Censoring Eliogabalo in Seventeenth-Century Venice

Author(s): Mauro Calcagno

Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 36, No. 3, Opera and Society: Part I
(Winter, 2006), pp. 355-377
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3656470
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxvI:3 (Winter, 2006), 355-377.

Mauro Calcagno

Censoring Eliogabalo in Seventeenth-Century

Venice In the letter to the reader that begins his short treatise
On Honest Dissimulation (1641), Torquato Accetto writes that his
book has been left "almost bloodless" by self-inflicted wounds.
"You will recognize the scars," the author warns, "when you use
good judgement." Accetto calls this treatise the "small book"; be-
hind it lies the forbidden "large book" which can be read only be-
tween the lines of the "small book." Accetto's distinction between
the book permitted and the one not permitted is symptomatic of a
historical condition common to writers living in the early modern
period: Censorship prevented them from writing their "large"
books. To circumvent censorship, Accetto suggests that authors
practice the art of dissimulation. But dissimulation, he adds, re-
quires an active response from readers, the ability to decode and
recover the "other text," which conveys full authorial intention.
By using the metaphor of "scars" (cicatrici), Accetto alludes to an
episode in Book XIX of the Odyssey in which a scar on Ulysses'
body reveals that he is not an old beggar, but the master and hero
of the household. Accetto's point is that any text published in the
age of censorship is metaphorically an injured body that readers
should use their hermeneutic skills to recuperate.1
Accetto's methodology of reading texts-a true hermeneutics
of "suspicion" avant la lettre---is useful for the interpretation of
works revised presumably under the pressure of censorship-in-
cluding opera librettos. As Mario Infelise writes, "In early modern

Mauro Calcagno is Associate Professor of Music, Harvard University. He is the author of

"Signifying Nothing: On the Aesthetics of Pure Voice in Early Venetian Opera," Journal of
Musicology, XX (2oo3), 461-497; "'Imitar col canto chi parla': Monteverdi and the Creation of
a Language for Musical Theater," Journal of the American Musicological Society, LV (2003), 383-
401.

? 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary

History, Inc.

I Torquato Accetto (ed. Salvatore S. Nigro), Della dissimulazione onesta (Turin, 1997; orig.
pub. Naples, 1641), 5-7. For this interpretation, including the distinction between "small"
and "large" book (libro piccolo and libro grande), I am indebted to Nigro's comments on
Accetto's work included in the introduction to Della dissimulazione (esp. 6-7, xxvi-xxix), as
well as in the chapter "Della dissimulazione onesta di Torquato Accetto," in Alberto Asor
Rosa (ed.), Letteratura Italiana: Le opere. II. Dal Cinquecento al Settecento (Turin, 1993), 976-978.
All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

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356 MAURO CALCAGNO

Europe, between the beginning of the XVI and the en

XVIII centuries, a system of control over the production,
tion and use of books was born, then developed, and final
into crisis." This system, enacted by both the Catholic st
the Church, affected the "relationships that came to be es
between those in control and the booksellers," as well as t
ception of that climate by both authors and readers."2
In this context, the situation of Venice, the most im
publishing center in Italy, emerges as unique, given the r
tradition of relative independence from Rome. The same c
produced the first "index of forbidden books" on behalf
Church (1549) was also the site of an extraordinary confl
tween a Catholic government and Rome. The Interdict
and the Jesuit order's expulsion from Venice were follow
period of unprecedented freedom in the publishing d
which lasted until the end of the 1640s, when the new poli
ality of the War of Candia imposed the re-establishment of a
relationship between Venice and Rome.3
Venice saw the publication of its first opera librettos i
Soon thereafter, the city became the European capital of d
per musica. It is difficult to assess the effect of censorship on
ephemeral booklets in small duodecimo format. No archiv
umentation survives concerning the Riformatori allo studio d
(the state censors) related to them. Opera patrons, howeve
have imposed forms of preventive censorship during the
tion process-"patrons" meaning anyone who had powe
librettist, from impresarios to theater owners. Conjectur
dence of such restrictive actions emerges in librettos exam
cording to Accetto's "methodology" of reading between th
The case at hand is the libretto published for the prem
Eliogabalo, written by Aurelio Aureli and composed by G
2 Mario Infelise, I libri proibiti (Rome, 1999), 4, 42.
3 On censorship in seventeenth-century Venice, see Marino Zorzi, "La prod
circolazione del libro," in Gino Benzoni and Gaetano Cozzi (eds.), Storia di Ven
origini alla caduta della Serenissima. VII. La Venezia barocca (Rome, 1997), 921
Ulvioni, "Stampa e censura a Venezia nel Seicento," Archivio veneto, CXXXIX (1
Mario Infelise, "A proposito di imprimatur. Una controversia giurisdizionale di fi
tra Venezia e Roma," in Studi veneti offerti a Gaetano Cozzi (Venice, 1992), 287-29
I libri proibiti, 71. In his contribution to this issue, Edward Muir links the freedom
the Republic with the rise of the Accademia degli Incogniti and the beginning of p
in Venice. In dealing with freedom restrictions after this "Sarpian moment," affec
main of opera, my essay complements his.

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 1 357

Antonio Boretti, which opened the 1667/68 season at the Vene-

tian SS. Giovanni e Paolo, a theater owned by the Grimani family.
Recovering signs of authorial intention in this libretto requires at-
tention not only to the text proper but also to what modern liter-
ary critics describe as the privileged space of transaction between
author and public, or the paratextual elements-in this case, the il-
lustrated frontispiece, the title page, the dedication, the letter to
the reader, and the plot summary.4
Genette, who coined the term paratext, defines it as a "thresh-
old" or "a zone between text and off-text ... a privileged space of
a pragmatics and a strategy ... a fringe of the printed text which in
reality controls one's whole reading of the text." The paratext
works as an interface not only between author and public-thus
representing the locus of authorial intention-but also between
text and context. In the case of Eliogabalo, it is the interpretive
space between the libretto and the historical circumstances em-
bedded in both the surviving archival documentation concerning
the first performance and the related artistic and sociopolitical dis-
courses produced in the Venice of the 166os. Paratextuality is also
part of a larger phenomenon that Genette calls "transtextuality."
The transtextual relationships of Eliogabalo's 1668 libretto extend
backward in time to its literary and visual sources and forward to
the librettos published for performances of the opera throughout
Italy after its Venetian premiere. In Accetto's "methodology of
reading," the interaction of these elements reveals that "other
text" with the author's true voice-one, as it turns out, suppressed
by censorship.5

4 ELIOGABALO / DRAMA PER MUSICA / Nel Famoso Teatro Grimano / L'Anno

M.DC.LXVIII. / DI / AURELIO AURELI. / Opera Decimaquarta / DEDICATO / A
gl'Illustrissimi Signori / GIO: CARLO, / ET / VICENZO / Grimani Fratelli. / IN
VENETIA, M. DC. LX VIII / Per Francesco Nicolini / Con Licenza de' Superiori, e
Privilegio. / Si vende in Spadaria. A second edition was published the same year. The librettos
are indexed as numbers 8758 and 8759 in Claudio Sartori, I libretti italiani a stampa dalle origini
al 18oo: Catalogo analitico con 16 indici (Cuneo, 1990). The performances of Aureli/Boretti's
Eliogabalo span the period from 1668 to 1687.
5 Ghrard Genette (trans. Jane E. Lewin), Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (New York,
1997), 2. Genette defines transtexuality as everything that brings a text into relationship with
other texts: intertextuality (quotation, plagiarism, and allusion), metatextuality (e.g., critical
commentaries), hypertextuality (imitation, pastiche, and parody), archtextuality (e.g., genre),
and paratextuality. See idem (trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky), Palimpsests: Lit-
erature in the Second Degree (Lincoln, 1997). For an extension of Genette's categories to opera,
see Marco Emanuele, Opere e riscritture: Melodrammi, ipertesti, parodie (Turin, 2001).

