Abstract
Nerone (Nero), one of the operas by Arrigo Boito (Padua, 1842—Milan, 1918), the Italian librettist (he collaborated with Giuseppe Verdi), was premièred posthumously in 1924. Boito had both written and set to music two operas: Mefistofele and Nerone. Simon Magus features prominently in the opera Nerone. Boito ascribes to Simon Magus in his lifetime a shrine in Rome (where Nero discovers he is being duped), and one comes across the ascription of Valentinian doctrines to Simon Magus’ chorus in Nerone. Of course, conflating the Valentinians with Simon Magus is historically incorrect. Simon’s flight is because Nero has him thrown in the arena, after Simon’s was instrumental in Nero’s subjecting Christians to martyrdom. Nero gives order that Simon Magus be made to fly like Icarus. The German guards pull Simon Magus towards a wooden ladder. The crowd, along with Gobrias (Simon Magus’ former pupil) and Tigellinus, laugh and taunt Simon Magus: “Vola, /Se sai volar! Icaro, vola!” (“Fly, /If you know how to fly. Icarus, fly!”). It was usual for ones being executed in the Roman arenas to be stripped of their dignity, by being made to impersonate some mythical character. A condemned man made to impersonate Daedalus in the arena in Flavian times was described in Martial’s attributed Liber spectaculorum. Boito was probably inspired, for his reinterpretation of Simon Magus’ death, by the executed man made to impersonate Icarus in Nero’s times, according to Suetonius.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Italian Iram refers to Hiram, King of Tyre. He collaborated with King Solomon. In the Book of Ezekiel, there is an invective against Tyre, and rabbinic tradition considered this directed against the same Hiram, endowed with exceptional longevity, as this requires him to have been alive (longevity he had obtained as reward) even as the Babylonians destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem, built by Solomon with the help of Hiram. See, in the previous chapter (Chap. 2) in this book, Sect. 5.2, which begins on p. 149.
- 3.
The Lombard composer Cesare Dominiceti or Dominicetti was born in “Desenzano [on the southern shore of Lake Garda], July 12, 1821; d[ied in] Sesto di Monza [now Sesto San Giovanni, now administratively part of the metropolitan area surrounding Milan], June 20, 1888. He studied in Milan, where all his operas were brought out. He lived for a long time in Bolivia, where he made a fortune. In 1881 he was appointed prof[essor] of composition at the Milan Cons[ervatory]. He wrote the operas Due mogli in una (June 30, 1853), La maschera (March 2, 1854), Morovico (Dec. 4, 1873), II lago delle fate (May 18, 1878), and L’Ereditiera (Feb. 14, 1881)” (Slonimsky et al. 1900).
Cesare Dominicetti or Dominiceti was a composer of operas, either serious or comic, and an appreciated melodist, orchestrator, and harmonist, but eventually he was not able to compete with Giuseppe Verdi, or to keep abreast with how the public’s taste had been shaped by Verdi. Unlike Boito, Dominicetti was not influenced by Richard Wagner. His exiling himself during 18 years in Bolivia did not improve his prospects, and upon his return to Italy, he was even less at ease with having to compete as a composer, but his leaving for South America was itself under the impact of his relative lack of success in Italy. Even in Bolivia, he had to turn away from music, even though he had arrived there as a musician, and he had to work in the tin mines, and in that job, he made a fortune. From 1881, he was professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory where he had studied, and in that role he was appreciated by colleagues, and especially by the director of the Conservatory. Dominicetti’s pupils in Milan included, among others, a pupil from Brazil: the composer José Lino de Almeida Fleming (1840–1888)—see on him Silveira (2009)—who was to become a prominent exponent of Brazilian Romanticism (Volpe 1994). Silveira depends upon Volpe for de Almeida Fleming’s relation to Dominiceti [sic] in Milan and for Dominiceti’s period in Bolivia.
