Virtue and Liberty: Italian Opera and Roman Self-Imaging in Britain, 1720-1742
Résumé
En Angleterre, les opéras et les chanteurs italiens ont été, dès le départ, objets de ridicule et d’invectives. Cependant, les sommes d’argent importantes, le soutien et le mécénat dont cet art bénéficia de la part des élites intellectuelles, culturelles et politiques du royaume semble suggérer que l’opéra a joué un rôle politique et culturel dans le pays. Un quart des livrets d’opéra ont trait à l’antiquité romaine et l’opéra semble avoir eu une influence dans ce que Philipe Ayres appelle « Roman Self-Imaging », l’élaboration d’une image de soi comme Romain. Ayres n’englobe pas l’opéra italien parmi les arts qui ont illustré et défendu un état d’esprit fondé sur les deux piliers de la liberté et la vertu classiques, grâce auxquels les Britanniques se sont construits une image dérivée de la Rome républicaine et se sont façonnés en « oligarchie de vertu ». Cependant, il nous semble que les livrets d’opera seria italiens ont pu contribuer à ce processus en présentant des modèles avec lesquels les Britanniques ont pu s’identifier pour mieux les dépasser dans l’élaboration de leur image d’eux-mêmes en Romains.
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An exotick and irrational entertainment, which has been
always combated, and always has prevailed.
—Samuel Johnson
It may suffice to say of the modern opera, that by the sober and judicious part of mankind, it has ever been considered as the offspring of luxury; and those who have examined it with a critical eye, scruple not to pronounce that it is of all entertainments the most unnatural and absurd.
—John Hawkins
The Italian Opera, is a Diversion of more pernicious consequence, than the most
licentious Play that ever has appear’d upon the Stage.
—John Dennis
1These amusing comments on Italian opera represent only one side of the literary reception of Italian opera in early eighteenth-century Britain. Unfortunately, such squibs are mistakenly taken by some modern commentators to characterize the British response as a whole to opera and, moreover, are often considered a just evaluation of the aesthetic merits of Italian opera seria, an opinion seemingly validated when Handel abandoned opera, allowing the English to appreciate a truly respectable art form: oratorio sung in English.
- 1 P.C. Scipione (1726) and Alessandro (1726).
2It may be pointed out that the critics are attending only to formal, surface features of the music of opera; they (and modern scholars) ignore the content of the librettos: dialogue, action, character, moral conflict, and poetic justice. There is some evidence to suggest that the content of operas may have been taken seriously by London audiences. Librettos were sold to audience members and included English translations and plot summaries; librettos were saved, collected, bound, and deposited in noblemen’s libraries; and many audience members saw the same opera repeatedly in a single season. Two librettos by Paolo Rolli were published as independent Italian poetic dramas.1
- 2 Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, “New Light on Handel and the Royal Academy of Music,” Theatre J (...)
3The financial support of opera by the cultural élite of Britain is also telling evidence. For the nine seasons of the Royal Academy of Music from 1719-20 to 1727-28, for example, the king and some 70 of the company’s shareholders sank more than 20,000 pounds into subsidizing the company, until it folded in bankruptcy.2 Thereafter, opera was revived and produced at the Haymarket Theatre almost continuously throughout the 18th century and beyond; twice, London supported two rival opera companies.
4Opera must have been a valued “cultural production”; it must have done some serious “cultural work” that caused the cultural élite to support it in the face of constant ridicule and lack of financial viability. This essay will explore one way in which the plot, dialogue, and poetic justice found in Italian opera seria on Roman subjects could do “cultural work” in Britain — that is, in helping construct or reinforce a sense in Britain’s élite political community of what Philip Ayres calls “Roman self-imaging.”
Roman Self-imaging
- 3 Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cam (...)
5In Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England,3 Philip Ayres shows how, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the British “cultural and political elite appropriated and assimilated classical, and particularly Roman, habits of mind.” In all manner of cultural productions, Britons proclaimed their allegiance to, and gave visible form or verbal expression to, Roman ideals of “liberty” and “civic virtue” and self-fashioned themselves as an “oligarchy of virtue.” Lord Chesterfield could write his son in 1738:
- 4 The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, ed. with intro. Bonamy Dobrée, 6 v (...)
De toutes les histoires anciennes, la plus intéressante, et la plus instructive, c’est l’histoire Romaine. Elle est la plus fertile en grands hommes, et en grands événements. Elle nous anime, plus que toute autre, à la vertu. . . .
Sous le règne d’August, . . . elle ne l’était plus d’elle-même; ayant perdu son ancienne liberté, et son ancienne vertu.”4
- 5 An extended parallel is presented in Walter Moyle, An Essay upon the Constitution of the Roman Gov (...)
6After the Glorious Revolution, British aristocrats and gentry imagined themselves as virtuous Romans, a process that was a conscious effort of a newly powerful political oligarchy, primarily Whig, to dignify and vindicate itself and its political revolution by association and identification with an image of Republican Rome. Appealing to this classical heritage of civic virtue in the service of liberty was a form of political self-justification. From the days of the Commonwealth, Britons retold and analyzed their political history, statesmen, and institutions in terms of classical precedents, antecedents, and parallels.5 The modern Whig assertion that Britain had already achieved glorious liberty after 1688 was a way of forestalling or preempting any further political revolution.
7The political history of Rome — especially as conveyed through Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy) (1513 or 1515-1519) — was portrayed as one of struggle by defenders of liberty against tyranny and slavery; Roman history showed the absolute imperative of having selfless, virtuous men participate in politics; as well, Roman historians (especially Tacitus) showed the ways liberty and civic virtue could be lost (especially by the effects of corruption, effeminacy, and luxury).
8Personal and civic virtue were two sides of the same coin, and both were inseparable from liberty. Personal virtue meant avoiding luxury, excess, and effeminacy; virtue was compatible with wealth only if it was derived from land. Civic virtue (what Britons called “public spirit”) meant self-sacrifice and putting duty toward the state above one’s own self-interest. The British Constitution (a balance of Lords, King and Commons) paralleled — or was superior to — the mixed form of government praised by Polybius and Cicero. The analogy fit better if England was described as a republic with a king. In both forms, active government was reserved to a political élite.
9By imaging themselves defenders of liberty and civic virtue along the lines of the Roman Republican senatorial oligarchy, Britons could distinguish themselves from the indulgent and licentious aristocracy of Charles II and James II; they could imagine themselves as protectors of British liberty from the threat of absolutism and the Pretender across the seas. This identification with Republican ideals of virtue and liberty gave the new British mixed constitution a legitimacy not to be found in the continental absolutist courts.
- 6 Elizabeth W. Manwaring, Italian Landscape in Eighteenth Century England: A Study Chiefly of the In (...)
