Hercules in love: Antonia Bembo and Ars Minerva

Ars Minerva founder, Executive Artistic Director and stage director Céline Ricci. Photo: Martin Lacey Photography. Image source: sfgate.com

For each year of the past decade (excepting the shutdown year of 2020), the visionary artistic director Céline Ricci of Ars Minerva has produced and directed the fully-staged modern première of a Baroque opera unperformed for centuries. All have featured powerful women from history or myth. The operas have centered on goddesses, sorceresses, Amazons, empresses, queens, princesses, and noblewomen, and featured roles taken by great singers from the past, such as the first Black diva Vittoria Tesi. For its eagerly-awaited tenth production this year, for the first time Ars Minerva staged an opera not only focused on women, but composed by one: Antonia Bembo.

The only child of a Venetian doctor, Antonia trained as a singer and composer with Francesco Cavalli, a former chorister and student of Claudio Monteverdi, and the most important Italian opera composer in the years after Monteverdi's death. Antonia was also associated with the guitarist Francesco Corbetta; a 1654 letter from the Mantuan envoy in Venice speculates that the 14-year-old Antonia is to be married to him.

But five years later, she was married instead to the nobleman Lorenzo Bembo. Her marriage probably brought an end to her studies with Cavalli, but if not, they would have ceased on his departure the following year for the court of the young Louis XIV to stage his wedding opera, Ercole amante (Hercules in love). Cavalli did not return to Venice until 1662, bitter over the difficulties that had delayed the production of his opera at the highly factionalized French court. It's not known whether Antonia was able to resume her studies with him after his return.

Francesco Corbetta. Image source: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library.

Antonia's marriage was an unhappy one. After giving birth to three children, in 1672 Antonia filed for divorce on the grounds of her husband's unfaithfulness, profligacy, and physical abuse. These were evidently not sufficient reasons to grant a wife a divorce: Antonia lost the case. She did not finally escape Lorenzo until 1677, when she fled Venice with Corbetta and traveled with him (but without her children) to Paris.

There she began singing and composing again, performing for Louis XIV and being granted a pension that enabled her to live in the convent of the Filles de Saint Chaumont. For the rest of her long life she continued to compose. She lived to be around 80 years old, dying about 1720. Six manuscript volumes of her compositions are now held in the Bibliothéque National de France, and include Italian arias, cantatas, and serenatas, Latin masses, and French airs, petit and grand motets. Antonia composed a single opera: Ercole amante.

Title page of the manuscript score of Antonia Bembo's L'Ercole amante (1707). Image source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

Dated 1707 (Antonia would have been in her late 60s), Ercole amante is a setting of the very same libretto by Francesco Buti that Cavalli had set nearly five decades previously for the royal wedding. Although Antonia incorporates elements of French opera such as choruses and dances, and the vocal types are typical of French opera (no roles for castrati), the libretto is in Italian. The musical and dramatic forms are also those of Italian opera of the 17th century, and would have been considered somewhat old-fashioned by 1707. The arias are generally short, don't have repeating sections, and flow out of and back into the arioso recitative. The libretto pulls out all the Baroque stops: it includes a sleep scene, a descent to the underworld, a tempest, and dei ex machina. In addition to goddesses, demigods and princesses, the characters include a comic page; the developing conventions of Italian opera seria would soon banish comic characters to the emerging genre of opera buffa.

The story is a curious one for a wedding opera, since the onstage wedding proves fatal to the (anti)hero. The backstory is that Ercole (Hercules) has fallen in love with Iole, the daughter of King Eutiro (Eurytus). The king had promised Iole's hand in marriage to the man who could best his sons in an archery competition. Ercole won the contest, but when he attempted to claim his prize the king reneged on his promise. The enraged Ercole killed the king, together with his sons, and abducted Iole.

Hercules abducting Iole, relief ca. second century CE, Archaeological Museum of Piraeus, Greece. Image source: David Stanley (flickr.com) CC-BY 2.0

As the opera begins we learn that Iole was and remains in love with Ercole's son Hyllo (Hyllus), and he with her, but both are powerless to defy Ercole. And at home Ercole already has a wife, Deianira (Dejanira). Ercole's plan to break his vows to Deianira outrages the goddess of marriage, Giunone (Juno), who was already angered because Ercole was born of her husband Jove's adultery with a mortal woman. Giunone is opposed by Venere (Venus), who uses her powers to further Ercole's desires.

Ercole banishes Hyllo and prepares to marry Iole. Iole is repelled by the thought of marrying her father's murderer, while both Deianira and Hyllo despair. Deianira asks her servant Licco (Lichas) to help her die, but he refuses. Hyllo throws himself from his prison tower into the sea, only to be rescued by Neptune at Juno's urging. It seems that both characters will be forced to live to witness their beloveds marry one another.

Iole visits the tomb of her father to try to win the acceptance by his spirit of her imminent marriage to his killer. When she learns of Hyllo's apparent death, Iole also contemplates suicide. But then Licco reminds Deianira that when the centaur Nessus tried to carry her off, Ercole shot him with an arrow that had been dipped in the poisonous blood of the Hydra (the slaying of the Hydra was the second of his Twelve Labors). As Nessus lay dying, he gave Deianira a cloak soaked with his blood, telling her that if Ercole wore it, it would ensure that he would never be unfaithful. Iole and Deianira give the robe to Ercole at the temple just before the marriage ceremony. But to the stunned horror of the onlookers, when Ercole dons the robe the poisoned blood of Nessus burns him and he dies in agony. Juno, her anger against Ercole finally placated, grants him immortality.

