‘In Love's harmonious consort’? Penelope and the interpretation of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria

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.