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358 MAURO CALCAGNO

A TALE OF TWO OPERAS A masterwork of"honest dissim

the letter to the reader that librettist Aurelio Aureli preface
Eliogabalo both obscures and illuminates the turbulent ci
stances of this opera's creation. In it, Aureli writes that the l
was the "hasty" replacement of a previous version (his rev
a text by an unnamed author) set to music by Francesco
But, for some "unexpected" reason, he was "ordered" to a
the Cavalli version. The later work was based on the sam
as the former one, though "completely different in man
action," as Aureli seems determined to reassure the reade
whomever he "had to obey"). The letter mentions his col
tors by name, including that of the new composer, Giova
tonio Boretti, who was only twenty-seven years old, muc
ger than Cavalli (age sixty-five).6
The score of Cavalli's Eliogabalo survives, but the oper
reached the stage. The events to which Aureli cryptically
in the prefatory letter of his libretto can be partially recons
through the archival documentation regarding the circum
of this opera's production. During the months immediate
ceding the operatic season in which Cavalli's Eliogabalo w
performed, the noblemen who owned the theater-the
brothers Giovanni Carlo and Vincenzo Grimani, resp
nineteen and fifteen years old-dismissed Cavalli, hired B
and obliged Aureli to write the new Eliogabalo. The Grima
abruptly fired the theater's impresario, Marco Faustini, a
his place. In the dedicatory letter of the new Eliogabalo,
praises the two brothers as the heirs of the Roman and G
trons of theater arts.7
Who, and what, was behind the cancellation of Cavalli's op-

6 Aureli, Eliogabalo, 5. For the original text of this letter, and other documents mentioned or
quoted in this article, see Calcagno, "Fonti ricenzione e ruolo della commitenza nell'
Eliogabalo musicato da F. Cavalli, G.A. Boretti e T. Orgiani (1667-1687)," in Dirko Fabris
(ed.), Francesco Cavalli e la circolazione dell'opera veneziana nel seicento (Naples, forthcoming).
7 Aureli, Eliogabalo, 3 (dedication dated January Io, 1667 [?1668]). The scores of both
Cavalli's and Boretti's Eliogabalo are preserved at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice as
Ms.It.C1. IV, 358 [=9882] and Ms.It.C1. IV, 413 [=9937], respectively. The events outlined in
this paragraph emerge from the surviving archival documents examined in Lorenzo Bianconi,
"Caletti, Pietro Francesco," in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1973), XVII, 686-696;
Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley, 1991),
188 n. 75, 195, 2Io n. 35; Franco Mancini, Maria Teresa Muraro, and Franca Povoledo, I teatri
del Veneto (Venice, 1995), I, 297-298. The documents, preserved at the Archivio di Stato di
Venezia, fondo Scuola Grande di S. Marco, are (I) a contract ofJune 29, 1667 (with receipt of

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 359

era? Since archival documents do not provide an ans

ses can be advanced primarily by comparing Bo
Cavalli's Eliogabalo. The plots of their librettos share
themes: First, Eliogabalo (or Heliogabalus) is more i
chasing women than in ruling the Roman Em
Alessandro, Eliogabalo's cousin and successor, embo
peror's virtuous counterpart; he is virile, diligent in
faithful to his beloved. As for the musical style of t
Lorenzo Bianconi suggests that the Venetian public
ferred Boretti's modern-style canzonette to Cavalli's sty
musical drama.8
Bianconi also notes that the most striking difference between
the two versions lies in the outcome of their finales. In the Cavalli
finale, the lascivious emperor is brutally killed (offstage), and
Alessandro takes power. In Boretti's opera, Eliogabalo survives his
soldiers' revolt, regrets his evil deeds, and continues to rule with
Alessandro's help. Bianconi suggests that the finale of Cavalli's op-
era was too pro-monarchy for republican Venice, though appar-
ently not for monarch-ruled Turin in 1678, where the finale of
Boretti's opera was replaced by one more like Cavalli's. The pref-
ace to Turin's libretto reports that changes were necessary because
certain passages were more suited to a libera civitate (Venice) than
apud Reges (Turin). But, as Bianconi adds, a later and much revised
libretto of Eliogabalo published for a 1687 Venetian performance
also features the killing of the emperor, despite Venice's continued
status as a libera civitas. The reason behind the divergence between
the two finales lies, as we shall see, not so much in larger political

July 13) between Cavalli and the manager of the Theater SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Marco
Faustini, concerning the first Eliogabalo, whose author is not mentioned (busta 194, cc. 50-
5I), partly transcribed in Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 436; (2) a contract of
October Io, 1667, between Aureli and Faustini, regarding the adjustments to be made in this
first Eliogabalo (busta 194, n. III, c. 3 I), transcribed in Mancini, Muraro, and Povoledo, I teatri
del Veneto, 311, but erroneously dated September Io; (3) a letter of December 15, 1667, by
which Faustini renounces the management of the Theater SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in favor of
the Grimani brothers. This letter indicates that Cavalli was paid a commission, despite the
cancellation of his opera (busta 188, cc. 199--202, transcribed in ibid., 311-312). Rosand, Op-
era in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 142, observes that the Grimanis "were quite used to having
their theater [the SS. Giovanni e Paolo] compared favorably with those of ancient Rome."
8 Bianconi, Caletti, 689, supports his claim by mentioning Cavalli's 1673 opera Massenzio,
which was canceled because its music was considered old-fashioned ("mancante di briose
ariette," as Pietro Dolfin writes to the Duke of Braunschweig in a letter of December 23,
1672, transcribed in Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 441-442). See also Jane
Glover, Cavalli (London, 1978), 29.

