Deity, Beast, and Tyrant: Images of the Prince in the Operas of Monteverdi

Abstract

Acknowledged as the first masterpieces in the then new art of baroque opera, the three extant operas of Claudio Monteverdi are here analyzed as representations of early seventeenth-century absolutist and republican ideas. The characteristic themes of Italian baroque political theory-fortune and virtù, the passions, political activism vs. philosophic contemplation, the intoxication of power-pervade the operas. But the focus of this essay will be on the operatic depiction of princes. Composed during his years of service at the court of Mantua, Monteverdi's Orfeo endows the prince, in absolutist fashion, with the characteristics of divinity. Monteverdi's last two operas, Ulisse and Poppea, composed in republican Venice, bring the prince back down to earth. Ulisse embeds the prince in an historical world of mutability and contingency, where strength and guile are the only guarantors of success. Poppea takes this historicism one step further, as it broaches a republican critique of absolutism.