“Deluso profondamente dal fallimento del suo secondo lavoro teatrale, [Dominiceti or Dominicetti] abbandonò le scene per un lungo periodo. Solo nel 1853 mise in scena a Milano, ai Filodrammatici, l’opera Due mogli in una, che ottenne un discreto successo di pubblico e di critica; incoraggiato, scrisse l’opera La maschera, che allestita al teatro alla Scala di Milano nel 1854, ottenne solo un parziale successo. Successivamente, forse per le delusioni subite. partì per l’America del Sud come maestro concertatore di una compagnia di canto ma, abbandonato dall’impresario in Bolivia, fu costretto a lavorare in una miniera di stagno, il che gli consentì di accumulare una discreta fortuna e di far così ritorno in Italia” (Ricci 1991) [“Deeply disappointed by the failure of his second play, he abandoned the scenes for a long time. Only in 1853 he staged in Milan, at the theatre of the Filodrammatici, the opera Due mogli in una, which obtained a moderate success with the public and critics; encouraged, he wrote the opera La maschera, which was staged at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1854, and was only partially successful. Subsequently, perhaps because of the disappointments suffered. he left for South America as a concertmaster of a singing company but, abandoned by the impresario in Bolivia, he was forced to work in a tin mine, which allowed him to accumulate a fair fortune and thus return to Italy”].
- 4.
“Di una sua opera, Iram, su libretto di A. Boito, si è a lungo favoleggiato: è infatti noto che il D[ominiceti] non compose mai quest’opera, anche se sul Catalogo Ricordi del 1875 la partitura autografa risulta presente negli archivi della casa editrice milanese” (Ricci 1991) [“One of his operas, Iram, on a libretto by A. Boito, has long been fabled about: it is in fact known that D. never composed this opera, even if in the Ricordi Catalogue of 1875 the autograph score is present in the archives of that Milan publishing house”].
It has been an unfounded claim that Dominicetti was to some extent a collaborator of Boito in setting to music the opera Mephistopheles: “Riconosciuto armonista poderoso e ricco di fantasia [...] fu considerato anche un brillante orchestratore (il che dette origine alla diceria, peraltro infondata, che egli avesse aiutato l’amico Arrigo Boito nell’orchestrazione del Mefistofele [...]” (Ricci 1991) [“Recognized as a powerful and imaginative harmonist [...] he [Dominiceti or Dominicetti] was also considered a brilliant orchestrator (which gave rise to the rumour, however unfounded, that he had helped his friend Arrigo Boito in the orchestration of Mephistopheles [...]”].
- 5.
Masonic influence in operas was rather conspicuous already in the eighteenth century (Tocchini 2006, 2014, cf. 2000), and Chiara Tommasi Moreschini (2015) discusses this in the context of an analysis of Mozart’s Zauberflöte, an opera whose setting is Egyptian, the claimed mysteric ideology being Isiac, of the worship of Isis. Gerardo Tocchini (2004) is concerned with ancient religion and mysteries as represented in Enlightenment-age Italy.
Also see the book Mozart and Masonry by Paul Nettle (b. 1889, d. 1972), a book that first appeared in German in 1956 and then in English in 1957. Mozart’s Magic Flute as being a Masonic opera was the subject of an article by Istel and Baker (1927) and of a book by Jacques Chailley (b. 1910, d. 1999), whose English translation was first published in Chailley 1972. The French original was published in 1968, and an augmented edition appeared in 1983.
- 6.
Also note: “In point of fact, there was considerable development within the Gnostic movement, and it is by no means certain that all the ideas attributed to some of the early leaders were actually held by them. Thus Cerfaux finds traces of Valentinian and Basilidian influence in the theories ascribed to Simon Magus. The later members of Simon’s sect have simply attributed to their master ideas actually borrowed from other sources for the development of their system” (Wilson 1957, p. 22).
- 7.
Paul Kalligas writes (2000, p. 116): “The arrival in Rome of the heresiarch Valentinus, around the year 140, and his stay there for more than two decades, when he was nearly appointed to the Episcopal see of the city, but was eventually outvoted by a colleague with stronger credentials as a martyr, symbolizes, one might say, the beginning of a process of crystallization of this theosophical movement into a more or less philosophically structured theological system, based on Platonic and Pythagorean principles. Valentinus himself is commonly described in our sources as a Platonist, […].”
- 8.
Both Valentinus and Basilides reportedly came from Alexandria.
- 9.