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360 MAURO CALCAGNO

contexts (republic versus monarchy) but in characteristics

to Venetian operatic patronage.9
Nonetheless, the finale of Cavalli's work may have p
role in the rejection of the opera, and ideological reas
have mattered. By showing the repentance of the ruler,
his slaying, the action of the Boretti libretto adheres to o
main tenets of early modern Catholic political thought. A
to Jesuit writers, for example, the power bestowed upon
mate prince was irrevocable, regardless of his viciousness
anny. It was considered acceptable to slay a tyrant who u
throne (tyrannus in regimine) but not a proper ruler turned
sor (tyrannus in titulo, as Heliogabalus was). That the
Boretti's opera reflected Jesuit-like political thinking is argu
the fact that four months after its Venetian premiere the o
performed at the Jesuit college of Parma (Collegio de
where many Venetian nobles sent their children. Eliogaba
have been conceived-and its finale changed-with the
performance in mind. The repentance of Eliogabalo at th
Boretti's opera illustrates one of the most stressed values
plays.10
The moral message conveyed by Boretti's finale also fits the
conservative political and cultural atmosphere of Venice during

9 Bianconi, Caletti; idem, "L'Ercole in Rialto," in Muraro (ed.), Venezia e il melodramma nel
Seicento (Florence, 1976), 264-265. For the Turin performance, see also Mercedes Viale
Ferrero, "Repliche a Torino di alcuni melodrammi veneziani e loro caratteristiche," in ibid.,
145-171; idem, Storia del Teatro Regio di Torino. III. La scenografia dalle origini al 1936 (Turin,
1973), 24-38. The Turin libretto is n. 8764 in Sartori, I libretti italiani. I am grateful to
Mercedes Viale Ferrero for providing me with a photocopy of it.
io Robert A. Lauer, Tyrannicide and Drama (Stuttgart, 1987), 6o. This protective view of ty-
rants is echoed in Cavalli's Eliogabalo, which features the slaying of a depraved yet legitimate
ruler. Eliogabalo repeatedly assaults Flavia, the beloved of his cousin Alessandro, who at the
end of the opera becomes the new emperor. Yet, well aware of Eliogabalo's reprehensible be-
havior, Alessandro repeatedly disagrees that the emperor should be killed: "Long live the em-
peror," he declares, "Long live we the people. Let Heaven punish its own evildoers. We shall
not escape sin with greater sin" (III, Io). ELIOGABALO / DRAMA PER MUSICA / Da
rappresentarsi in Parma / NEL COLLEGIO DE NOBILI / IN OCCASIONE / DEL
BATTESIMO / DEL SERENISSIMO / ODOARDO / PRENCIPE / DI PARMA / IN
PARMA, Per Mario Vigna. 1668 / Con Licenza de' Superiori. Sartori, I libretti
Repentance was an important element in the plots ofJesuit dramas based on
See Maurice Gravier, "Le theitre des jhsuites et la tragbdie du salut et de la
Jean Jacquot (ed.), Le theatre tragique (Paris, 1972), 119-129. The other oper
sides Eliogabalo, during the 1667/68 season at the SS. Giovanni e Paolo, The T
by Love, or Meraspe, also features the final repentance of the tyrant, although
longer Rome but Egypt.

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 1 361

the I66os. The Jesuits' return to Venice in 1657, after a fifty-year

absence because of the Interdict, contributed to a shift toward reli-
gious orthodoxy, which also affected the cultural domain, includ-
ing book publishing. For example, as Muraro observed, the statues
crowning the Chiesa della Salute underwent significant icono-
graphic changes in the I660s precisely to reflect this new attitude.
Evidence, though scant, also indicates that the Grimani family
supported the Society ofJesus during this time. When the brothers
Grimani assumed sole responsibility for managing the theater in
1667, their public image became closely tied to the productions
there. Eliogabalo-staged in the Grimani's first season as manag-
ers-must have been in accord with their beliefs as members of
the ruling class.11
The only other seventeenth-century Venetian artwork about

i i Giorgio Spini, Ricerca dei libertini. La teoria dell'impostura delle religioni nel Seicento italiano.
Nuova edizione riveduta e ampliata (Florence, 1983), 259: "Indeed [in Venice] it is not only the
licentious group of the Incogniti that completely disappears. It is also that historic function
that Venice had within the world of Italian Counter Reformation (as the antagonist of the
Habsburgs, of Rome, of the Jesuits, since the age of Boccalini and Sarpi) which begins to van
ish under the pressures of the Turkish Empire and of the local changes of men and things."
See Giuseppe Gullino, "Il rientro dei Gesuiti a Venezia: le ragioni della politica e
dell'economia," in Mario Zanardi (ed.), I Gesuiti e Venezia. Momenti e problemi di storia
veneziana della Compagnia di Gesz'. Atti del Convegno di Studi. Venezia, 2-5 ottobre 199o (Padua
1994), 421-433; idem, "L'opera del nunzio Carafa per il ritorno dei Gesuiti nella Serenissima,"
Studi Romani, XXIV (1976), 162-180. For the effects of the conservative turn on the press, see
Zorzi, "La produzione e la circolazione del libro," 960-962. As a litmus test for this change
between the Interdict of 16o6 and the return of the Jesuits in 1657, the enrollment of Venetian
noblemen at the Parma Jesuit college dropped. Patricians could show their independence
from Rome by choosing to send their children either to the Studio of Padua or to the
Somaschi fathers, but not to Parma-to send them to a Jesuit college would have represented
a different political statement (see Gian Paolo Brizzi, "Scuole e collegi dell'antica Provincia
Veneta della Compagnia di Gesui, 1542-1773," in Zanardi [ed.], I Gesuiti e Venezia, 467-511)
After the Interdict, from 16Io to 1620, only 4 of the 280 students admitted to the Parma col
lege came from Venice, but in the 1650s, this number increased to 16 (of 257), and peaked at
54 (of 395) in the I660s (these numbers are inferred from Andrea Sabini, Collegii Parmensis
Nobilium Convictorum Nomenclatura Universalis, cum notis historicis [Parma, 1820]; Gaetano
Capasso, "I1 Collegio dei Nobili di Parma. Memorie storiche," Archivio storico per le Provinci
Parmensi, I [I9OI], 1-248). Evidently, during the I65os and I660s, Venice had re-established
closer ties with the Compagnia. Michelangelo Muraro, "Il tempio votivo di S. Maria della Sa-
lute in un poema del Seicento," Ateneo veneto, XI (1973), 87-119; idem, "Iconologia e
ideologia del tempio della Salute a Venezia," in Jan Slaski (ed.), Baroccofra Italia e Polonia (War-
saw, 1977), 71-78. Zanardi, "I 'domicilia' o centri operativi della Compagnia di Gesfh nello
Stato veneto (1542-1773)," in idem (ed.), I Gesuiti e Venezia, 103, reports on the failed negoti-
ations that occurred from 1661 to 1663 between Zuane Grimani (the uncle of Giovanni Carlo
and Vincenzo, the dedicatees of Eliogabalo) and the Jesuits' highest hierarchies to build a col
lege in Venice.

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362 MAURO CALCAGNO

Heliogabalus (to my knowledge) is a wood carving in the v

the church of S. Pietro Martire on the island of Murano-Aureli's
birthplace-which shows Heliogabalus as one of the thirty-tw
statues standing among twenty panels representing the life of S
John the Baptist. Like Aureli's libretto, it also deals with the theme
of repentance. Besides Heliogabalus, thirteen other statues in th
church impersonate characters from Roman history. Ten of the
were also portrayed in Venetian opera during the 166os and 1670
when the subject of tyranny took center stage. These negative po
litical examples matched the element of docere (teaching) with th
of delectare (entertaining). The Murano carving, placing notoriou
historical figures side-by-side with the announcer of redemption
emphasized the notion of conversion that contemporaneous op-
eras, including Eliogabalo, implicitly advocated.12

