The Secret AU of Mozart's Clemenza di Tito

[ricardienne]

Last night Almost two months ago I saw a college friend of mine singing Vitellia, the lead soprano role, in La Clemenza di Tito. The production was a lovely, small, bare-bones presentation that was unfortunately in a black-box theatre that was both dead and small. So you couldn't get a great tone, and it was really loud (and: of the five major roles, 4 were soprano or mezzo). But the singing was excellent, I had a good time (although my ears were ringing afterwards), and I awoke the next day with a desperate need to figure out who all the characters (who have wonderfully specific names like "Sesto" and "Publio") could plausibly be. Interestingly, there are just enough threads to pull on to construct a pretty compelling subtext out of the prosopography.

The plot of the opera goes like this: The year is 79. Tito has become emperor upon the death of his father Vespasian. Vitellia is both in love with Tito (or at least wants to be Empress) and wants vengeance for her father (the 10-years-dead-and-deposed emperor Vitellius). Sesto is BFFs with Tito, but also madly in love with Vitellia. Annio is BFFs with Sesto, and (mutually) in love with Sesto's sister Servilia. When Tito asks for Servilia's hand, Vitellia orders Sesto to start an assassination plot against the emperor. There is much angst, but Sesto can't refuse her anything. But then Servilia reveals to Tito what her brother and lover were too wimpy to say: that her heart belongs to Annio, and Titus is like, "cool. I'm so lucky to have someone who is actually honest with me! In that case, I'll marry Vitellia." But meanwhile, Sesto's plot is already in motion...(oh noes!). He is captured, refuses to talk (to protect Vitellia), and he and Tito both angst a lot about whether he should be executed, how could he have betrayed our friendship, etc.. Finally, Vitellia has a Moment of Truth and realizes that she can't just go off and be empress by letting Sesto take the blame and be thrown to the lions (although unbeknownst to everyone, Tito has already decided to pardon him, because, come on guys, this opera is called La Clemenza di Tito). So she confesses, and Tito pardons everyone, and they live happily ever after.*

*Bearing in mind that Titus died in 81, possibly poisoned by his brother Domitian, and that Domitian was ---not as nice as Titus, shall we say.

So: Titus. Obviously a real person, the son of Vespasian, sacker of Jerusalem, expert forger, but also generally liked -- it helped, said the historian Cassius Dio, that he didn't rule long enough to behave badly. Not to mention the fact that all the sins of the Flavians came to a head with his younger brother Domitian. In the opera, there are some random scenes here and there where Tito's praetorian prefect Publio (more on him later) brings him a list of libellists and refuses to prosecute with words straight out of Suetonius. He sends aid to the victims of Vesuvius, and there are possible a few references to the coliseum. Vitellia was actually a real person, too: daughter of the short-lived and really pathetic emperor Vitellius (Contestant #3 in the Year of Four Emperors, if you're counting). She was married first to Valerius Asiaticus, although when the civil war heated up her father seems to have offered (maybe) her in marriage to Vespasian/one of his sons.

Suetonius does tell us about a plot against Titus:

When two men of patrician birth were found guilty of making designs on his throne he did nothing more than warn them to stop, explaining that the principate was given by fate and promissing that he would give them anything else that they desired. [2] And at once he sent his own personal messengers to the one's mother, since she lived far away, to allay her distress with the news that her son was safe. The men themselves he not only invited to a private dinner, but the next day at a gladiatorial exhibition, he offered them the fighters' weapons to inspect, having purposely made sure that they were in his company.(Suet. Tit. 9.1-2)

I quoted this because it is delightful and charmingly Suetonian: Titus sending letters to anxious mothers! Dramatic displays of trust involving sharp weapons!

