“Una lingua sciolta” Listening to the voice of Anna Renzi 1

Abstract

Anna Renzi is best known as the first Ottavia in Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. An unconventional protagonist in an unconventional opera, Ottavia is anomalous both dramatically and musically. The discrepancy between the style and scope of Ottavia's role and Anna Renzi's reputation was central to Magnus Schneider's hypothesis that Anna Renzi also sang the role of Drusilla. Over the past two decades studies of seventeenth-century female singers have revealed how their public and private lives were shaped by early modern notions about gender, in particular lingering Galenic notions about female bodies and Aristotelian concepts of male and female virtue. The reports on La Deidamia likewise focus on dissimulation—in this instance Renzi's ability to transform herself from an unhappy queen who laments in private to the male character Ergindo, who attracts female lovers.