FROM SOURCE TO LIBRETTO: THE SENATE EPISODE Cavalli's final

featuring the killing of the emperor, was probably less suited to the
Venetian stage of the I660s than Boretti's, which highlighted r
pentance. But the rejection of Cavalli's opera becomes even mor
understandable-and the evidence for censorship strengthene
through analysis of another critical episode common to both li
brettos, Eliogabalo's appointment of an all-female Senate. Com-
parison of this passage with its literary source discovers that i
scandalous meanings were much more manifest in Cavalli's ver-
sion than in Boretti's. The librettist had to employ considerable
skill to manipulate his source in such a way as to create an associ
tion between Venice's contemporary historical situation and th
episode's sexual and political overtones without being too blunt.1

12 The carving, completed in 1666, was originally placed in the Scuola di S. Giovan
Battista. Aureli's family played some role in its activities. See Emanuele Cicogna, De
inscrizioni veneziane (Bologna, 1969; orig. pub. 1824), VI, 372-373, 387. The ten characte
were Nero (Claudio Cesare, 1671, and II Nerone, 1679), Seneca (Il Nerone), Julius Caesar (Giu
Cesare, 1677), Mauritius, Foca, and Maxentius (Heraclio, 1672), Furius Camillus (Cesa
amante, I651), Belisarius (Totila, 1677), Pompeius Magnus (Pompeo magno, 1666), a
Germanicus (Prosperita and Caduta di Elio Seiano, 1666). As Paolo Fabbri, II Secolo cantante: P
una storia del libretto d'opera nel Seicento (Rome, 2003; orig. pub. Bologna, 1990), 213, observ
Aureli's libretto marks "the first time the character of the monarch himself offers an image o
the excesses to which absolute authority can arrive, an authority that cannot find in itself a
self-imposed rational obstacle, any control of its omnipotence."
13 The literary sources of seventeenth-century opera librettos have yet to be fiully explore
Some examples can be found in Wendy B. Heller, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women
Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley, 2003).

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 363

In the first libretto, the Senate episode occupies three s

(Cavalli, I, 14-16), whereas in the second libretto, it occupie
one brief scene of just seven lines (Boretti, III, 19). Why d
passage have to be so drastically shortened (although traces
first version remained in the second one)?
The first pages of Aelius Lampridius' Vita Heliogabali (f
century A.D.) comprise the main historiographical source f
emperor's life. The section about the women's Senate, w
emblematic of the emperor's outlandish behavior, is as fo
"He also established a senaculum, or women's Senate on
Quirinal Hill. Before his time, in fact, a congress of matro
met here, but only on certain festivals .... But now, throu
influence of Symiamira [the emperor's mother] absurd de
were enacted . .. namely .. . [regarding] who was to yield p
dence and to whom, who was to advance to kiss another."1
In Lampridius' history, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,
Elagabalus ("deus Sol invictus"), came from Syria, apparent
child of a prostitute, or so was his mother's reputation in
His ascent to power was rapid, but his turbulent reign ha
only four years when he was assassinated in 222 A.D. at the
twenty. He had extravagant habits and sexual perversions.
ample, he traveled with 6oo chariots "full of his male pros
bawds, harlots, and lusty partners in depravity" (31, 5-6). H
carded women but kept the same male prostitute (Zotico, w
character in Cavalli's Eliogabalo) as a servant and adviser dur
entire reign (24, 2; IO, 2), eventually undergoing surgery
come a castrato. He also loved to perform, one of his favori
being the goddess Venus in erotic poses. In Lampridius' wor
for him was nothing except a search for pleasures ... [he] m
any orifice of his body an instrument to indulge in any s
pleasure" (I9, 6).
It is not surprising that Lampridius' account stimu
Aureli's imagination, as well as those of many other early m
Italian writers, such as Leonardo Bruni, Tommaso Garzoni
Cesare Capaccio, Secondo Lancellotti, and Giuseppe Batti
mention only a few. Unlike Aureli, these writers neve
Heliogabalus the subject of an entire work; Lampridius' bio

14 In the following pages, I quote from Lampridius' Vita Heliogabali as translated b

Magie in The Scriptores Historiae Augustae (New York, 1924), II, 105-177.

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364 MAURO CALCAGNO

served them mainly as a source for quotations, allusions, an

lations. Nonetheless, all of these writers, Aureli included
conscious decision to adopt a common source. To borrow
of Genette's terms, their works are "hypertexts" all derivi
a common "hypotext," that of Lampridius.s5
At the end of the plot summary (argomento) of his sec
bretto, Aureli declares the Latin writer as his only source. Th
summary is another paratextual element that, like the "letter
reader," is crucial to an understanding of both the vicissi
the opera and the possible reasons for censorship interven
list of Eliogabalo's dissolute habits therein is a miniature r
the one provided by Lampridius. Yet, Aureli's more im
source for the argomento is not Lampridius' Vita, the hy
but a work that borrowed from it, one of its hyperte
Historia imperial y Cesarea (1545) by the Catalan write
Mexia. Aureli read it in the 1558 Italian translation by Lu
Dolce, which was reprinted in Venice many times after i
publication.16
A comparison between Aureli's argomento and Mexia/
Dolce's Vita di Heliogabalo highlights the librettist's process of
copying and assembling from his source. Each episode narrated in
the argomento corresponds to a passage in the libretto itself, ex-
cept in one case, the episode of the all-female Senate, which pres-
ents an ambiguity relevant to the issue of whether Aureli's libretto
was censored. This section of the argomento conflates two epi-
sodes that its source, Mexia, keeps separate-Heliogabalus' con-
cession of the Senate to the women, and the distribution of politi-
cal appointments to vile and dissolute persons. In Lampridius' Vita
(which Mexia follows more closely than Aureli), the two episodes
are chapters apart, but in Aureli's argomento, only a comma sepa-
rates them: "And finally he awarded the Senate in Rome to
women, distributing the appointments and the honors to the most
vile and vicious persons of his court." The question arises, Are the
"vile and dissolute persons" who received Heliogabalus' political
I5 Bruni, Oratio Heliogabali ad meretrices (1408), Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le
professioni del mondo (1576), Capaccio, II principe. Tratto dagli emblemi dell'Alciato (1620),
Lancellotti, Hoggidi, overo il mondo non peggiore ne piu' calamitoso del passato (1623), and Battista,
Poesie meliche (1664). For Genette, see n. 4.
16 Le vite de gli imperadori romani da Giulio Cesare sino a Massimino tratte per M. Ludovico Dolce
dal libro Spagnolo del Signor Pietro Messia. I quote from the edition closer to Aureli's Eliogabalo,
published in Venice in 1664, 219-225.

