Monteverdi. L’Incoronazione di Poppea Facsimile della partitura di Napoli. Edizione del libretto a cura di Lorenzo Bianconi. Saggi introduttivi di Gino Benzoni e Alessandra Chiarelli

A mocking cynicism pervades the opera, which is drawn from the Annals of Tacitus and from a Latin tragedy attributed to Seneca (Octavia): one recognizes in it the imprint of the philosophical and moral libertinism cultivated by the Accademia degli Incogniti. This volume reproduces the manuscript score preserved in Naples. Like the manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana (already reproduced in facsimile in 1938), this one is the product of several hands: Francesco Cavalli, perhaps Benedetto Ferrari and probably an unknown Neapolitan composer. In his introductory essay, the historian Gino Benzoni delineates the reception during the 17th c. of Tacitus, the main basis of the opera. Alessandra Chiarelli clarifies the complex web of sources for the music and libretto. Lorenzo Bianconi contributes editions of the “scenario” (1643), the text as its author chose to publish it (1656) and the variants of the Neapolitan libretto (1651). Linen. $185 (view other volumes from this series)