10The arts collaborated in constructing Britons as modern embodiments or representatives of Roman ideals and virtue. Britons planned gardens on Roman models and filled their landscapes with Roman temples and monuments. Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson assumed the personae of Horace or Juvenal, now writing on British themes and characters. Statuary portrayed Britons (and not just its kings) as Romans dressed in togas and military armor. Being represented as Romans was visual evidence the sitters were spiritual Romans of the Republican past. British architecture imitated Roman models as transmitted through Palladio. Poets extolled, and painters portrayed, the Thames valley as equivalent – if not superior – to the Roman campagna.6
11Reading classical authors created a shared agreement among Britons on civic values and personal codes of conduct. Horace, Cicero, and Quintillian were taken as guides for poetry and oratory. What was said of Rome applied to Britain. Plays, such as Nathaniel Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus (1681) and Addison’s Cato (1713), drew parallels between contemporary political events and ancient Rome, often identifying Republican Romans as Whigs, and Whigs as guarantors of English liberty. Modern politicians were praised or vilified under the names of Roman types: Caesar, Cato, Cataline, Cicero, Nero, Sejanus, or Verres. Some Britons, such as Shaftesbury, came to share more cultural ground with Cicero and classical virtue than with Christianity; Shaftesbury drew a parallel between Britain in 1710 and Rome during the Punic wars, when both wanted only repose from arms to apply themselves to arts and letters.
Republican Virtue
- 7 The best survey is J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the (...)
12The philosophical system that underlies the personal and civic principles of the Roman Republic, the world of the opera librettos, as well as much of the political, moral, and artistic discourse of early eighteenth-century Britain is embodied in the doctrine called civic humanism or classical republicanism. Its principles are found in canonic texts by Cicero, Sallust, Polybius, Tacitus, Livy, Seneca, and others that were part of every educated male Briton’s education.7 M. M. Goldsmith’s summary provides a useful beginning point:
- 8 M. M. Goldsmith, “Liberty, Luxury and the Pursuit of Happiness,” pp. 225-251 in The Languages of P (...)
Civic humanism [...] held that political activity was essential for self-fulfillment but that naturally human beings would selfishly pursue their own interests and pleasures. However, it was possible to train and discipline them into good citizens, active in public affairs and motivated by public spirit to seek the benefit of the commonwealth rather than personal advantage. A good society would have laws and institutions by which liberty would be maintained and the citizens imbued with public spirit and engaged in public service.8
- 9 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, II.18 (Appellata est enim ex viro virtus).
13The well-being of the state depended on the moral character of the citizen, who was assumed to play an active role in politics. The citizen was male, of age, of some wealth, and free. In order to pursue the common good above his own needs, the citizen had to be independent; and this usually meant he was a property holder. The shorthand for the necessary moral qualities for the citizen is the term virtus. Cicero explains the derivation of virtus from vir (man) in the sense that virtus is what is characteristic of, what must be practiced by, a man seeking personal fulfillment or glory in politics and the good of the Republic.9
14Historians taught that the actions of individual men and women made states great. It is precisely those ancient heroes (of both Rome and Near Eastern empires) exemplifying these civic virtues who appear in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century tragedies, opera librettos, and history paintings. Many famous exemplars of Roman virtue are the basis for opera libretti: Cato of Utica (who chose suicide over life under the dictator Julius Caesar), Scipio Africanus Major (who practiced self-mastery and gave freedom to a conquered female slave), Mucius Scaevola (who burned his hand to demonstrate the fortitude of the Romans), and Titus Vespasianus (who extended clemency to plotters against him).
- 10 Especially I.5-29. A briefer discussion is found in De Inventione, II.53-54; a brief typology of v (...)
- 11 De Officiis, I.7; trans. Walter Miller. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Pres (...)
- 12 Bellum Catilinae, X.1.
15The classic discussion of the virtues necessary for the vita activa politica was found in Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties),10 probably the West’s most influential guide to civic behavior. For Cicero, prudentia, justitia, fortitudo, and temperantia were the four Cardinal Virtues. Most necessary for civic concord was justitia, which for Cicero was the “crowning glory of the virtues and on the basis of which men are called ‘good men’ [...] [and] by which society and what we may call its ‘common bonds’ are maintained.”11 For Sallust, it was “through toil and the practice of justice” that the Roman Republic grew to greatness.12 Cicero analyzed justice into beneficentia (generosity) and clementia (mercy). Most opera librettos reached a lieto fine, in which the hero dispensed justice (most commonly clemency) that resolved plot conflicts and rewarded virtue.
- 13 De Republica, VI.13.
- 14 De Officiis, I.17; ed. cit., 61. Cicero ranks one’s duties: from country, parents, children, family (...)
16A citizen’s primary duty is to his country. In Cicero’s influential “The Dream of Scipio” (one of the small portions of De Republica known in the Middle Ages and Renaissance), Scipio Africanus (Publius Cornelius Scipio) appears before his grandson in a dream, to declare that loving justice and doing one’s duty is a citizen’s paramount obligation to his country. He promises, “All those who have preserved, aided, or enlarged their fatherland have a special place prepared for them in the heavens, where they may enjoy an eternal life of happiness.”13 For Cicero, the most important social relation is one’s link to one’s country. Parents, children, relatives, and friends are dear, “but one native land embraces all our loves; and who that is true would hesitate to give his life for her, if by his death he could render her a service?”14
- 15 The classic statement is in Longinus, On the Sublime, 44.
17Essential for achieving the citizen’s personal fulfillment and the greatness of the state is liberty. The arts and sciences rose and declined hand in hand with the rise and loss of liberty.15 It was a commonplace that Rome and her arts and letters achieved greatness once she gained liberty with the expulsion of kings. Britons above all prided themselves on their hard-won possession of liberty; as Joseph Addison stated:
‘Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia’s isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.
(A Letter from Italy [1704], 139-40)
Opera Seria as Historical Drama
18This essay attempts to rectify Ayres’s overlooking the role of Italian opera seria as one of the media for his process of Roman self-imaging. Rather than look at a single opera, I will look at a distinctive group of Italian operas: those on Roman subjects. They represent approximately one-quarter of the operas produced in London from 1720 to 1742. But I suggest they had a special resonance and significance for the London audience who, as Ayres has described, were trying to fashion a moral and civic culture that emulated the values of ancient Rome, and especially the Republic. The operas present exemplars of virtue and devotion to duty and liberty, who could serve as objects of admiration and imitation by members of Britain’s political community.
19One of the persistent charges hurled against Italian opera was that — sung in a foreign language in a florid musical style with words and syllables endlessly repeated — it was mere sound, an irrational entertainment that obviously could not fulfill drama’s principal objective: to delight and instruct, and thereby convey moral lessons. Before proceeding, I must challenge this conventional wisdom. I would like to radically historize the literary, poetic and dramatic place of Italian opera in Hanoverian Britain, to suggest that opera seria could have been taken seriously enough by Britons to be the sort of cultural production that could do significant political work.
- 16 Richard G. King, “Classical History and Handel’s Alessandro,” Music and Letters, 72 (1996), 34-63.
20Most of the operas are based on historical subjects, and librettists carefully indicate in the printed libretto the source of the historical event(s). In the case of Paolo Rolli’s Alessandro (London, 1726), Richard King has shown how the libretto closely follows and replicates the most important episodes from the campaign of Alexander the Great in India.16 To the extent that the operas faithfully present the events told by the classical authors, they can count as histories and claim the same utility. Henry Felton’s comments, in A Dissertation on Reading the Classics (1713), about what will be gained from reading the classics, could – with some qualifications and exceptions – apply equally well to the operas presented in the Haymarket Theatre:
- 17 Quoted from 4th, enlarged edn (1730).
