{"id":1107,"date":"2016-01-17T19:56:54","date_gmt":"2016-01-17T19:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fleeting.eu:8080\/wordpress\/?p=1107"},"modified":"2016-01-19T10:46:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T10:46:54","slug":"a-serious-challenge-for-my-scholarly-readership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/a-serious-challenge-for-my-scholarly-readership\/","title":{"rendered":"A serious challenge for my scholarly readership"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the years I have developed an obsession for a piece of music by Monteverdi * that ends his opera Coronation of Poppea written in 1642.<\/p>\n<p>Here it is. I love this recording, but <strong>it is 1 min 18 seconds into this video<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Pur ti miro - Nuria Rial, Philippe Jaroussky, Christina Pluhar and l&#039;Arpeggiata (Claudio Monteverdi)\" width=\"625\" height=\"469\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J2gwS6pawdU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=J2gwS6pawdU\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=J2gwS6pawdU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What (I think) I know about this piece (no serious scholarship ever undertaken), and what makes it so fascinating to me is as follows: &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>1. It is a love duet between Nero and his prostitute wife Poppea after she has contrived to ascend the throne of Rome leaving a trail of blood and misery. It is based on real events recounted by Tacitus.<\/p>\n<p>2. The opera is framed by various goddesses, in articular &#8216;Amor&#8217; the God of Love is set against the goddesses of Fortune and Virtue or Wisdom (I think). Amor intervenes directly in the action.<\/p>\n<p>3*. It is said that this duet may have been the work of one of Monteverdi\u2019s pupils (don&#8217;t think dopey nerd who knows a few power chords though). Cavalli is mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>4. It is thought that the audience would both have known the story of the real events and may have also known that subsequent to the marriage Nero kicks Poppea to death in a jealous or drunken rage.<\/p>\n<p>So my questions relate to the following possible scenarios<\/p>\n<p>1. Audiences of the time just wanted a good happy ending and did not care about the story &#8211; so Monti provides just that.<\/p>\n<p>2. Monteverdi was being incredibly modern and ironic in not musically hinting at us what a couple of bastards we have here.<\/p>\n<p>3. The fact that &#8216;love trumps all&#8217; is sufficient to justify an ending of such beauty and thus negates any need for musical subtext<\/p>\n<p>4. Monteverdi\u2019s pupil had not read the story and just churned out a crowd pleaser<\/p>\n<p>5. Monteverdi lost the plot \u2013 he was very old<\/p>\n<p>This duet seems to me like an ending unlike any other in the canon of the time (not that I know sod all \u2013 Charles help please) in so far as evil is truly triumphant, there is no moralising summation, no irony, no attempt to hint at anything other than a deep loving joy proclaimed by two of the nastiest characters in all opera.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone prepared to do the reading necessary, listening, viewing to find out? I would really love to know what the most likely scenario was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the years I have developed an obsession for a piece of music by Monteverdi * that ends his opera Coronation of Poppea written in 1642. Here it is. I love this recording, but it is 1 min 18 seconds into this video https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=J2gwS6pawdU What (I think) I know about this piece (no serious scholarship [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-else"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}