Recent Monteverdi scholarship has set great store by the composer's last work for the new ‘public’ opera houses of Venice, L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643). The problematic status of the sources for Poppea – at least some of its music is not by Monteverdi – and a rather prurient fascination with its supposed amoral excess have provided ample scope for scholars to play their textual and critical games, often with impressive results. But this has deflected attention from Monteverdi's first Venetian opera, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640), written to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. Once a cause of some debate – Wolfgang Osthoff carried the torch in the 1950s – Il ritorno d'Ulisse is now seen as a much less complicated work. We have only one manuscript of the score – A-Wn MS 18763 – the uncertain provenance of which has caused scant musicological anxiety; nor have the surviving copies of the libretto, with their divergent readings, excited much recent comment from scholars. Thus the text is seemingly secure. Moreover, the supposed ‘moral’ of Il ritorno d'Ulisse – ‘the rewards of patience, the power of love over time and fortune’ — seems unproblematic, nay predictable, perhaps tedious. Even Ellen Rosand's noble attempt to inject a fly in the ointment by focusing on the seemingly minor character of Iro, the social parasite, has scarcely troubled complacent critical comment on an essentially straightforward opera with an essentially straightforward message.

A common feature of Cherubini's Parisian operas of the 1790s is the displacement of one or more of the protagonists. They are out of sorts with their environment, experiencing a need to escape that prevents the traditional unity of place from focusing the drama. The heroine of Lodoïska (1791) is imprisoned in a tower; in Eliza ou le Voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard Florindo travels to Mont St Bernard to forget his beloved Eliza, who pursues him and saves him from suicide. For the heroine of Médée (1797), Corinth represents unhappiness: she returns to her former home only to take revenge. In Les deux Journées (1800), Armand and Constance flee Paris to save their lives; even in the comic opera L'Hôtellerie portugaise (1798) the central location serves merely as a rendez-vous for the two lovers on their way to evade the wicked plans of Donna Gabriele's stepfather. These operas do not, in other words, unfold in reassuring environments where characters feel at home; nor are there neutral backgrounds that enable the drama to concentrate on personal interaction. What is more, although placing protagonists in such unhappy circumstances is widespread in late eighteenth-century opera, and ‘rescue operas’ in particular, it is at least arguable that Cherubini exploited their restlessness in a uniquely successful manner.

Although the term ‘verismo” emerged in both literature and opera during roughly the same period (in novels and spoken theatre around the 1870s, in opera around the 1890s), the modern tendency has been to regard this as a coincidence of little consequence. However, it is perhaps worth returning to the question in light of recent studies in literary verismo, some of which offer new perspectives and even contribute to a re-definition of operatic verismo. I shall start, then, from the hypothesis that a new comparison between these two types of verismo may lead to a common definition.

During the last hour we spoke about the transformation of opera into music drama, and I explained the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk. So that nobody has any excuses, I'll write on the blackboard once more the names of

Richard Wagner

Richard Strauss

Now we come to a new chapter. You'll remember that I read to you from Wagner's texts. They always dealt with gods and heroes and curious concepts like forest murmur, magic fire, knights of the Grail, etc., which you found rather strange. Then there were some difficult thought processes, which you were unable to follow, and also certain things that you could not yet comprehend and are as yet none of your business. None of this was of much interest to you't want to go to sleep. You want to hear music you can comprehend without special explanation, music you can readily absorb and sing with relative ease. … Nowadays there are matters of greater interest to all, and if music cannot be placed in the service of society as a whole, it forfeits its right to exist in today's world.