[You] will meet with great and wonderful Examples of [...] Virtue in the Greeks and Romans, with many Instances of Greatness of Mind, of unshaken Fidelity, Contempt of humane Grandeur, a most passionate Love of their Countrey, Prodigality of Life, Disdain of Servitude, inviolable Truth, and the most public disinterested Souls that ever threw off all Regards in comparison with their Countrey’s Good.17
21In his “Life of Plutarch” (1683), Dryden also tells of the use of history:
- 18 John Dryden, Works. Vol. 17: Prose 1668-1691, ed. Samuel H. Monk (Berkeley: University of Californ (...)
It informs the understanding by the memory: It helps us to judge of what will happen, by shewing us the like revolutions of former times. For Mankind being the same in all ages, agitated by the same passions, and mov’d to action by the same interests, nothing can come to pass, but some President [precedent] of the like nature has already been produc’d, so that having the causes before our eyes, we cannot easily be deceiv’d in the effects, if we have Judgment enough but to draw the parallel.18
22For a writer in the London Magazine (1762), “the contents of the historick page” showed lessons about:
- 19 “Letters To a Young Nobleman,” London Magazine, 31 (1762), 76.
The rise and fall of kingdoms and states, the establishment of liberty and laws, or the encroachments of slavery and despotism, the flourishing of arts and sciences, or the prevalence of ignorance and barbarity; the enervating effects of luxury and vice, or the happy influence of temperance and virtue.19
- 20 Quoting from Dryden, Dedication of the Æneis (1697); and Richard Steele, The Tatler, no. 98 (24 No (...)
23The possibility that opera could carry the same function as history was affirmed by several contemporary writers. They place emphasis on the fable, which is central to the moral effects of both drama and opera. The “powerful Charms of Poetry,” the verbal medium of drama and opera, add delight and help the example of virtue sink “deepest into the Heart of Man.”20 Moreover, opera, with its music and spectacle had advantages lacking even in spoken drama. The author of The Touch-Stone: Or, . . . Essays on the Reigning Diversions of the Town (1728) asserted:
Of all other Arts a compleat Opera comes nearest that perfect State of Poetry, because you may there enjoy a finished regular Fable, accompanied with the most exquisite Harmony. [...] A compleat Opera is a regular musical Dramma, and approaching very near to the Excellency of Poetry, (because Virtue may be there inculcated by a proper Fable). (pp. 2-3).
24A writer in 1730 thought “Theatrical Representations” the “most perfect” entertainments” that “Humane Wit can invent”:
- 21 Fog’s Weekly Journal, no. 98 (8 August 1730).
The Design of them is Morality, their Subject is History, and their Ornaments are Music, Painting, and Poetry; we are by them snatch’d back into former Ages, grow in a Manner cotemporary [with the past] and acquainted with Cæsar and Alexander, and are made Eye-Witnesses of the Actions of Cato and Lucretia. Men [on stage] are more legible and expressive Characters than any that fall from the Pen of the most artful Writers.21
25A year later another writer described the potential moral effect of an opera “regularly conducted” on the human mind:
- 22 British Journal, or The Traveller, no. 17 (9 January 1731).
what I have sayed of Tragedy and Comedy, may likewise be said of Operas; for the Fable of an Opera ought to be as regularly conducted, and the Characters as justly maintained, as in a Tragedy or Comedy; and the Poet ought to propose the same moral End in one as in the other; and one contains as large a Province for the Exercise of a fine Genius as either of the other. [...]
An Opera, with all the Circumstances necessary to make a Tragedy compleat in the Fable, Sentiments, and Diction, set to Music by a masterly Hand, and performed with Justice to the poetical and musical Compositions, would have an Advantage over Tragedy. […] Music therefore may be properly sayed, if the Song has any moral Sentiments in it, to be one of the Channels of Morality to the Mind.22
26Henry Stonecastle, writing in 1735, was certain that
- 23 [Henry Stonecastle] The Universal Spectator, and Weekly Journal, no. 352 (5 July 1735). Fog’s Week (...)
if then an Opera, or a Poem, set to good Musick, gives us, in some pleasing Allegory, a Lesson of Morality, I can’t but think it preferable to either the Comick Vein or the Tragick Stile […] Pieces set to Music, […] have this Advantage, that the Harmony keeps us attentive at the same Time that more than one Sense is entertain’d; the Language is intelligible and in a just Mean between the Rant of Tragedy and the low wit of Comedy; beside, the Italian Poets, from whom the Opera’s are taken, have more strictly adher’d to the first Design of Poetry, viz. the rendering Virtue amiable and Vice odious, than have our modern Writers; their Allegories are delightful and contain excellent morals.23
27History and drama need eloquence, ornament, and embellishment (the element of “delight”) to make the lessons more attractive; opera goes beyond both by providing music, costume, and staging.
- 24 Cornelius Nepos, The Lives of Illustrious Men, 2nd edn (1685), b5v.
28In addition to ornament and embellishment, opera shared with drama and poetry an advantage in conveying moral lessons: it taught by example, rather than precept. The traditional superiority of poetry (drama) and history over philosophy, as Aristotle had claimed, was that instead of conveying dry precepts, lessons about the human passions were taught by example and made more vivid by the ornaments of poetry and spectacle. The examples from history, Cornelius Nepos wrote, “will prove […] far greater Incentives to Virtue than all the grave and serious Precepts of Philosophers. […] The force of Example is intelligible to the meanest Capacities.”24
- 25 The Advancement of Learning, 2.4.2.
29Poetry, drama, and opera have an advantage over literal history. History records, as Francis Bacon observed, “the successes and issues of action not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence.”25 That is, the poet can take the liberty to arrange events to achieve the proper poetic justice at the conclusion so that virtue triumphs and vice is punished — a condition, we all know, that often does not prevail in real life.
- 26 On opera seria librettos as dramas of moral conflict and choice: Don Neville, “Moral Philosophy in (...)
30The opera audience at the Haymarket Theatre viewed not tragedies (with a few exceptions) but moral dramas: exhibitions of great and noble rulers (as well as their families, courtiers, and lovers in subplots) caught in a seemingly endless series of moral conflicts or choices.26 The complex plots — involving usually six characters, many subplots, numerous love pairings, disguised characters, recognitions, and duplicitous motives — generally advance by putting a character in a series of situations of moral choice, and being forced to choose between a personal, self-interested course of action or one that realizes virtue, duty, justice, or love of country.
31In the group of Roman operas, the plot advances to the scena ultima where the central character makes a moral or civic choice that reveals his or her virtue, justice, or clemency — an act that redounds to his or her glory and the welfare of the state. In several cases historical facts are altered. In Catone (London, 1732), after Pietro Metastasio, instead of Cato committing suicide, Julius Caesar repents of his tyrannical ways: thus converting a tragedy into a drama with a lieto fino of self-awareness by Julius Caesar. Invariably the plot fulfilled the stage’s classic role: to show virtue triumphant and vice destroyed; to show men and women rewarded for pursuing nobility and greatness. Additionally, the operas reinforced civic humanist, classical republican, or neo-Roman ideals.