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 365

appointments the women senators or other people entirel

thermore, what kind of "women" held seats in the Senate
Most surprising, however, is that Aureli's libretto for B
which should correspond to the outline in the argomento,
tains no mention of political appointments distributed to a
The penultimate scene of Aureli/Boretti, staged in the Hall
Senate, consists only of Eliogabalo's seven-line inaugu
speech to the female senators ("dame romane"), in which
won-len's garb, addresses them as "females, better parts of the
Kingdom," "sweet adornments of the Tiber," and "beautif
the next scene, he calls them "audacious comrades-in-arms"
("commilitoni audaci"), an intriguing epithet. Why would he ref-
er to the women as soldiers? Who are they really?
The libretto's hypotext, Lampridius' Vita, shows that in this
scene Aureli again conflates two distinct passages from his source,
as he did in the argomento with Mexia's Historia, in an ingenious
(but also dangerous) contamination. Lampridius' terms for the
women in the Senate were mulieres and matrones, simple gender
designations. In this passage of the biography, Heliogabalus does
not address the female senators at all; he is not dressed as a woman;
and the female senators are not described as "audacious comrades-
in-arms." Not before twenty-two chapters after the episode of the
all-women Senate, in a totally different context, did Lampridius
narrate that Heliogabalus was "dressed as a woman." On this occa-
sion, the emperor was speaking before an assembly rather different
from that of his women senators-a gathering of prostitutes
(meretrices). These are the women that Lampridius called commi-
litones, that is, comrades-in-arms.
Hence, Aureli/Boretti's Eliogabalo conflates two episodes that
are unrelated in both the hypotext (Lampridius' Vita) and the hy-
pertext used to make up the argomento (Mexia/Dolce). The up-
shot is that the group of noblewomen senators (dame) to whom
the emperor addresses his short speech in Aureli's libretto becomes

17 In the argomento, the triumphal entrance into the Campidoglio (section II) corresponds,
in the libretto, to the exordium of Act I (more later). The exchange between night and day
(section IV) and the banquet (section III) results in the setting of two groups of scenes: I, 2o-
21, "Piazza di Roma illuminata in tempo di notte," and III, 1-8, "Apparato di mensa
imperiale tra le delizie di un giardino regio." The events included in sections V-IX are con-
centrated in the two final scenes of the opera (20-21), which take place in the "Sala Regia
Destinata da Eliogabalo per il Senato delle Donne in Roma."

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366 MAURO CALCAGNO

a gathering of prostitutes, but the allusion is veiled under on

word, commilitoni.

REVEALING SCARS: CUTTING THE SENATE EPISODE Examination of

Lampridius' Vita shows that Eliogabalo's "vile" and "dissolute"
appointees in Aureli's argomento are the prostitutes to whom he
addresses his speech in the Senate. But why does the argomento
mention a distribution of the appointments occurring in the all-
women Senate that the libretto to follow does not include? Could
the staging of such political appointments have been too danger
ously close to the reality of Venetian contemporary events?
The episode of the distribution of the appointments derives
from yet another passage of Lampridius' Vita (6, 1-2): "He used to
sell ... appointments, honours, important jobs. He admitted sena
tors without considering age, social or economic status, carin
only about the price that was paid." This passage, however, was
not the immediate source for Aureli's appointments in the
argomento of the Boretti libretto. He had already used the passag
in a section of the previously rejected Cavalli opera, in which h
conflated this episode with the appointment of the all-wome
Senate and the allocution to the prostitutes (I, 14-16). In thes
scenes of Cavalli's opera-as in Boretti's one scene-Eliogabalo
appears in "habito femminile" and gives a speech to the female
senators, his "commilitoni." The distribution of political appoint-
ments that was mentioned only in the argomento for Boretti actu
ally occurs in this section of the Cavalli libretto; in fact, it is promi-
nent, occupying an entire scene (I, 15). Moreover, in Cavalli, the
Senate episode is central to the plot, and climactic-spanning 152
lines of text, three complete scenes. In Boretti, the analogous epi
sode is only seven lines long."8
In the Cavalli scene devoted to the distribution of political
appointments, the emperor, who in the preceding scene ha
mocked constancy and fidelity, announces the inauguration of th
all-female Senate. Advised by his servant Lenia, he proposes tha
the female senators be blindfolded and that they embrace one an

18 The text of Act III, scene 19 of Aureli/Boretti's Eliogabalo (73) is: [Eliogabalo, dressed
a woman] "O females, better part / of the Latin kingdom, / audacious comrades-in-arms, /
sweet adornments of the Tiber, here is Augustus, / changed from man into woman; /
please you, o beautiful, / I grant you the Senate." In Cavalli's score, scenes I, 14-16 are a
ff. 4or-49r.

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 367

other. She who guesses the name of the one who hugs her
political appointment. Eliogabalo also takes part in the
game, dressed as a woman. The emperor suspends the c
when an ex-lover suddenly enters the hall.
The seven lines in the libretto for Boretti, by contrast
no erotic game and no distribution of political appointmen
more important, these seven lines include textual fragment
Cavalli's opera. As in Accetto's two "books" mentioned at t
ginning--"small book" and "large book"-the shorter B
text conceals the longer, unpublished Cavalli text, which
faintly between its lines. In other words, the stark seven l
Boretti III, 19, exhibit, to use Accetto's crude metaph
"scars" (cicatrici) of Cavalli's earlier mutilated text (scenes I,
to use Genette's terminology, the later libretto is no long
hypertextual relationship with the earlier one (as it is wit
sources) but in a fully intertextual one-no longer just a
but selectively quoting. The summary of the Senate episode
Boretti argomento, however, does allude to the earlier lib
through dissimulation, in its passing mention of the politi
pointments. In an explosive mix, Cavalli's opera openly inc
in the "body" of its text, all three elements present in the
used by Aureli-the concession of the Senate, the allocu
the senators/prostitutes, and the distribution of political ap
ments. Any politically sensitive Venetian of the I66os-p
larly a censor reviewing a work about a loaded subject
Heliogabalus-would have been highly disconcerted by th
ate episode of Cavalli's opera.19
Besides the argomento, another paratextual element of
later libretto includes an allusion to the Senate episode of t
lier text-the illustrated frontispiece. This image fulfills a f
similar to that of the letter to the reader by working as
crypted clue to the earlier text-an interface between te
context, the author and its public.

ENCODING SCANDALOUS MEANINGS: THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE

LIBRETTO FRONTISPIECE In one of the Senate scenes of Cavalli's

opera, one of the emperor's lovers, Atilia, sings: "For the favor

19 Compare the excerpts in n. 18 and n. 28 for words lifted from the Cavalli libretto and in-
cluded in the Boretti one.

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368 1 MAURO CALCAGNO

you concede, / make us pay a toll of pleasure; / each of us beauties

/ should pay to you / the Love's tithe of our sex" (I, 14). Had
these lines been allowed on stage during the 1667/68 season, the
listener would have certainly caught an allusion to prostitution, a
striking reality of seventeenth-century Venice, which was famous
across Europe not only for its opera theaters but also for its many
prostitutes. Indeed, prostitutes and their gathering in semipolitical
"assemblies" were a recurrent theme in seventeenth-century Ital-
ian literature, especially in satirical works.20
Relevant to the topic at hand are the clandestine political
pamphlets that included critiques and satires of Venice (papal
Rome was also a favorite target). During the second half of the
seventeenth century, the myth of Venice as a unique and success-
ful political experiment, the Repubblica Serenissima, was under at-
tack in Europe, but particularly in Venice itself. Modern historians
have identified an extensive "literature of the anti-myth" in which
anonymous pamphleteers criticized Venetian political institutions
and their practices. One of its common targets was the sale of po-
litical appointments in exchange for money (broglio), a frequent
practice among members of the Venetian Senate. The "literature
of the anti-myth" also drew comparisons between the noble fami-
lies involved in Venetian politics and the thousands of prostitutes
living in the Serenissima.21