The occasion for which Antonia's opera was composed is not known, and it was probably never performed; Italian opera had not been staged at the French court for several decades. In addition, operas composed by women were a rarity then (and now): works by Francesca Caccini, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and Maria Teresa Agnesi are known, the last probably also never staged. However, Antonia may have been drawn to a personal parallel with Iole's plight: both were forcibly parted from the men they loved and compelled to undergo marriage to more powerful and violent men they didn't. And both ultimately escaped and were reunited with their first loves.

Ars Minerva's production of Ercole amante (seen November 16 at ODC Theater in San Francisco) was one of its most accomplished yet. As Ercole, Zachary Gordin possessed both the strong baritone and impressive physique required by the role; Ercole's bare-chested preening at the opening of the opera told us all we needed to know about the character's self-regard.

Zachary Gordin as Ercole in Ars Minerva's production of Antonia Bembo's Ercole amante. Photo credit: Valentina Sadiul. Image source: Ars Minerva

Aura Veruni's thrilling coloratura as the fierce Giunone provided a lightning-like jolt of energy from her first entrance, a descent from the heavens in costume designer Marina Polakoff's lit-from-within thundercloud dress. It was one of Polakoff's many spectacular creations for this production.

Aura Veruni as Giunone. Photo credit: Valentina Sadiul. Image source: Ars Minerva

Mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich movingly portrayed Deianira's emotional fluctuations between jealousy and despair.

Kindra Scharich as Deianira. Photo credit: Valentina Sadiul. Image source: Ars Minerva

In her Ars Minerva debut soprano Lila Khazoum convincingly portrayed Iole's anguish, while as Hyllo tenor Maxwell Ary (seen previously with Ars Minerva in last year's La Flora) coped well with the high tessitura of his role.

Maxwell Ary as Hyllo and Lila Khazoum as Iole. Photo credit: Valentina Sadiul. Image source: Ars Minerva

Baritone Nick Volkert ably distinguished the characters of Sonno (Somnus), Mercurio (Mercury), and Nettuno (Neptune); he was especially effective as the enraged spirit of Eutiro summoning the restless ghosts of Ercole's victims to wreak revenge.

Nick Volkert as the spirit of Eutiro. Photo credit: Valentina Sadiul. Image source: Ars Minerva

Melissa Sondhi's alluring voice and person were perfect for the love-goddess Venere; she also portrayed Sonno's wife Pasithea.

Melissa Sondhi as Venere. Photo credit: Valentina Sadiul. Image source: Ars Minerva

As Licco, mezzo-soprano Nina Jones was highly convincing; it's no wonder that this singer has made trouser roles something of a specialty. And as the comic Paggio (Page), rich-voiced contralto Sara Couden elicited laughter even as her character was being swept away by raging sea.

Sara Couden as Paggio and Nina Jones as Licco. Photo credit: Valentina Sadiul. Image source: Ars Minerva

Speaking of that raging sea, it was wonderfully depicted by Entropy's projections, which brilliantly set every scene from the heavens to Hades. Her projections have always been a striking and highly effective feature of Ars Minerva's productions, and she surpassed herself in her work for Ercole amante.

The tomb of Eutiro. Image credit: Entropy. Image source: San Francisco Classical Voice

Ricci's assured direction deftly blended the opera's comic and tragic elements, and included many telling dramatic touches. As an example, Juno's lightning-bolt hairpin doubles as a dagger that she gives to Iole when urging her to stab the sleeping Ercole. (Hyllo bursts in and prevents Iole from carrying out Juno's plan, disarming her. But when Ercole awakes and sees Hyllo standing over him holding the dagger, he thinks his son is his intended assassin rather than his rescuer.)

Conductor and harpsichordist Matthew Dirst, together with concertmaster Cynthia Keiko Black (who also portrayed Antonia in a pre-curtain sequence) ably led the six additional musicians of the onstage period-instrument ensemble through the constantly shifting score.

Once again, Ars Minerva has pioneered the revival of a forgotten Baroque opera and proved it to be highly stageworthy when approached with creativity, flair and respect. For a taste of the production, see News Up Now's Gleidson Martins' preview, including rehearsal scenes and interviews with Ricci, Polakoff, Dirst, and translator Joe McClinton (who also has a fascinating essay in the program about creating the supertitles):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOEX1bRso6o

Biographical information in this post was drawn principally from Dr. Paul V. Miller's program notes for Ercole amante, and from Laury Gutiérrez's essay "Antonia Bembo: The Resistant Exile." Gutiérrez is a gambist and founding director of La Donna Musicale, a group devoted to early music by women composers. There are surely more discoveries awaiting in the archives, and we are fortunate that artists like Ricci and Gutiérrez are dedicated to giving them new life. I'm eager to see what Ricci and Ars Minerva will do next; future plans will be announced on the Ars Minerva website.