Italian Opera Seria and Roman Self-Imaging
32To illustrate how Italian opera seria aided Britons’ process of self-fashioning as virtuous Romans, I will examine some episodes in these operas that present themes central to the shared Roman and British conceptions of virtue and liberty.
33That audience members might identify with characters on the stage is suggested by Alexander Pope in his prologue to Joseph Addison’s play Cato (1713), which presents one of the great exemplars of Roman Stoic self-sacrifice in the cause of liberty. The audience was to be absorbed into the spectacle and emulate worthy protagonists; Addison’s achievement was, Pope claimed,
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o’er each scene, and be what they behold:
…
He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops [tears] from British eyes.
(ll. 3-4, 15-16)
34Some opera librettos with Roman subjects quite explicitly connected Britain with ancient Rome. Paolo Rolli, in dedicating the reading-drama version of his P.C. Scipione (1726) to Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond and Lennox, stated:
Gli antichi Romani sono il Modello di questa in Armi e in Lettere floridissima Nazione: e non può trovarsi Soggetto più Nobile delle loro gran Geste, per un Teatro ove la Medesima vegga rappresentati i Personaggi a’ quali i suoi più gloriosi Figli somigliano.
(The ancient Romans are the model for this nation, flourishing in arms and letters: there is not to be found a more noble subject than their grand deeds, for a theatre where this nation may see represented the characters resembling her [the nation’s] most glorious children).
35Rolli had developed the conceit of the parallel between Britain and the Roman Republic previously in the dedication of Il Muzio Scevola (London, 1721) to King George I:
Felicissimi Regni! poichè d’affatto diversa Condizione da tutti gli altri; godono veramente la Romana Libertà: mentre i Popoli la possiedono, i Tribuni c’ invigilano, i Patrizij la difendono, il Sovrano la protegge. Leggansene le Istorie; e vi si rivedranno i Bruti i Muzii i Furii Cammilli i Scipioni. Paragonisi questo Regno alla Romana Repubblica; e si vedrà in quante principali Parti sian simili: Sì nella Gloria dell’ Armi, come nella costituzione delle Legi, e nell’ Onor delle Lettere. Io veggoci ‘n vita i Vincitori delle Gallie: e ritornare i Luttazij Catuli trionfanti da Lilibeo per navali Vittorie: V’ascolto i Ciceroni e i Catoni: v’ammiro le Vite, e poco fà, vi compiansi la Morte de’ Fabrizij non corrotti dall’ Oro Sannitico: In tutto insomma che quì succede, se ne può e se n’ ode far comparazioni con le famose Etadi Romane.
(Happiest realms! so different from all others; they truly enjoy Roman liberty: while the people possess it, tribunes watch over it, patricians defend it, and the sovereign protects it. Read the English history, and see there many a Brutus, a Mucius, a Furius Camillus, a Scipio. Compare this kingdom to the Roman Republic, and see in how many crucial ways they are alike: in the glory of armed warfare, in system of law, and in distinction of literature. Here I see true to life the conquerors of the Gauls, and many a Lutatius Catulus returning in triumph from Lilybaeum after naval victories; here I listen to Ciceros and Catos; here I admire the lives and, not long ago, mourned the death of some Fabricius uncorrupted by Samnite gold. In all, everything that happens here can be, and is heard to be, compared with the famous eras of Rome).
36Rolli then compares George I with the Alexander Severus and concludes that George is “one worthy of the obedience of this glorious people who so resemble ancient Rome” (cui degni d’ubidire quest’ Inclito Popolo che tanto all’ Antico Romano Somiglia).
Political Role of the Citizen
37We can best begin by posing the crucial question, “What image of ‘political’ man (or woman) is shown in the London Italian operas?” In the classical view of the republic, whether of the Roman Commonwealth or Britain’s mixed constitution, the state relied upon the virtue of the citizen for its health and longevity. Aristocracies and monarchies (and their tyrannical forms) could rely on the brute power of the state to enforce law, civic obedience, and military service. The classical view of the republic recognized that without the power of the monarch, the republic depended upon, even demanded, the willingness of virtuous citizens to sacrifice or limit their exercise of freedoms for the sake of the greater good of the state. In a republic, the participatory citizen shared responsibility for the affairs of state, foreign policy, and defense; thus, it was important that the citizen cultivate virtue and put the public interest above his or her private interest. What the librettos embody about the political duties of citizens is this civic humanist, classical republican ideal (or what John Dennis, Jonathan Swift, and other early eighteenth-century writers called public spirit): that the citizen’s first responsibility is duty to his country; that he must sacrifice his own self-interest and — in the extreme — even life for the greater good of his or her country. Like Hercules at the Crossroads, he must shun the easier, more pleasant and gratifying path of love, private passion, and pleasure in favor of the more demanding but nobler course of virtue and duty.
38The engine driving plots is the repeated contrivance of placing characters in situations of moral conflict or choice. The most pervasive and tortuous conflict for characters is between duty (to the state or one’s family) and the most intense of private self-interests, love. Private love is especially problematic for the hero or statesman pursuing the public good. Erotic love can be a passion that destroys a hero or makes him effeminate, leading him away from the path of virtue to actions destructive to the state.
39The competing claims of love and duty to one’s country are settled in favor of the latter. In Rolli’s Il Muzio Scevola, Mutius Scaevola makes clear that the demands of honor and virtue on a citizen (both male and female) trump the interests of one’s personal life. Before setting out on his attempt to assassinate Porsena, Mutius Scaevola asks Horatio to carry a message to Clelia, his beloved:
Dille che sol l’affetto
Della Patria prevale all’ amor mio:
Dàlle per me dolce amorosa addio.(Tell her that nothing but the Zeal for my Country cou’d
possibly prevail over my Love). (II.iii, pp. 46-47)
40In Grazio Braccioli’s Calfurnia (London, 1724), G. Marius tells Trebonius,
Che sei Figlio di Roma
...
Sia l’ tuo core amoroso,
Finchè chieda la Patria altro pensiero;
Ma al fragor delle Trombe
Lasci pronto l’Amor, e sia guerriero.
(You are a Roman,
…
Let Love no longer burn within your Breast,
When for your Country’s Good, your Sword’s requir’d;
But at the Trumpet’s Call let Love be banish’d,
Chase the deluding Charm, and take to Arms). (I.ii, pp. 8-9)
41Lucio also cautions Trebonio
Roma non soffre
Un Cittadin protervo
Che più che della Patria è d’amor servo.(Rome will disown th’ unworthy Man,
Who to his Country’s Good and Glory
Prefers an idle Passion). (I.xiii, pp. 25-27)
- 27 Likewise, Stilicon, in Domenico Lalli, Onorio (1736), must execute his own son for treason (II.v) (...)
