Libretto di Gian Francesco Busenello, musica di Claudio Monteverdi

Facsimile of the Naples score plus libretto edited by Lorenzo Bianconi, with introductory essays by Gino Benzoni and Alessandra Chiarelli

Drammaturgia musicale veneta, 2

Ricordi, Milan, 2011

L’incoronazione di Poppea (Venice 1643), a play by Giovan Francesco Busenello with music attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, has a very special place in the history of opera. It is in fact the first opera on a historical subject. Instead of Daphne, Orpheus and Adonis, the main characters are the Emperor Nero, the Empress Octavia, the Sabina courtesan Poppea and the philosopher Seneca. This book contains the manuscript score now in Naples, which like the manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, was copied by several hands: Francesco Cavalli, perhaps Benedetto Ferrari, and probably an Anonymous Neapolitan musician. The problematic issue of the relations between attribution, sources, versions and performances is addressed in the introductory pages by Alessandra Chiarelli, while Gino Benzoni describes the historical and cultural background to Busenello’s life and career, from the late 16th century to the 1750s.