20 Two examples are Ferrante Pallavicino's Retorica delle puttane (Venice, 1642) and
Gregorio Leti's I puttanismo romano o vero conclave generale delle puttane della Corte per l'elettione
del nuovo pontefice (Rome, 1668). Because of his Retorica and his numerous writings against the
Barberini family, Pallavicino was one of the main enemies of the Papal court. The Barberinis
long pursued a scheme to draw him out of the Venetian territory in order to execute him,
eventually succeeding in 1644 (see Spini, Ricerca dei libertini, 177-184). A letter (dated Oct. i9,
1641) from Francesco Vitelli, the papal ambassador to Venice, to Cardinal Francesco Barberini
complained about Pallavicino's future writing plans, including a life of Heliogabalus. The let-
ter is transcribed in Sergio Adorni and Albert N. Mancini, "Stampa e censura ecclesiastica a
Venezia nel primo Seicento: il caso del 'Corriero svaligiato,' " Esperienze letterarie, X (1985),
20. Apparently, Heliogabalus was a hot topic the mere mention of which could cause concern
in religious hierarchies. Could an unpublished "life of Heliogabalus" by Pallavicino have been
the original version of Cavalli's Eliogabalo, later "adjusted" by Aureli?
21 Piero del Negro, "Forme e istituzioni del discorso politico veneziano," in Girolamo
Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi (eds.), Storia della cultura veneta. IV (Part 2). II Seicento
(Venice, 1983), 411-422. See the anonymous pamphlet entitled Della Repubblica Veneta, writ-
ten c. 1664, published in Pompeo Molmenti, Curiositi di storia veneziana (Bologna, 1919),
359-456 (for the term broglio, 304). The "literature of the anti-myth" makes frequent use of
the comparison between nobles and prostitutes. See Giovanni Scarabello, "Le 'signore' della
Repubblica," in Ilgioco dell'amore. Le cortigiane di Venezia dal Trecento al Settecento. Catalogo della
mostra. Venezia, Casino municipale, Ca' Vendramin Calergi, 2febbraio-16 aprile 199o (Milan, 1990),
34 n. 137-

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 369

The references to prostitution present in Eliog

especially in the libretto for Cavalli-could easily have bee
as an allusion to this subversive literature. The conflation of the
distribution of political appointments, the Senate episode, and th
allocution to the prostitutes in the Senate scenes of Cavalli's oper
could well have caused offense, particularly to the owner and im
presario of the theater SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Giovanni Carl
Grimani, who was destined to become a member of the Venetia
Senate (his brother Vincenzo was probably too young at that tim
to be involved).
The issue of prostitution also surfaces, although encoded
cryptically, in the illustrated frontispiece of the libretto fo
Boretti-a lady on a throne, handing a piece of paper to (or r
ceiving it from) a child holding a torch (see Figure I). The coat
arms of the Grimani family appears in the background. The piec
of paper bears the name "ELIO / GABA / LO." At the base of th
throne appears the motto "Melius eligendum."
The visual part of this frontispiece evokes two characters, Ve
nus and Love, mother and son. A reference to Venus and Love ap
pears in the "body" of the libretto, in its very first scene, staged in
the Capitoline. Eliogabalo is sitting with Flora in the manner of
triumphant victor, on a majestic chariot pulled by women. I
voking Love, the emperor appears on stage crowned with myrtle
the flower of Venus. He is accompanied by Flora meretrix, lover
Pompeius, a prostitute. His final lines refer to the two Venuses o
classical mythology-the Venus celestis (Heavenly Venus), whom
he mocks, and the Venus vulgaris (Earthly Venus), amplified to th
"one hundred Venuses" pulling his chariot. This last reference ca
be understood in light of Lampridius' Vita (29, 2), in which the
emperor appears nude on a chariot dragged by nude women
groups of two, three, or four. Aureli manipulates this passage b
joining it with Lampridius' narration of the entrance of the em
peror into the Capitoline (3, 4), by increasing the number o
women to Ioo, and by identifying them as "Venuses."
In classical mythology, Venus vulgaris is the protector of pros-
titutes. Since the emperor thought of himself as a prostitute an
identified with Venus, displaying his skills as an actor in her gui
(Lampridius 5, 4), presumably the "one hundred Venuses" carry
ing his chariot in the opening scene of Eliogabalo are prostitutes
too, under his protection. Considering these aspects of Heli
gabalus' characterization, the lady-Venus in the frontispiece of th

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370 MAURO CALCAGNO

Fig. 1 Illustrated frontispiece of Aurelio Aureli, Eliog

I668)

....:.- ..
:":,:: . ..... ,: :.ar r*

~r~ o~arx*-o

......

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 1 371

libretto can be directly related to the emperor as Venus vulgaris.

The sexual ambiguity of the facial expression is telling in this re-
spect, considering that the emperor, according to Lampridius, was
a bisexual and a castrato.
By representing Venus, the frontispiece image gains further
symbolic connotations. In keeping with classical mythological de-
scriptions of the goddess as the protector of marriage, Venus holds
a mirror and rests her arm on a lion's head, as in the paintings in
which she represents the harmonious city of Venice, in this case as
Venus celestis, not vulgaris.22
The personification of Venice also drew upon the figures of
the Virgin Mary, the goddess Rome, and, most fundamentally,
Justice. The iconography of Venice as Justice depicts a lady seated
on a lion or a leonine throne, in a pose similar to that shown in the
Eliogabalo's frontispiece, but holding a sword in her right hand. In
addition, Justice was also associated with Sol invictus (never-
vanquished Sun) or Sol iustitiae (Sun of righteousness). In pagan
times, Sol iustitiae overlapped with Apollo-Sun and, later, with
Christ-Sun.23
Iconographically speaking, Venice was related to both Venus
and, through Justice, the Sun. These two attributes of Venice are
identical to those that historical sources assign to Heliogabalus. As
Lampridius reports, the emperor enjoyed portraying Venus
vulgaris, the protector of prostitutes. Heliogabalus was also known
as Sol Invictus Eliogabalus, because he imported the Syrian cult of
the Sun-God (Helios) into Rome, whence derived his name.
The Venus in the frontispiece of Aureli/Boretti's Eliogabalo,
being both Venus celestis and vulgaris, can be associated with the
semantic areas of Venice and Heliogabalus. Representing the two
Venuses, Venice and Heliogabalus are, on the surface, at opposite
poles. However, might not the intent of this juxtaposition have
been to associate Venice with Venus vulgaris, as the "literature of
the anti-myth" at home and abroad did? Dangerously and ambig-
uously, the frontispiece of Eliogabalo plays on double meanings.