42In some cases the higher demands of family and civic duty conflict with one another. In Matteo Noris’s Tito Manlio (London, 1717), Titus Manlius, as consul, must prosecute and ask the death sentence for his son (despite his military victory) for disobeying an oath and the Senate’s commands.27 The opera libretto, though, contrives a lieto fine instead of the historical one that commands the son’s execution. Titus yields to the demands of the Popolar tumulto: “To save a Hero from an unjust Death” (Di salvar un Eroe da ingiusta morte; III.8, pp. 54-55).
43A situation in Apostolo Zeno’s Lucio Papirio dittatore (London, 1732) puts several family members into a similar conflict. Lucius Papirius, made dictator in the war against the Samnites, has made Quintus Fabius, married to Papiria his daughter, master of horse, with instructions that he not attack the enemy until he has consulted the Auspices. Taking advange of a propitious opportunity, Quintus Fabius nonetheless attacks and defeats the enemy. Lucius Papirius, caught between duty to punish disobedience or mercy toward his son-in-law, refuses his daughter’s pleas for mercy and condemns Quintus Fabius to death, proclaiming,
Ove il Giudice siede
Il Padre non ascolta
(Where the Judge sits
the Father hears no more.) (I.xiii, pp. 18-19)
44Other family members follow suit. Papiria resolves,
Dove la Patria il chiede,
Sangue, ed affetti obblio:
(For where my Country claims it at my Hand,
I can forget all Ties of Blood and Fondness.) (I.xv, pp. 22-23)
45She later tells her husband,
Sposa non più, ma figlia.
(The Wife is lost now in the duteous Daughter.) (II.v, pp. 30-31)
46His father, renouncing his son for his disobedience, says “[I] put off the Parent, and assum’d the Roman” (D’ esser Padre lasciò, Romano apparve; II.v, pp. 28-29). These displays of civic duty are ultimately rewarded with a lieto fino
Personal Virtue
47Librettos present virtue, honor, or greatness of soul as the sufficient goal for the Roman citizen. Cato announces, “True Glory is my Guide alone” (Sol la gloria è mio consiglio; Catone; II.ii, pp. 28-29). Claims Caius Fabriccio, “Virtue’s the only View of noble Acts” (L’Onesta oprar, di chi ben opra è ‘l fine; Apostolo Zeno, Caio Fabbricio [London, 1733], III.xii, pp. 44-45). And Sextia, daughter of Caius Fabricius, states,
Di virtù sola
Non d’ ostri, e d’ori
Vani Tesori,
Un cor Romano
Piacer si fà.
(Virtue alone preserves the Power to charm
A noble Roman Breast, and gently warm). (I.v, pp. 12-13)
48Moral virtues are invariably construed in masculine terms, in the sense of strength and bravery in service to the state and of avoiding effeminacy or weakness. Achievement of classical virtue, states the consul Marius Aquilius in Nicola Haym’s Aquilio Consolo (London, 1724), requires Stoical suffering:
L’Oprar da forti o Amici
E da forti soffrir vanto fu sempre
Dalla virtù Romana.
(To go thro’ Toil, my Friends, with Hearts unwearied,
To suffer Ills with firm unshaken Souls,
Has even been the boast of Roman Virtue). (II.iv, pp. 40-41)
49The libretto to Zeno’s Caio Fabbricio clearly articulates the civic humanist opposition between effeminacy and manly military fitness. Pyrrhus, king of Epire, assisting the people of Taurentum in waging war again Rome, addresses them:
Popolo Tarentin, qual’ è cotesta
Femminea pompa in viril gente?In disciplina
Militar s’ agguerisca
La gioventu. Sia cittadino il braccio,
Che vi disende da minacce, e torti.(People of Tarentum,
Why this effeminate Pomp in manly Nation?
Train up your Youth in military Arts;
Let the City be the Strength
That guards you from all Menaces and Wrongs). (I.i, pp. 4-5)
50Librettos also show that Stoic adherence to virtue and sacrifice for the state can be exercised as well by females. In Rolli’s Il Muzio Scevola, Clelia bids farewell to her beloved Mutius:
E Patria e Libertà
Si preferisca al nostr’ amor, nè sia
Tenero affetto remora al valore.
(Let our Country and Liberty be preferred to our Love, and let not
tender Affection retard your Valour). (II.iv, pp. 50-51)
51Later, Clelia leads a group of Roman Amazon Warriors in defending a portion of the Roman walls against the attacking Etruscans. After being taken hostage, they escape the Etruscan camp, flinging themselves into the Tiber, as Clelia proclaims:
in breve
O a nostro scampo, estremo ardir s’ adopre;
O un’ onorato fin coroni l’Opre.
(Let an extream Courage be immediately engaged towards our Escape, or else let an honourable Death crown our Exploits). (III.vii, pp. 88-89)
52In Zeno’s Lucio Papirio dittatore, Papiria must decide on loyalty to her accused husband; she determines instead,
Son Romana ancor Io, Sposa non sono.
(I am a Roman, and a Wife no more). (II.v, pp. 30-31)
53For females, striving for honor or virtue is usually realized by their abhorrence of tyrants and takes the special form of preserving their chastity by refusing to submit to them in marriage. In Rolli’s Numitore (1720), Lidia rebukes the tyrant Amulius, who demands her in marriage:
Che più lieta vedrai quest’ Alma forte
Odiarti’n vita, e averti a sdegno in morte.
(You’ll see my undaunted Soul, in Extasies of Joy,
Abhor you whilst I live, and scorn you when I dye.) (II.i, pp. 24-25).
54Later, in a long scene of recitative, further refusing Amulius, she prefers union in death with her beloved, and willingly drinks a cup of poison (II.iv).
55In Haym’s Cajo Marzio Coriolano (London, 1732), Claudia, in love with Attius Tullus, prince of the Volsci, on command of the Senate and people, must abandon her love because he is an enemy of Rome. Agreeing to do so, she states,
Sento che in quest’ istante
Preval Claudia Romana, a Claudia amante.
(I feel myself already more a Roman than a Lover.) (I.vii, pp. 12-13)
56In Haym’s Vespasiano (London, 1724), Arricida, wife of Titus, is the object of the illicit love of Domitian, who is attempting to usurp Titus’s crown. She rejects his passionate advances and offer of the crown (I.viii-ix); commanded to be kept among the Vestal Virgins, she resolves to suffer anything in defense of her honor, proclaiming,
Dal mio sen costante e forte
Svelli pur tiranno il Cor;
Sarà dolce a me la Morte
Se così vivrà l’Onor.
(From my bosom, faithful and strong,
Tear out, tyrant, even my heart;
Death will be sweet for me,
If in this way Honor will live). (I.ix; p. 16; trans. provided)
- 28 See also the example of Polissena in Nicola Haym, Il Radamisto (London, 1720), II.ix-x.