As Alberto Ferreiro (2003, p. 55) has pointed out concerning Nicolas of Antioch, “Irenaeus was the same originating source for the tradition about Nicolas of Antioch. Irenaeus presented Nicolas as one of several heretical ‘successors’ of Simon Magus. In the tradition, as it unfolded beyond Irenaeus, Nicolas’s central error was not doctrinal as such, sexual immorality. Irenaeus linked Nicolas, one of the alleged seven deacons consecrated at Jerusalem by the Apostles, with the sect Nicolaitans that was flourishing in the second century. Irenaeus, furthermore, believed this was the same Nicolas and his sect that Apostle John censured in the Apocalypse.”
- 10.
By mingling with the orthodox, thus being more insidious than out and out Gnostics.
- 11.
Cf., e.g., Orbe (1953)—based on Irenaeus—and Visser (1958), Quispel (1974), and Wilson (1980). Also see Edwards (1995) and, on Valentinian influence on Christianity, Leeper (1990). There even is a typological co-occurrence, or perhaps, if we look for origination, a correlation, between a Valentinian idea and Manichaeism: “Mani was said to have a counterpart in the celestial realm, a twin, (Syr[iac], at-Taum) a pneumatic-divine entity who was both his protecting agency and his alter ego. In the Manichaean Codex of Cologne, a Greek biographical text, the term suzugos (“he who is bound in marriage”) is substituted for twin. This is reminiscent of the fact that in Valentinian Gnosticism the soul of the Gnostic was conceived of as feminine, destined to marry her divine counterpart, her angel. In Mani’s case, the terms twin and husband both point to a relationship that implies the Gnostic notion of the perfect consubstantiality of the celestial element and its counterpart active in the terrestrial realm. The terrestrial element waits to be reunited with the celestial element, the pneumatic self. At the same time, the heavenly twin and the angelic husband are an expression of transcendence in relation to whatever lives in the terrestrial realm” (Bianchi 2005, p. 9413).
- 12.
At http://musicologia.unipv.it/collezionidigitali/ghisi/pdf/ghisi165.pdf one can find a PDF scanned version of Boito’s libretto of Nerone: tragedia in Quattro atti, as printed in 1926 by Ricordi in Milan, from a copy (no. 165) on hold at the Fondo Ghisi of the Facoltà di Musicologia of the Università di Pavia. (1924 was the year of both the opera’s première, and Ricordi’s copyright.)
- 13.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerone_(Boito) explains, concerning this opera: “It was eventually premiered posthumously at La Scala on May 1, 1924, conducted by Arturo Toscanini in a version of the score completed by Toscanini, Vincenzo Tommasini, and Antonio Smareglia. The role of Nero was first performed by Aureliano Pertile. The role of Asteria, a young woman torn between her love for Nero and her Christian sympathies, was created by Rosa Raisa. ¶ The opera was very well received at its premiere, and the newly rebuilt Rome Opera House inaugurated its first season with Nerone in 1928. However, it has only been rarely performed since that time, even in Italy. It did not receive its US premiere until April 12, 1982, when it was performed in a concert version by the Opera Orchestra of New York in Carnegie Hall.” The 1924 première was very well received, and yet, that opera was subsequently quite rarely performed.
- 14.
Whereas the English-language Wikipedia page for Boito’s Nerone does not include a précis, a detailed précis in Swedish is found at the Swedish-language version of that Wikipedia page, and I had http://imtranslator.net/translation/swedish/to-english/translation/ automatically translate it, paragraph by paragraph, and then I reworded the output. At the Italian-language version of the Wikipedia page—at https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerone_(Boito)—the précis of the opera’s acts is formulated differently.
Note in particular the précis of Act I (set on a major road: the Via Appia), according to that Italian webpage (my translation follows the original):
È notte, e nella Via Appia risuonano i canti dei viandanti (Canto d’amor). Nerone, spaventato, dice al fido Tigellino di aver scorto una Erinni, una delle terribile divinità vendicatrici, che lo tormentava per il matricidio. Tigellino lo rassicura, e lo esorta a compiere il rito con Simon Mago per placare i Mani della madre Agrippina. Durante il rito riappare nuovamente l’Erinni, e Nerone scappa spaventato. Simon Mago chiede quale sia la sua vera identità: è Asteria, una giovane innamorata di Nerone (È il mio nume!). Il mago pensa di utilizzare la ragazza per poter assecondare l’imperatore.