22 This connotation is often found in association with the harmony of music as well. See
Ellen Rosand, "Music in the Myth of Venice," Renaissance Quarterly, XXX (1977), 511-537.
23 David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (Chapel Hill, 2001), 6-46; Erwin
Panofsky, "Albrecht Diirer and Classical Antiquity," in Meaning in the Visual Arts (Chicago,
1982), 256-265, and figures 82-84; Lionello Puppi, "Ignoto Deo," Arte veneta, XXIII (1969),
174-175-

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372 | MAURO CALCAGNO

The implication ofJustice in the frontispiece further increases

the ambiguity of the image. The previously mentioned inscription
"Melius eligendum"-meaning "one has to choose the better"-
invokes the concept ofJustice as choice, but, again, with an air of
double meaning. Venice, interpreted as the Sun, is associated with
Justice in the sense of a choice for the better. But what does the
inscription have to do with Heliogabalus, who certainly is not a
model of justice? It might simply be conveying the negative idea
that Heliogabalus, contrary to Venice, made only the worst, unjust
choices.
But the motto has a function beyond that of abstractly refer-
ring to the historical character of Heliogabalus in opposition to
Venice. By highlighting "choice," the inscription embodies an al-
lusion to the Senate episode of Cavalli's opera, specifically the dis-
tribution of political assignments through the game of the blind-
folded women. The motto encodes a warning that can be
deciphered as follows: "Venice has to choose better when assign-
ing political appointments, exactly the opposite of what Helio-
gabalus did when he appointed female senators and assigned them
political roles." The frontispiece thus restores to the Boretti opera
precisely the part of the Senate episode that appears only in the li-
bretto for Cavalli. The motto, like the argomento and the short
Senate episode of its libretto (scene III, 19), functions as an allusion
to the Senate scenes of Cavalli's opera (I, 14-16). Moreover, just
like the argomento and the Senate episode, this allusion appears as
an encryption, or a "scar."
Through the theme of prostitution, implied in the figure of
Venus, the frontispiece image crosses the boundaries of its position
within the "paratext" of the libretto. By virtue of its liminal posi-
tion, this image, on the one hand, relates the libretto to artistic and
sociopolitical contexts familiar to viewers, whereas, on the other
hand, it reaches three elements of the text to which it belongs:
One is located in the "paratext"-the argomento (which relates
the female senators to prostitutes). The second and third are lo-
cated in the body of the text-the opening scene of the libretto
(which features Flora and the Ioo Venuses/prostitutes) and the
"Senate episode" two acts later (particularly the words "audacious
comrades-in-arms" referring to the female senators/prostitutes).
In addition, the image alludes to the distribution of political ap-
pointments in Cavalli's Eliogabalo. Aureli might originally have ac-
cepted the image for the first libretto and then used it for his sec-

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 1 373

ond libretto as a memento of a deleted episode that was important

to him.

THE JOURNEY OF THE SENATE EPISODE The Senate episodes of the

two Eliogabalo librettos encode scandalous meanings that audiences
must have considered politically subversive. An act of censorship
appears to have forced Aureli to emend the Senate scenes of
Cavalli's opera. Aureli responded to it with an act of dissimula-
tion-by leaving traces of the previous text in the new one.
But who was responsible for the censorship? An examination
of the librettos published for the performances throughout Italy
between the 1668 premiere and the return of Eliogabalo to Venice
in 1687, its third reincarnation, confirms that the Senate episode
was considered subversive and that the Grimanis asked Aureli to
revise the Cavalli version. In the libretto's travels, the Senate epi-
sode was indeed the most unstable part of the text.24
In the 1668 Parma libretto, the Senate scene is identical to
that performed a few months earlier in Venice, but the choro di
Dame is given a few extra lines soon after Eliogabalo's inaugura-
tion of the all-women Senate. The libretto of a second revival in
Naples in 1669 includes a dedication written by the performers
which mentions unspecified difficulties in staging the opera. In
this libretto, the Senate scene of Boretti's opera is no longer set
the Senate. All reference to this political assembly disappears. Th
"Senate Hall" becomes "Eliogabalo's Hall" and, consistently, th
crucial line of the 1668 Venetian libretto, "vi concedo il Senato
is omitted.25
In light of these stratagems, devised to affect seven scant lines
24 That a Senate scene must have been problematical on Venetian stages is shown by th
fact that Aureli's libretto Claudio Cesare, set to music by Boretti, was published in two diff
ent editions for its Venetian premiere at the Teatro S. Salvatore in 1672 (see Sartori, I libre
italiani, n. 5737, 5738). In the first edition, the last four scenes of Act III (19-22) are set in
Senato de Romani aperto. In the second, shorter edition (ristampata), scene 18 was deleted, g
ing no change of setting for the new scene 18 (which was 19 in the previous version, cut
half by eliminating any reference to the Senate); scene 20 was deleted; and the Scena ultim
joins the end of scene 21 with the ultima of the previous version. The text of this reprint
version corresponds with that found in the surviving score of the opera (Venice, Bibliotec
Marciana, Ms.It.C1. IV, 401 [=99251).
25 In the added lines of the Parma text, the chorus ironically reflects on "an array of wom
entering the Senate" as ragion di Stato, but a "reason" that, being "upside down," fits all of
emperor's other deeds. The two final lines of this text ("It is a noble reason of state / if an
ray of Women enters the Senate") seem to echo the sentiments of the students of the Jesu
college who attended the opera, some of whom belonged, as we have seen, to Venetian n
bility. For the title page of the Naples libretto, see Sartori, I libretti italiani, n. 8760. Mig

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374 MAURO CALCAGNO

of text, the negative reaction that the 152 lines of

sode of the Cavalli libretto must have elicited is not
ine. Examination of the librettos published after the
contributes, retrospectively, to an understanding of th
brettos. Although the four librettos published aft
one-related to performances in Genoa (1670), B
Rome (1673), and Milan (1674)-do not diverge fr
tian one, a fifth libretto, related to the 1673 performa
shows significant changes. Not only, as Bianconi no
Turin version replace the finale of the Venetian lib
featuring the killing of the emperor (as in Cavalli), bu
the Senate scene altogether. This scene must hav
unsuitable to the Turin audience as the outcome of the finale.
But the most surprising alteration made to the Senate episode
since the cancellation of Cavalli's opera in 1667 is found in the Ve-
netian libretto published in 1687. The names of the characters, ex-
cept those of the emperor and his cousin, changed, and so did the
title, which became in a first edition II vitio depresso e la virti4
coronata and in a second, shorter one L'Eliogabalo rifformato col titolo
del vitio depresso e la virtu coronata. The music was no longer by
Boretti but by Teofilo Orgiani, and the opera was staged at the
Teatro Sant'Angelo. As in Venice almost twenty years before (and
as in Naples in 1669 and Turin in 1673), things must not have
gone smoothly.26
The first edition of this 1687 Venetian libretto includes a let-
ter to the reader, missing from the reprinted version, which states,
"This drama that you are reading is my Eliogabalo which already
eighteen years ago you saw performed with much applause in the
Famous Grimani Theater of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. It is the same
character, but shaped differently than in the version that you saw
back then. I was hoping that also this one would appear on the
same stage; but my hopes have remained unfulfilled" (7-8).
The role of the Grimanis in the vicissitudes of the 1687 li-
bretto clearly emerges. In that year, Vincenzo and Giovanni Carlo

some element of the libretto have caused these difficulties (ombre and turbolenze), or are they
simply cited in the dedication for rhetorical reasons?
26 Sartori, I libretti italiani, 25Io5 (Il vitio) and 8767 (L'Eliogabalo rifformato). That one version
precedes the other is inferable from the list of performances included in Cristoforo Ivanovich
Memorie teatrali di Venezia (published as an appendix to his Minerva al tavolino [Venice, 1681] in
1688), 444.

