AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts Friday afternoon 95
RECOMPOSING MONTEVERDI: ERNST KRENEK’S
L’iNCoroNAZioNe di PoPPeA
Benjamin Thorburn
Yale University
In 1936, Ernst Krenek produced an adaptation of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea
for a repertory company known as the Salzburg Opera Guild to perform on its tour of the
United States the following year. In its first professional performances in the U.S., Monteverdi’s
last opera was presented in a form quite different from that given in its surviving sources,
with a reduced cast of characters, two acts rather than three, and Krenek’s freely contrapuntal
elaboration of the score for modern orchestra. In his review for the New york times, Olin
Downes declared that “a musical antiquarian would be likely to condemn this scoring lock,
stock and barrel,” though the performance as a whole earned his praise. While Krenek revered
Monteverdi’s music for its psychological expressivity, he sought to improve on the weaknesses
he saw in Busenello’s libretto by eliminating scenes and characters that he deemed inessential
to the dramatic action. Key events such as the attempted murder of Poppea were altered, and
in certain places Krenek composed new text. In sum, his revisions surpass the task of a practical
adaptation and amount to a dramatic and musical reshaping of the opera.
Using the musical score as written artifact, I consider how Krenek’s revisions affect our interpretation
of the drama, especially in the characters of Seneca and Drusilla, both of whom
recent scholarship has regarded as central to the opera’s morality. Through his writings on the
adaptation, I show that Krenek’s reconception of the roles of Drusilla and Poppea reflects the
ideal of the “eternal feminine” that prevailed in Viennese literary circles of his time. I also
place Krenek’s incoronazione in relation to the strands of political crisis and controversy in
his career. It occupies a position between two critical events: in 1934, the politically motivated
cancellation of the premiere of his anti-nationalist opera Karl V, and the annexation of Austria
in 1938, which precipitated his emigration to America. Elements of incoronazione resonate
with the later opera Pallas Athene weint (1952–55), to Krenek’s own libretto. Set at the decline
of Athens, it is a political parable in which Socrates, a lone voice of reason and morality not
unlike Seneca, is sentenced to death by a tyrannical ruler.
That such a forward-looking composer as Krenek would take an interest in Monteverdi
may be surprising, but it is far from unique. As a composer who edited or adapted Monteverdi’s
works, he stands among many others including D’Indy, Malipiero, Orff, Dallapiccola,
Henze, and Berio, all of whom sought in some way to move forward by looking to the past.
This paper thus will situate Krenek’s adaptation within this broader context of Monteverdi’s
twentieth-century reception.
REPRODUCING OPERA: EMERGENT
MEANINGS IN JANáčEK ON STAGE
Jennifer Sheppard
University of California, Berkeley
Recently, the most exciting productions of operas have attracted attention by rebelling
against established ideas of the opera’s text and stagings—Peter Sellars’ New York settings
of Mozart operas are just one example among many. Likewise, the most stimulating developments
in opera criticism have been in the area of performance, where a much-needed