But that's not the plot of the opera, which isn't really historical at all: it's basically a rewrite of Racine's "Clemency of Augustus," transported to the Flavian period. There, the anecdote of the emperor deciding to forgive the plotting of a young man (Cinna) whom he had raised and honored in spite of his (Cinna's) parents having been proscribed during the civil wars at least derives from a classical source (Seneca the Younger; the romance-motivation by a woman who is also seeking revenge for her parents' death is a baroque addition, however). Scholarship on the libretto generally talks about (a) Racine and (b) other operatic/dramatic characters that inform the personalities of these characters. It assumes that no one but Titus is historical, although there is some lip service paid to the passage of Suetonius I quoted above But this is in fact false. In particular, Annio and Servilia, the B-couple, are not randomly chosen names. Although they properly belong in the reign of Nero, not that of Titus, they are real historical figures whose history bears some tugging.

Servilia was the daughter of [Quintus Marcius] Barea Soranus; she was married Annius Pollio (i.e. Annio). When the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero broke in 65, Annius was denounced by one of his friends under interrogation (Annals 15.56). Tacitus implies that it was more a desperate attempt to gain clemency by naming others than because Annius was actually involved; in the event, he was merely exiled; the 'friend' didn't survive.) While Annius might well have been kicking around a decade later, however, having been recalled from exile during one or another of the regime changes after the death of Nero, Servilia, as far as we know, was dead.

Nero turned on Barea Soranus, paired with the slightly more famous 'Stoic martyr' Thrasea Paetus, in 65/66, under the heading, as Tacitus tells it, of "excising Virtue itself" (Ann. 16.23), which gives you an idea of the mythologies that quickly built up around these 'heroic' dissident families who -- women as well as men -- stood up to tyrants, spoke freely, refused to take part in imperial corruption and evil, generally made a nuisance of themselves, etc. Thrasea is the more famous figure here (for certain values of famous, anyway), in part because the extant Annals cut off in the middle of his dying exhortation, but this scene was probably was followed by a similarly grand and tragic tableau of the deaths of Servilia and her father. Because Servilia, young and stupid and afraid, consults an astrologer about her father's fate. (FYI: astrology is never a good idea in imperial Rome.) There is an absolutely wrenching scene in Tacitus where she is dragged into court as well and -- Oh I'll just put in the whole passage:

Meanwhile Soranus's accuser, Ostorius Sabinus, enters and begins with Rubellius Plautus's friendship,* Soranus's proconsulship of Asia -- 'conducted more for his own reputation than for public good when he fanned their civic strife.'** This was old; recent, however and to connect the daughter to her father's peril: her lavish expenditures. The cause? Servilia's devotion (that was the girl's name). From filial love and youth's foolishness; still, she consulted about nothing but the safety of her family: would Nero hear prayers? would the senate decree nothing terrible?

So she was summoned to the senate and they stood opposite before the consuls' tribunal: the father great with age against the daughter not yet twenty years old; recently widowed, abandoned by the exile of her husband Annius Pollio; not even looking at her father, whose dangers she thought she had overburdened.

Then the accuser's interrogation: had she sold her dower goods, stripped jewelry from her neck to get money for magicians' sacrifices? First prostrate on the ground in long silence and weeping, she then embraced the altars: "Nothing" she said. "No unholy powers, no vows; I asked for nothing in my unlucky prayers but that you, O Emperor, and you, Lords, keep my dear best father safe. I gave my jewels, my wardrobe, the signs of my rank; just so my blood and life, had they demanded. Ask them, previously strangers to me, what they are, what arts they practice; I never mentioned the emperor's name except among the gods. Any yet my unlucky father knows nothing! if there was a crime, I sinned alone."

Soranus loudly interrupts: she never went with him to the province; she was to young to have known Plautus; she is unconnected with the charges against her husband; he begs them distinguish someone only charged with excesive devotion; for himself: any fate. Rushing to embrace his daughter running toward him -- but the lictors blocked them both.(Annals 16.30.1-32.2)

*Rubellius Plautus was an earlier victim of Nero whose crime was being too closely related to the Julio-Claudian family and hence being a potential replacement emperor. He tried to mitigate this fault by living a completely quiet life away from Rome and not getting involved in politics at all; it didn't work.