57Other examples of female virtue and bravery occur in Caio Fabbricio, where Caius Fabricius gives his daughter Sextia, now an enslaved captive, a dagger and expects her to kill herself if her captor attempts his unlawful love upon her. In Calfurnia, Calfurnia, daughter of a Roman consul, refuses to flee from her sacrifice that will ensure her father’s conquest of Rome’s enemy. In Aquilio Consolo, Lincestes, sister of the tyrant Arrenion, helps Aquilius escape prison and ultimately return with soldiers to overthrow the tyrant. And in Angelo Cori’s Adriano in Siria (London, 1735), Emirena, captive daughter of her vanquished father, offers to sacrifice herself as Hadrian’s wife to save her father.28
58Britons were proud of their mixed constitutional monarchy that guaranteed them “liberty and property.” The printed libretto to Il Muzio Scevola promotes the ideal of sacrifice in defense of liberty. Liberty, the great cry of the Whig party, is extolled in one of the few title-page epigraphs found on a printed libretto:
Do thou, great Liberty, inspire our Souls
And make our Lives in thy Possession happy,
Or our Deaths glorious in thy just Defence.
(Addison, Cato, III.5, ll. 79-81).
- 29 On the progress of Liberty to Britain, see Alan D. McKillop, The Background of Thomson’s “Liberty”(...)
59While the myth of Britain as the last refuge of Liberty is set forth in Rolli’s dedication of the libretto to George as mentioned above.29
60Defense of liberty verged on an absolute duty. In Numitore, when the sacred Lupercalian Games are interrupted by armed assault by the tyrant Amulius, Romulus exhorts:
Per conservar la Libertà natia
Tutto il sanque versar non si risparmi.
(In just defence of native Liberty
None ought to spare the shedding all their Blood). (I.vi, pp. 22-23)
Personal Virtues of the Ruler
61These examples so far have been of active citizens pursuing virtue in the political sphere. Necessary for the success of the Roman Republic and Great Britain were virtuous rulers, and the Roman librettos offer many lessons and models of civic behavior befitting a virtuous eighteenth-century Briton. Essential for a statesman serving virtue and liberty was self-mastery (self-conquest) over pleasure, love, hatred, or revenge. Such self-conquest ultimately redounds to the ruler’s own glory and to the welfare and security of the state; it proves the virtue of the hero and his suitability to govern. As Cicero declared in praising Julius Caesar:
- 30 Pro M. Marcello Oratio, III; in The Speeches of Cicero, ed. and trans. N. H. Watts. The Loeb Classi (...)
animum vincere, iracundiam cohibere, victoriam temperare [...] non ego eum cum summis viris comparo, sed simillimum do iudico.
(To conquer the will, to curb the anger, and to moderate the triumph […] him who acts thus I do not compare to the greatest of men, but I judge him most like to God.)30
- 31 On the moral debates in Scipio, Robert C. Ketterer, “Handel’s Scipione and the Neutralization of P (...)
62Several of the most famous examples of self-mastery from antiquity are evoked in the Roman operas for London. Celebrated is the episode of the Continence of Scipio, presented in Paolo Rolli’s Scipione (London, 1726).31 Publius Cornelius Scipio (Scipio Africanus), a victorious proconsul in Spain, has fallen in love with a beautiful slave-captive; when he discovers she is betrothed, he declares,
Dopo il Nemico oppresso
Voglio esser di me stesso
Più forte Vincitor.
(Now the fall’n Enemy has felt his Doom,
I’ll try new Triumphs, I’ll myself o’ercome,
And prove the bravest Conqu’ror at home). (III.viii, pp. 60-61)
63He demonstrates his personal virtue (magnanimity) and mastery of his passions when he yields the slave-captive to her fiancé and gives to the couple a ransom offered for her release. In Cori’s Adriano in Siria, the Emperor Hadrian, engaged to a Roman princess, has fallen in love with a captive barbarian princess Emirena. Under sway of his amorous passions, he is helplessly indecisive over whom to marry. According to the libretto’s argument, “at length gaining a Victory over himself,” he overcomes his passion for his slave Emirena, “restores to his Enemy his Kingdom; to his Rival his Spouse, and […] restores his Heart to Sabina [his espoused], and recovers his own Glory.”
Clemency
64By far the most prevalent virtue exhibited by monarchs and other rulers in the librettos is clementia (mercy). Cicero and Seneca stated that it played a crucial role for a monarch in securing and maintaining his rule, and the right of clemency was enshrined as one of the noblest prerogatives of a sovereign. Even Machiavelli could advise (provisionally) that every prince “must want to have a reputation for compassion” (che ciascumo principe debbe desiderare di essere tenuto pietoso; Il principe, 17). The majority of the operas dispose the plots so that in the scena ultima the victor or rightful ruler pardons malefactors, often even those who have attempted assassination or rebellion against them, thus achieving the obligatory lieto fine.
- 32 On pity in the Stoics, Traute Adam, Clementia Principis: Der Einfluß hellenistischer Fürstenspiege (...)
- 33 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Essays, trans. John W. Basore, 3 vols. Loeb Classical Library (London (...)
65The classical Roman clementia should not be confused with pity or compassion (misericordia) for the suffering of a fellow human. Roman Stoics actually regarded pity as a weakness, if not a sickness (aegritudo): the ruler or judge should not be moved by the passions into disregarding the rational demands of justice, law, or needs of state.32 Classical clementia is a triumph of self-mastery over one’s own passions of vengeance or pity.33
- 34 A classic example is the speech of Marcus Cato (father of Cato Uticensis) in defense of the Rhodia (...)
66Pardons are extended for reasons of state: as part of the code of honor toward enemies who surrender and submit, to gain the obligation and allegiance of one’s enemies, as a form of benign punishment in exiling victims and making them live a life of repentance, or as a sign of true magnanimity of spirit and proof of worthiness to rule.34 Julius Caesar proclaims, “‘Tis the Prerogative of Heroic Virtue to pardon Offences” (Virtù de’ grandi è il perdonar l’ offese; Nicola Haym, Giulio Cesare in Egitto [London, 1724], I.ii, pp. 6-7). Clemency brings glory to the prince who exercises it. Artaxerxes’ clemency toward Artabane and his son (the latter had quelled a rebellion against him) is praised by his Persian subjects:
Giusto Re la Persia adora
La Clemenza assisa in Trono
Quando premia col perdono
D’un Eroe la fedelta.
Da Giustizia è bella allora
Ch’è compagna alla Pietà.
(Impartial Prince! Persia adores
Mercy seated on the throne,
When with pardon it rewards
An Hero’s loyalty.
Justice is truly lovely,
That has Mercy for its Mate.)
(Pietro Metastasio, Artaserse [London, 1734], III.vi, pp. 50-51)
67The most famous Roman act of clemency (widely known now through Mozart’s opera) is that of the Emperor Titus Vespasian, which also occurs in the London version, The Clemency of Titus (after Metastasio; London, 1737). Having discovered that he was the intended victim of an assassination plot by one of his dearest friends Sextus, he remands Sextus to the Senate for trial. Although the Senate declares Sextus guilty, and his spurned lover Vitellia admits she instigated the plot, Titus pardons all and embraces his friend. Sextus proclaims:
O Generoso Augusto,
Di tue sublimi Imprese
E la più grande il perdonar le Offese.
(Of all they noble acts, O gen’rous prince,
Thy pard’ning crimes, does much the brightest shine.)
