The promoters of early Venetian opera (mostly musicians rather than entrepreneurs) soon discovered the universal truth that the genre is a hugely expensive form of theatre, particularly when enormous sums are being expended on singers and sumptuous scenic effects. Something had to give and what gave were the chorus and the number of instrumentalists. The chorus came to play an increasingly restricted role until it virtually disappeared altogether, a development that would last in Italian opera until the very end of the Baroque. While the number of instrumentalists remains a matter of debate, most authorities (if apparently not some contemporary music directors!) agree that the forces employed in Venetian theatres were small, restricted to what has been calculated on average to four violins, two violas, two stringed bass instruments (whose function was to play in ritornellos and separate instrumental numbers) and a continuo group consisting of pairs of arch lutes and harpsichords to support the singer. Trumpets (battles or ceremonial scenes) and flutes (in, for example, pastoral scenes) would be added to provide special colour at isolated moments. To a far greater degree than was the case with the lavishly scored Renaissance intermedii and first operas, the small instrumental ensemble became closely integrated with the singers, often providing imitative ritornelli.

Those familiar with the operas Monteverdi composed (and we must not forget there was a third, the lost Le nozze d’Enea in Lavinia of 1641) during his astonishingly productive old age will recognise many of the characteristics outlined above. Just how much of the music we now associate with them was Monteverdi’s own is a matter for conjecture. Inconsistencies in the surviving sources have led commentators to suggest that others had at least some hand in them (the famous duet that ends Poppea is but one example), yet so much more profoundly do they examine the human state than other Venetian operas of the period that is difficult to believe they are not substantially the work of Monteverdi himself. All three probably received their premiere at the SS Giovanni e Paolo theatre, although some doubt remains as to whether or not it was the venue for the first, Il ritorno (1640).

As has been frequently observed, Il ritorno and Poppea (1643) take up almost diametrically opposed philosophical viewpoints. In her resistance of the suitors who would usurp her husband’s kingdom during a long absence from which he may never return, Penelope is as much a symbol of conjugal love as Beethoven’s Leonora and her ultimate reunion with Ulysses represents a triumph for morality. In contrast, Poppea is scheming and minx-like, a woman on the make who will stop at nothing in her desire to gain power by means of her seduction of the impressionable Nero. That by the end of the opera she has succeeded and the pair are able to celebrate sensuality in the famous final duet still appears somewhat shocking even by today’s standards. Yet it is a measure of Monteverdi’s deep humanity that the cynical amorality that pervades Poppea is offset by the dignity of Seneca and the profoundly sympathetic portrayal of Nero’s wife, Ottavia, a great tragic figure whose Act III lament “Addio Roma” is the most moving scene in the opera. No such ambiguity attaches to Il ritorno, which is content to lead us through an unfolding epic drama in which we know that Ulysses will overcome the machinations of the suitors, themselves ultimately reduced to ridiculous figures in the great scene of the stringing of Ulysses powerful bow.