**When Soranus was governor of the Province of Asia, he supported cities who refused to let Nero's agents take the treasures from their temples. Given that this was after the Great Fire of 64, and Nero was collecting money to rebuild Rome, one could perhaps make the argument that this was a case of currying favor with the provincials rather than acting for the good of Rome. On the other hand, just because your city burned down is no reason to go around despoiling other people's cities (not to mention that lots of this money would have been earmarked, as it were, for Nero's Golden House), so I'm going to tentatively award Soranus the moral high ground here.

In the event, Servilia and her father were "allowed a choice of death," although the text breaks off before we get that scene. (If some 9th century scribe had had the energy to go three more paragraphs, we would probably have it.) However, if you want to see how multigenerational family forced suicide scenes go down in Tacitus, you can read 16.10-11 (Links go to a fairly mediocre translation from Perseus Project), where all the stops get pulled out for the deaths of Antistius Vetus, his mother-in-law Sextia, and his daughter Politta. (Bearing in mind that the Soranus and Servilia death-scene was probably more elaborate and heartstring-tugging yet, just as the Soranus-Servilia trial is much much fuller and more elaborate than the Vetus-Politta "trial" and also stretched out by being intercut with other episodes.)

Clemenza!Servilia is still very recognizable as the innocent, good-hearted Tacitean!Servilia, brave enough/naive enough to make an appeal to the emperor when the men around her won't dare. This Servilia is also perhaps combined with her cousin Marcia Furnilla, who was briefly the wife of Titus. (After the downfall of Barea Soranus, this connection was a liability, and Titus divorced her.)

So, arguably, Clemenza takes place in a slight AU: in 65 Servilia and Annius were not yet married; possibly Titus and his father had contemplated asking for her hand as well. Moreover, here Barea Soranus has a son: "Sesto" is actually named, had he existed, something like Sextus Marcius Barea Soranus. Somehow, both Sextus and Servilia were allowed to go into exile instead of being forced to die. (In the boring version, I suppose that Servilia, having more of a support network in the form of her brother, didn't resort to magic; but this is *my* Mozartian AU and boring solutions are not allowed. Instead, all three were condemned, but Sextus and Servilia got a last-minute reprieve. Or something.)

This is all very well, but why have all of these late-Neronian victims running around more than a decade later, in the reign of Titus? On the one hand, that time gap matches Vitellia's (she's still nursing vengeance for her father's death). On the other hand, this time gap gives Sesto, Annio, and Servilia more complicated motivations with respect to the Flavian dynasty, ones that -- and this is the cool part, which is motivating this entire post -- sort of line up with those of their counterpart characters in Clemency of Augustus in a twisted and actually quite subtle way. Maybe too subtle, but I'll argue it anyway.

[This is AU] We've established that the Sesto-Servilia-Annio group are the heirs of Barea Soranus. Annio and Sesto probably joined Vespasian's army in the East as soon as Nero was killed in late 68 and maybe were even in touch with the Flavian camp before his death; hence they were able to pick up their friendship with Titus, becoming his aides in the Jewish War..* ). I'm going to say that Servilia was in the Flavian camp, too, being innocent but also awesome, and that there was a totally awkward love polygon involving Titus, Annius, Servilia, Sextus, and Queen Berenike. Or maybe it was totally non-awkward free-love polyamorous goodness, because What Happens in the East Stays In The East (except for Servilia/Sextus, although Berenice, with a broader Hellenistic view of such things, didn't see why being siblings would be a problem.)**

* Yeah…about that. Titus was the one who destroyed the Temple, in another instance of conspicuous lack of clemency. I once read a review in the NYT of a production of Clemenza that spent a good half the article complaining about how the opera completely ignored Titus's sack of Jerusalem. Which is true. It does.
**Probably this kind of shippiness is inappropriate, considering the footnote above this one.