(III.viii, pp. 60-61).
68In Alessandro, Cletus, leader of a failed rebellion against Alexander the Great, implores clemency on the grounds of “Our Truth and Valour” (Nostra fede e valor), which Alexander grants, justifying his action in an aria:
Prove sono di Grandezza
Perdonar l’ Alme soggette,
Le superbe debellar.
Fa del Trono su’ l’ Altrezza [sic]
Scintillar l’ Alme perfette
La Clemenza nel regnar.
(To pardon Men that are subdu’d,
To raise the Humble, check the Proud,
Proofs of truest Grandeur are.
Clement Acts in those that reign,
When the fullest Pow’r they gain,
Sparks of Heav’n-born Souls declare.)
(III.vi, pp. 60-61).
69Clemency can teach malefactors to reform and confess. In Metastasio’s Poro, re dell’Indie (London, 1731), Alexander the Great grants clemency to the traitor Timagenes, admonishing him:
e conservando in mente
Del fallo tuo la rimembranza amara
Ad esser fido un altra volta impara.
(and from hence,
Let the severe Remembrance of thy Crime
Teach thee to act with an unblemish’d Faith.)
(III.vi, pp. 56-57).
70In Haym’s Il Dario (London, 1725), Darius states, “A Crime confess’d deserves some Clemency” (Il confessato error merta Clemenza; III.v, pp. 62-63).
Pardons in British Criminal Law
- 35 The Coronation Oath is given in The Grand Exemplar, . . . Of His Sacred Majesty King George . . . (...)
71The frequent representations of the nobility that grants clementia would resonate strongly with the king, judges, privy counselors, and ministerial secretaries in the London opera audience. The king himself had sworn in the usual coronation oath to “cause Law and Justice in Mercy to be Executed” in all his judgments.35
- 36 J. H. Baker, “Criminal Courts and Proceedure at Common Law 1550-1800,” 15-48, and J. M. Beattie, “ (...)
72A central element of the British legal system was the monarch’s prerogative of mercy.36 After judicial sessions concluded, judges’ reports were sent to the secretaries of state, who routinely approved on the king’s behalf the recommendations for mercy. Favorable cases obtained the Great Seal on the authority of a secretary of state or the Privy Council.
- 37 Baker, “Criminal Courts,” 44-45; Beattie, “Crime and the Courts,” 179-81.
- 38 Thomas R. Forbes, “A Study of Old Bailey Sentences between 1729 and 1800,” Guildhall Studies in Lo (...)
73By the 1720s, the use of royal pardons in capital cases was fully routine. Newspaper columns, while reporting on current capital convictions, always also contained reports of those granted reprieves and pardons. The Transportation Act, which sent convicts to the North American and West Indian plantations, was passed in 1719. In eighteenth-century Britain, over 100 capital convictions were spared each year; in Surrey, for example, between 1736 and 1753, for those 179 guilty of capital property offenses, 51.4 percent were pardoned and transported.37 And in London, between 1749 and 1771, of 1,121 condemned, 443 (40 percent) were pardoned; by the end of the century, only one-quarter of death sentences were carried out.38
- 39 Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765), 4.31.390. Further on the social and ideological role of (...)
74The royal prerogative of mercy was one of the greatest and most venerable signs of the monarch’s majesty as God’s representative on earth. The great jurist William Blackstone summarized in 1765 the benefits of the royal pardon: “One of the great advantages of monarchy in general, above any other form of government [is] that there is a magistrate, who has it in his power to extend mercy, wherever he thinks it is deserved.”39 The opera librettos thus not only validate Britain’s system of pardons by showing their long heritage, but align the routine, daily actions of judges, secretaries, and ministers with those of the classical Roman statesmen.
Conclusion
75Our agenda was to explore how Britain has used or rewritten the classical heritage in new operas. I have suggested that the spectacle of these enactments of Roman history on the opera stage — making Roman virtue visible on stage, adorned with all the trappings of theatrical entertainment — would have done some “political work,” working alongside architecture, gardening, sculpture, and poetry to help Britons engage in what Philip Ayres calls Roman self-imaging.
- 40 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 168, (...)
76Linda Colley, in Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, has noted why the image of patriotism in classical histories, which applies as well to our Roman operas, was congenial to eighteenth-century Britons.40 The patriotic achievement celebrated was highly specific: the heroic acts were those of men of rank and title. The operas reminded the British élites of their duty to fight for their country and liberty, but also affirmed that it was men of superior rank, education, and lineage who were qualified to do so. The dramas about ancient rulers affirmed a society based on proud personal status and rank and reinforced a selective cult of heroism focusing on deeds of commanders, princes, and aristocrats.
- 41 William Temple, “Upon Heroick Vertue,” Miscellanea. The Second Part, 2nd edn (1690), 146. Previous (...)
77“Heroick Virtue” was, in fact, according to Sir William Temple, the preserve of the aristocrat: “It must be ennobled by Birth, to give it more Lustre, Esteem and Authority.”41 One writer in the London Magazine (1762) explained why history was especially the preserve of the men of wealth and privilege:
- 42 “Letters To a Young Nobleman,” London Magazine, 31 (1762), 76.
[In] the contents of the historick page, […] men of quality and fortune are deeply interested, as their conduct must necessarily have great influence in promoting the grandeur and happiness, or preventing the fall and misery of their country.42
78In seeing classical heroes struggling and sacrificing for freedom and liberty against tyrants, despots, and arbitrary rulers, Britons could recall and celebrate what they saw as their nation’s own constant struggles on behalf of Protestantism and liberty against despots and absolute monarchs, such as Charles II, James II and Louis XIV — struggles undertaken in both opera and Britain by the ruling political élites.
- 43 “Breaking the Chains of Reason,” pp. 195-240, inE. P. Thompson (ed. ), Out of Apathy, New Left Boo (...)
79Alastair MacIntyre quotes Karl Marx’s later observation that British bourgeois society, “absorbed in money making and in the peaceful warfare of competition, […] forgot that the shades of ancient Rome had sat beside its cradle.” According to MacIntyre, “for bourgeois society the Greco-Roman world provided the mantle which human values wear.” It was distant enough to be viewed dispassionately, yet “near enough to provide a model for social behavior.”43
- 44 Ayres, Classical Culture, 3. See also Reed Browning, Political and Constitutional Ideas of the Cou (...)
80The Republican example showed the necessity of having virtuous, independent, propertied, public-spirited men and women participate in public life to preserve liberty. “By analogy with the defense of the Republic by heroes like Cato and Cicero,” summarizes Ayres, “the English oligarchy could imagine itself as the classically spirited guarantor of the liberties it had won for all in its fight against Stuart absolutism”44 — a process in which, I suggest, Italian opera could participate.
Notes
1 P.C. Scipione (1726) and Alessandro (1726).
2 Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, “New Light on Handel and the Royal Academy of Music,” Theatre Journal, 35 (1983), 149-167.
3 Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1-47.
4 The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, ed. with intro. Bonamy Dobrée, 6 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1932), 2:340.