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 1 375

still owned and managed the SS. Giovanni e Paolo, the theater in
which Aureli/Boretti's Eliogabalo had been staged back in 1668.
Judging from the letter, the two noblemen rejected Aureli's new
work, as they had rejected the libretto that he had written in 1667
for Cavalli. Two elements that might have prompted the Grimanis
to refuse the 1687 libretto might be the same ones that presumably
caused them to refuse the libretto for Cavalli twenty years ear-
lier-the finale and the Senate scene.
The finale of the 1687 Eliogabalo is, surprisingly, that of
Cavalli's opera, featuring the slaying of the emperor in the second
revolt of the Praetorians (although the wording is different and the
names of the characters change). A character (Flavia in 1667,
Emilio in 1687) reports the death of Eliogabalo to Alessandro,
who is then crowned emperor and marries his lover (Flavia/
Celia). For ideological reasons, the Grimanis had rejected this
same finale in 1667, forcing Aureli to change it into the one in-
cluded in the Boretti version, featuring the emperor's repentance
Apparently, they considered this finale inappropriate in 1687 as
well, probably for identical reasons. None of the operas based on
Roman emperors staged in the SS. Giovanni e Paolo to that point
had featured the slaying of a tyrant.27
The second element that the Grimanis would have deemed
unacceptable--the Senate episode-once more reveals its crucia
role in the interpretation of the opera. Act I of the 1687 Eliogabal
opens in the "Sala del Senato delle Donne Romane." The charac
ters participating in this scene are Eliogabalo (sitting on a throne)
two lovers, and Roman noblewomen sitting in the Senate. As
text for this opening, Aureli could have easily adopted the seven
lines that he had used eighteen years earlier in Boretti's opera. In
stead, he began his 1687 opera with the seven lines that appear in
Act I, scene 15, of Cavalli's Eliogabalo and nowhere else.28
Aureli, however, made three significant changes to this text
of the very first libretto. First, the emperor, unlike in Cavalli's (and
Boretti's) opera, is not dressed as a woman. Second, the Roman
27 Even Caligula delirante (Noris/Pagliardi, 1673), an opera in which the protagonist be
haves in the same lascivious way as Eliogabalo, has a happy ending. The worst that could hap
pen to a Roman emperor was to be suicidal, as in Domiziano (Noris/Boretti, 1672).
28 The text in the Cavalli opera is "To you, women, the better part / of my kingdom, he-
roic sex, / most dignified supporters, / comrades-in-arms of the august enterprises, / I now
grant the Senate. At this moment / let your empire begin: / this notion is both worthy of you
and worthy of me."

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376 1 MAURO CALCAGNO

"women" become "noblewomen," thus leaving no doubt about

their identity. Finally, and most importantly, he omitted the line
with the epithet "comrades-in-arms of the august enterprises"-
the clearest allusion to prostitutes-substituting for it a blunt "of
the glories of the Tiber." Thus did his reinstatement of the Cavalli
passage eliminate the scandalous association between female sena-
tors and prostitutes. In light of this reform of the Senate scene, the
title of the 1687 version (Eliogabalo rifformato . . . ) makes even
more sense. Evidently, however, this "softening" was not enough
for the Grimanis to accept Aureli's new version.

Since the two rejections of Aureli's librettos occurred under the

same circumstances, the Grimanis appear to have been responsible
for both of them-the later rejection illuminating, retrospectively,
the earlier one. Evidently, the Grimanis not only handled their
theater's financial matters but also evaluated the material to be per-
formed therein, aware that their own personal image was also at
stake.29
In 1678, the Grimanis opened a second, independent theater
destined for opera, the S. Giovanni Grisostomo, which at that
point was the most luxurious, spacious, and important opera the-
ater yet built. This opening "represented the climax of a patrician
enterprise [that of the Grimanis] which projected in the magnif-
icence of a theatrical space their public image, as an expression of
family pride." As they had done with the SS. Giovanni e Paolo,
the Grimani brothers assumed total control of both the financial
and theatrical aspects of the enterprise.30
Unlike the Grimanis, however, most other patrician families,
like the Cappellos and Marcellos, who together founded the
Teatro S. Angelo in 1677, engaged an impresario to run their op-
era businesses. Because these two families treated opera strictly as a
profit-making venture, not as a reflection of their images, they
must have been less inclined to censor performances. Their impre-

29 In their forthcoming book, Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in
Seventeenth-Century Venice (New York, 2005), Beth andJonathan Glixon discuss a 1648 agree-
ment between the nobleman Francesco Tron and the managers of his theater that he approve
all librettos before operas are staged. I would like to thank the Glixons for their help during
the writing of this article.
30 Mancini, Muraro, and Povoledo, I Teatri del Veneto, I, ix. See also Harris S. Saunders,
"The Repertoire of a Venetian Opera House (1678-1714): The Teatro Grimani di San
Giovanni Grisostomo," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Harvard University, 1985).

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CENSORING ELIOGABALO 377

sario, Francesco Santurini, was more concerned w

gins than artistic quality. He held his job for ten
Cappellos and Marcellos continued to rely upon im
he left.31
The S. Angelo theater saw the premiere of
Eliogabalo. During its inaugural season a decade ea
opera to be performed there featured a libretto by n
Aureli (Elena rapita da Paride). Already by then, the l
nection with the Grimanis had loosened. Though
Paolo had been the sole venue for all of Aureli's librettos from
1658 to 1669 (including Eliogabalo), in 1670 the librettist began to
collaborate with the Grimanis' competitors in the Venetian oper
market, but the S. Angelo became the most receptive venue for
his works.
After his unsuccessful attempt to place Eliogabalo at the SS.
Giovanni e Paolo in 1687, Aureli spent a period in Parma at the
court of Ranuccio II Farnese (169o-1697) before returning to
Venice, where he died in 1709. In the last years of his life, he
wrote mostly for the S.Angelo. He never wrote for the Grimanis'
main theater, the S. Giovanni Grisostomo. The vicissitudes of the
Eliogabalo librettos, which spanned twenty years, left a lasting mark
on his career. They reveal the uneasy relationship between patron
and librettist that characterized Venetian opera production during
the seventeenth century-a relationship in which censorship
played a significant role.32

31 The distinction between noble patrons/managers (such as the Grimanis) and patrons
who relied upon a non-noble impresario to run their theaters is relevant to discussions of the
role of patronage in early Venetian opera. Clearly, patron/managers had more at stake in op-
era productions than patrons whose involvement was limited to mere financial reward. Thus,
the common view that the Venetian operatic system was driven exclusively by pure commer-
cial reasons, with little or no symbolic value affecting the image of the theater owners, needs
to be fine-tuned by taking into consideration how each institution was run. In this respect,
Claudio Annibaldi's distinction between "humanistic" and "commercial" patronage is too
rigid in, for example, "Tipologia della committenza musicale nella Venezia seicentesca," in
Francesco Passadore and Franco Rossi (eds.), Musica, scienza e idee nella Serenissima durante il
Seicento. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia-Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, 13-15
Dicembre 1993 (Venice, 1996), 63-77, and "Towards a Theory of Musical Patronage in the Re-
naissance and Baroque: The Perspective from Anthropology and Semiotics," Recercare, X
(1998), 173-182. On Santurini, see Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 391-392. On
the Teatro S. Angelo, see Mancini, Muraro, and Povoledo, I Teatri del Veneto, 3-62.
32 Twenty years before his relocation to Parma, Aureli had written the version of Eliogabalo
performed at the Jesuit College to honor the baptism of Ranuccio II Farnese's son. A list of
Aureli's librettos can be gathered by consulting Sartori, I libretti italiani.

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