most sublime passages. In the Consolatio ad Helviam, written during his own exile, Seneca comforted his mother by reminding her

Inside the world there can be found no place of exile; for nothing that is inside the world is foreign to mankind. No matter where you lift your gaze from earth to heaven, the realms of God and man are separated by an unaltered distance. Accordingly, so long as my eyes are not deprived of that spectacle with which they are never sated, so long as I may behold the sun and the moon, so long as I may fix my gaze upon the other planets ... what difference does it make to me what soil I tread upon? (8.5-6)

Returning then to Act I scene 6, I also object to Fenlon's characterisation of the Page, whose criticisms of Seneca he calls 'some of the sharpest in the opera' (p. 67). The Page, like the soldiers, is a brilliant comic invention. But like them he is not credible. His first and last emotion is anger (bars 86-98, 203-15). When the Page calls Seneca's precepts 'canzoni' (literally, 'songs', but here meaning 'jokes'), the composer, as Fenlon notes, switched 'from duple to triple metre, and again, by extravagant extension through conven- tional means adds, through irony, to the diminution of Seneca's authority' (p. 65). If anyone's status is undermined it is the Page's. For Monteverdi also employed here a ciaconna bass line (bars 118-29, Fenlon's Ex. 5), a figure that still had connotations of rude behaviour and lasciviousness.32 The Page also accuses 'clever philosophy' - Seneca's - of doing the contrary of what it teaches (bars 154-61). Thus the already unreliable figure sinks to the charges that Seneca (and Tacitus) had liquidated as ones motivated by envy. Monteverdi even underlined the fatuousness of this charge by setting the concept of 'contrary' to a ridiculous pictorialism; the bass and voice lines move in stepwise contrary motion. Finally, Fenlon himself observes that in the Page's only other scene, Act II scene 4, he is 'shown completely overwhelmed by his infatuation for one of the empress' ladies in-waiting' (p. 80): hardly a recommendation for his reliability.

Returning to Seneca, one notes that he says not a single word in his own defence during the Page's outburst: a nice illustration of the principles of another of his treatises, De constantia, which, unlike Lipsius's, deals with the wise person's indifference to insult. Fenlon rightly observes that the philosopher's soliloquy in Act I scene 7 about the unhappiness of the rich and powerful is directed as much towards himself as it is towards Octavia (p. 67). Here were also find another echo of the Consolatio ad Helviam, where in Book

32 See Lorenzo Bianconi, Seventeenth-Century Music, trans. David Bryant (Cambridge, 1987), 101-4.

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12 property is said to lead to unhappiness. Likewise, Seneca's sternness with Nero in Act I scene 9, so far removed from the more permissive Tacitean figure (who sought to direct Nero's 'deviations from virtue into licensed channels of indulgence'; Annals 13.2), recalls a passage in De ira 1.7.2:

it is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than, after they have been admitted, to control them; for when they have established themselves in possession, they are stronger than their ruler and do not permit themselves to be restrained or reduced.

Fenlon has slightly misread Seneca's one justification in this scene to depart from strict legality: 'If innocence is lost, let it be lost only to earn kingdoms, because the sin committed to enlarge the empire absolves itself' ('S'innocenza si perde, / Perdasi sol per guadagnar i regni, / Ch'il peccato commesso / Per aggrandir l'impero / Si assolve da se stesso', bars 127-39). This is not an example of the thought of Lipsius, who 'had come to use Prudence to legitimate whatever a prince deemed necessary to control his state' (p. 69). Rather, Busenello's Seneca speaks of the conquest of other lands, a Roman imperial virtue that Tacitus himself felt Nero lacked.33

Fenlon treats the remainder of Seneca's scenes, Act II scenes 1-3, with great sensitivity. I would add only that the philosopher's claim in the last of these, 'death is but a brief anguish' ('breve angoscia e la morte', bar 9), echoes the end of De providentia, that dying 'is so brief that its fleetness cannot come within the ken' (6.9). The final irony is that we take leave of Busenello's Seneca just as he is about to face a death that was anything but easy.

ROBERT R. HOLZER

33 On the latter point see Grant (n. 6), xiii.

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the song of the soul: understanding 'poppea'by iain fenlon; peter n. miller

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