5 An extended parallel is presented in Walter Moyle, An Essay upon the Constitution of the Roman Government (1726).
6 Elizabeth W. Manwaring, Italian Landscape in Eighteenth Century England: A Study Chiefly of the Influence of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa on English Taste, 1700-1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1925).
7 The best survey is J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).
8 M. M. Goldsmith, “Liberty, Luxury and the Pursuit of Happiness,” pp. 225-251 in The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony S. Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 226.
9 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, II.18 (Appellata est enim ex viro virtus).
10 Especially I.5-29. A briefer discussion is found in De Inventione, II.53-54; a brief typology of virtues is also given in the Tusculan Disputations, III.17. On the Medieval and Christian tradition of the virtues, Rosemond Tuve, “Notes on the Virtues and Vices,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 26 (1963), 264-303.
11 De Officiis, I.7; trans. Walter Miller. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 21.
12 Bellum Catilinae, X.1.
13 De Republica, VI.13.
14 De Officiis, I.17; ed. cit., 61. Cicero ranks one’s duties: from country, parents, children, family, to kinsmen.
15 The classic statement is in Longinus, On the Sublime, 44.
16 Richard G. King, “Classical History and Handel’s Alessandro,” Music and Letters, 72 (1996), 34-63.
17 Quoted from 4th, enlarged edn (1730).
18 John Dryden, Works. Vol. 17: Prose 1668-1691, ed. Samuel H. Monk (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 270-71.
19 “Letters To a Young Nobleman,” London Magazine, 31 (1762), 76.
20 Quoting from Dryden, Dedication of the Æneis (1697); and Richard Steele, The Tatler, no. 98 (24 November 1709).
21 Fog’s Weekly Journal, no. 98 (8 August 1730).
22 British Journal, or The Traveller, no. 17 (9 January 1731).
23 [Henry Stonecastle] The Universal Spectator, and Weekly Journal, no. 352 (5 July 1735). Fog’s Weekly Journal, no. 338 (26 April 1735), however, asserted that whatever might be said in defense of “Dramatick Entertainments […] cannot be urged to justify those more effeminate and expensive Amusements which the present Age has introduced, and which do not a little contribute to the general Corruption that has overflow’d us.” The author asks, “whether a Man ever returned wiser from an Opera than he was before he went to it, except he repented, and laugh’d at his own Folly, for having given so much Money for a Song. —Has Faronelli with that sweet Pipe of his, inspired any of our Mercenaries, who are the People that flock most to hear him, with more vertuous or honourable Sentiments in respect to their Country?” The point is elaborated for a full half-column.
24 Cornelius Nepos, The Lives of Illustrious Men, 2nd edn (1685), b5v.
25 The Advancement of Learning, 2.4.2.
26 On opera seria librettos as dramas of moral conflict and choice: Don Neville, “Moral Philosophy in the Metastasian Dramas,” Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, vol. 7, no. 1 (1982), 28-46; and Michael F. Robinson, “How to Demonstrate Virtue: The Case of Porpora’s Two Settings of Mitridate,” Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, vol. 7, no. 1 (1982), 47-64.
27 Likewise, Stilicon, in Domenico Lalli, Onorio (1736), must execute his own son for treason (II.v).
28 See also the example of Polissena in Nicola Haym, Il Radamisto (London, 1720), II.ix-x.
29 On the progress of Liberty to Britain, see Alan D. McKillop, The Background of Thomson’s “Liberty”, Rice Institute Pamphlet, vol. 38, no. 2 (July 1951)
30 Pro M. Marcello Oratio, III; in The Speeches of Cicero, ed. and trans. N. H. Watts. The Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann, 1931), 428-29.
31 On the moral debates in Scipio, Robert C. Ketterer, “Handel’s Scipione and the Neutralization of Politics,” Newsletter of the American Handel Society, vol. 26, no. 1 (April 2002), 1, 4-8.
32 On pity in the Stoics, Traute Adam, Clementia Principis: Der Einfluß hellenistischer Fürstenspiegel auf den Versuch einer rechtlichen Fundierung des Principates durch Seneca (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1970), 20-39 (Seneca), 828-118 (incl. Seneca and Cicero); and Ford L. Battles and André M. Hugo, Calvin’s Commentary on Seneca’s “De Clementia”Renaissance Society of America (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), 367.
33 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Essays, trans. John W. Basore, 3 vols. Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1928), 2.3.1, pp. 434-357.
34 A classic example is the speech of Marcus Cato (father of Cato Uticensis) in defense of the Rhodians in the Senate; in Aulis Gellius, Noctium Atticarum (The Attic Nights), 6.3.47, where he showed it was in the interest of the Republic to retain the Rhodian’s friendship. In operas, see Apostolo Zeno, Ormisda (London, 1730), I.xv, and Niccolò Minato, Serse (London, 1738), I.xii.
35 The Coronation Oath is given in The Grand Exemplar, . . . Of His Sacred Majesty King George . . . with the Declaration and Coronation Oath (1715), 25.
36 J. H. Baker, “Criminal Courts and Proceedure at Common Law 1550-1800,” 15-48, and J. M. Beattie, “Crime and the Courts in Surrey 1736-1753,” pp. 155-87, in J. S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England, 1550-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977);Douglas Hay, et al. (ed.), Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Allen Lane, 1975), 17-63, 43-49; J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 430-49; and J. A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750 (London: Longman, 1984), 68-69.
37 Baker, “Criminal Courts,” 44-45; Beattie, “Crime and the Courts,” 179-81.
38 Thomas R. Forbes, “A Study of Old Bailey Sentences between 1729 and 1800,” Guildhall Studies in London History, vol. 5, no. 1 (October 1981), 26-35.
39 Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765), 4.31.390. Further on the social and ideological role of the pardon, V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770-1868 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 200-3; and Albion’s Fatal Tree, 43-49.
40 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 168, 180.
41 William Temple, “Upon Heroick Vertue,” Miscellanea. The Second Part, 2nd edn (1690), 146. Previously, he wrote, it “may be said to arise, from some great and native Excellency of Temper or Genius transcending the common race of Mankind, in Wisdom, Goodness and Fortitude. These ingredients advantaged by Birth, improved by Education, and assisted by Fortune, seem to make that noble composition, which gives such a lustre to those who have possest it, as made them appear to common eyes, something more than Mortals” (144).
42 “Letters To a Young Nobleman,” London Magazine, 31 (1762), 76.
43 “Breaking the Chains of Reason,” pp. 195-240, inE. P. Thompson (ed. ), Out of Apathy, New Left Books, (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960), 204-05.
44 Ayres, Classical Culture, 3. See also Reed Browning, Political and Constitutional Ideas of the Court Whigs (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 9.
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Thomas McGeary, « Virtue and Liberty: Italian Opera and Roman Self-Imaging in Britain, 1720-1742 », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal, Vol. VI – n°2 | 2008, 36-60.
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Thomas McGeary, « Virtue and Liberty: Italian Opera and Roman Self-Imaging in Britain, 1720-1742 », Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne], Vol. VI – n°2 | 2008, mis en ligne le 21 août 2009, consulté le 29 novembre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/1130 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/lisa.1130
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