After that brief digression, we return to our Serious Tacitean AU. So things seemed good in the early years of Vespasian's reign. [This is not AU] At the beginning, the Flavians put themselves forward as Completely Not Like Nero: exiles were recalled, everyone remembered how Vespasian had almost gotten killed for falling asleep during on of Nero's performances, how Titus had been friends with Nero's murdered step-brother Britannicus, how Vespasian had been good friends with Soranus and Thrasea. There was a half-hearted attempt to take revenge on some of the most powerful accusers of Nero's reign; Exhibit A. was the trial of Publius Egnatius Celer, a philosopher friend and hanger-on of Barea Soranus who turned on him and testified against him at his trial. Celer was exiled, or possibly even executed but then he was, politically speaking, small fry.

Soon however, it turned out to be all to true that "the best day of a new regime is the first;" Helvidius Priscus, the most prominent of the remaining Stoic-Republican dissidents, managed to goad Vespasian into pulling a Henry II and Thomas à Becket (Titus's mad forgery skills may have been involved.) The most unscrupulous accusers from Nero's reign started to come back into power in the Flavian court, because every emperor can use a few good unscrupulous accusers. A bit more repression. Titus, meanwhile, took the never-beloved-by-senators post of Praetorian Prefect (~ Head of Security) to his father, where he turned out to be in fact the furthest thing from clement. Here are some things that Suetonius has to say, for example

Suetonius Div. Titus 6.1. He exercised his office sometimes rather tyrannically and harshly. Whenever he suspected someone, he sent agents around to the theatres and camps to call for his punishment as if by popular desire, then put the suspect down without delay. Among the was Aulus Caecina of consular rank, whom he invited to dinner and ordered to be run through as soon as he exited the dining room -- in extreme circumstaces, to be sure, since he had found a copy of a speech Caecina had planned to deliver to the army [sc. to stir them to insurrection]. As he thus took thought for future security, he acquired such a great deal of ill-will in the present that hardly anyone every entered his principate amid such unpopularity and unwilling citizenry.

Which, you know: fair enough from a certain persepctive. One has to take thought for security, and making sure that power-hungry opportunists aren't constantly trying to overthrow the emperor is part of that. Nevertheless, we should imagine that Titus' accession was not necessarily the moment of rejoicing that the choruses of the opera would have us think. Sesto, especially, is perhaps feeling a bit…conflicted about it. Obviously his friendship with Titus is now longstanding, but Titus seems to be going in a direction that is not so pleasant, and that is hard for the son of Barea Soranus -- an exemplum of upright, quasi-Republican Stoic-senatorial statesmanly virtue -- to endorse. And meanwhile, there's Vitellia, who hasn't forgotten how the Flavian generals killed her baby brother in cold blood, along with all of her other paternal male relatives -- not to mention her father. In contrast to Vitellius' fairly lenient policy toward the families of his rivals during his brief reign, she might be pointing out. So just as Cinna in the Clemency of Augustus had a past that made him particularly susceptible to want to plot against the emperor, Sesto -- in the AU in which he exists -- has a family history of principled dissidence that acts as another piece of his internal angst (because he's best friends with Titus, qua friends) and gives him even a bit more in common with Vitellia. But what pushes things over the edge when Titus becomes emperor?

Now. There is one other character in Clemenza, the Praetorian Prefect, whose name is the nicely generic "Publio" [baritone]. Becaues he is not involved in a love triangle, Publio is an extremely boring character. I think he barely gets an aria, and only one or two duets. Mostly, he shows up periodically to announce to Titus that he has uncovered some libellous verses so that Titus can reaffirm his committment to freedom of speech or something; in the second half, he arrests people and acts as the voice of "dude, the guy tried to assassinate you; you should really execute him." I honestly don't know how we are supposed to interpret Publio. I suspect that in the 18th century context he is reasonably seen as a good soldier, devoted to his Emperor (that's how they played him in the production I saw, anyway), which Emperor just happens to be superhumanly kind and merciful.

From the perspective of Roman senatorial historiography (and what other perspective is there, really?), however, Publio is a textbook villain: his loyalties are only to the emperor (and the fact that he has no arias worth shaking a stick at perhaps is another clue that he's not from a particularly high background); he pops up to denounce people; he seems awfully happy about the fall of Sesto…

We don't, as it happens, know the name of Titus's historical Praetorian Prefect. And obviously, "Publius" is as generic a name as "Sesto." To tie this all together, however, I think we ought to imagine that this Publio, newly elevated to the post of Titus's Praetorian Prefect, is none other than Publius Egnatius Celer -- the erstwhile client and protegée of Barea Soranus who betrayed him, wasa initially exiled or even executed early in Vespasian's reign (and who then fades out of the record). In the Clemenza!verse, however, Publius Celer has wormed his way back from exile, and, in spite of his low birth, has started making himself useful to the emperors.* And when Titus gives him the post of praetorian prefect, it seems like a clear sign that Titus is going to be everything that Sesto doesn't want in an emperor. But he still likes/loves Titus and sort of wants to give him a chance! But what about his father! And now he kind of agrees with Vitellia, but for the wrong reasons! And he has to protect his sister! (This is because Sextus is stupid and doesn't realize that Servilia may be sweet and kind and innocent, but she is also capable of taking care of herself.) Annio and Servilia, in contrast, are on the one hand the operatic B-couple, but they are also the a-political couple, and this, too, is understandable. While Sesto is trying to follow in his father's footsteps and have a political career, and while he has been rising thanks ot his friendship with Titus, Annio stays in the background: definitely loyal, definitely supporting his friend, but not going for prominence himself. He's clearly learned that this risk isn't worth taking. Servilia, meanwhile, is still coping with her own immense amount of angst and guilt from what happened to their father. She's also learned that not only appearing innocent, but actively ignoring political realities is the only safe strategy. And that's what is all going on when the curtain goes up on Act I scene I of La Clemenza di Tito

*Everything else I've suggested is on very solid ground, but the identity of Publio is much much more implausible. The praetorian prefect was, I think, usually drawn from the military, and there is no reason to think that Celer had any such connections. See also the fact that he was very explicitly a humble personage/itinerant philosopher/hanger-on in the household of Soranus. But this is an AU, and there are actually not very many people with the praenomen Publius who are polticly active at this period. Another possibility, although one less useful for the relationships I have been outlining above, is that Clemenza's "Publio" is none other than P. Cornelius Tacitus, exercising a post early in his cursus and doing the things that would make him write such bitter, angst-ridden history some decades later.

Three thousand and some words later -- if anyone is still reading -- what are the conclusions, apart from the fact that ricardienne secretly wants to write fic about this opera? I suppose, that even an extremely superficially "plotted" opera actually has a lot of historical stuff going on behind it, although I would not venture a guess as to the extent to which we should imagine that audiences could or even were intended to recognize it. And, lest you be surprised that obscure characters from Tacitus are operatically viable, a future post will deal with Rimsky-Korsakov's practically unknown historical opera Servilia, which dramatizes the events of Tacitus with the added twist that everyone becomes a Christian before dying at the end.

Comments

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

This is so much fun. Thanks for writing it!

(I haven't seen this particular opera, but I am *all for* historical commentaries on operas based on putatively historical events)

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! And there are a number of lovely arias --

e.g. "Parto ma tu ben mio" (Sesto finally agreeing to kill Titus for Vitellia): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oQQD7EwWRI

"Deh per questo" (Sesto's angst-ridden plea for personal forgiveness to Titus in a production that really seems to have brought out the Titus/Sextus subtext...): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUrHIq9Bt0Q

"Ecce il punto, Vitellia" (Vitellia's moment of truth recit & aria): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hOk1c7WhYk

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

I read all of it! I would also totally read your post on the Rimsky-Korsakov.

Now... can you turn this into a class assignment??

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

I mean.... conceivably, it could turn into an article on the 18th century Reception of Tacitus or something... I don't know. Someday, maybe!

The problem with the Rimsky-Korsakov is that is an insanely obscure opera (who knew that there were insanely obscure Rimsky-Korsakov operas? But I guess the giant spectacle melodrama on an obscure classical subject doesn't age well....?) and just about everything about it is in Russian. But I am trying to figure stuff out!

(I also could have sworn that I found a 19th century painting of Servilia and her father tragically dying, but now I can't find it at all!)