Sulla via, intanto, compare Rubria, una cristiana, che sta pregando Dio (Padre Nostro). Viene raggiunta da Fanuél, il capo dei cristiani, che la invita ad andarsene, dato che si sta avvicinando il Grande Nemico, Simon Mago. Il mago appare, ed esorta Fanuél a cedergli i suoi miracoli in cambio dell’oro. Il cristiano rifiuta, ed i due si allontanano, infuriati.
Frattanto, Nerone viene a sapere da Tigellino che il popolo sta venendo verso di lui. L’imperatore teme per la sua vita, ma scopre che il Popolo vuole portarlo in trionfo verso Roma (Fortuna a fronte!).
[It is night. On the Via Appia, the songs of travellers resound (Song of love). Nero is scared, and tells his trusted Tigellinus that he saw one of the Erinyes (i.e., the Furies), one of terrible avenging deities, and she was tormenting him because of his murder of his mother. Tigellinus reassures him, and exhorts him to carry out, with Simon Magus, the rite in order to placate the Manes of his mother, Agrippina. During the rite, the Erinys reappears, and Nero, scared, flees. Simon Magus asks about her true identity: she is Asteria, a young woman enamoured of Nero (He is my numen!). The magus thinks he could use that maiden in order to satisfy the Emperor.
Meanwhile, on the road Rubria, a Christian woman, appears; she is praying (Our Father). She is reached by Fanuèl, the Christians’ leader. He urges her to go away, as the Great Enemy, Simon Magus, is approaching. The magus appears, and urges Fanuèl to give him his miracles, which he would pay for in gold. The Christian refuses, and the two men go away, furious at each other.
Meanwhile, Nero is informed by Tigellinus that the people is approaching towards him. The Emperor is afraid for his life, was then realises that the People wants to carry him in triumph to Rome (Fortune ahead!).]
- 15.
The précis of Act II as given in https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerone_(Boito) is as follows, after the indication of the setting, this being in Simon Magus’ temple:
Mentre si svolgono i riti nel tempio (Stupor! Portento!) Simon Mago escogita con i suoi fedeli di piegare Nerone al suo potere. Apparso l’imperatore nel tempio, gli ordina di andare all’altare (Su quell’altare), e fa apparire Asteria in vesti di dea. L’imperatore ne è estasiato (Ecco, la Dea si china), ma si rende conto subito che è un inganno, vista la reazione “umana” della finta dea, che lo bacia. Allora fa arrestare Simon Mago e ordina che Asteria sia gettata nella fossa delle serpi. Presa poi la cetra si siede sull’altare, come Apollo, e inizia a suonare.
[While the rites are celebrated inside the temple (Amazing! A miracle!), Simon Magus plots with his faithful how he would reduce Nero into his power. The Emperor appears in the temple, and Simon Magus orders him to go to the altar (On that altar), and has Asteria appear, dressed as a goddess. The Emperor is ecstatic (Lo! The Goddess bends down), but he realises right away he is being deceived, upon seeing the “human” response of the fake goddess, who kisses him. He then has Simon Magus arrested, and orders that Asteria be thrown into the snakes den. He then picks up the lyre, sits on the altar, as though he was Apollo, and he begins to play the instrument].
- 16.
“Simon Mago guida i soldati romani sino a loro, e Fanuel viene arrestato. Il cristiano chiede ai fratelli di pregare per lui (Cantate a Dio)” [“Simon Magus leads the Roman soldiers to them [the Christians], and Fanuèl is arrested. The Christian asks his coreligionists to pray for him (Sing to God)”] (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerone_(Boito)).
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
As Gatti explains (1924, p. 611): “And Fanuèl, in a song like a lullaby, summons up a picture of distant Galilee and the sermon of the Nazarene. ‘Ancora, ancora!’ [‘Encore, encore!’] murmurs Rubria, expiring in the caress of the melody. Asteria looks around; no hope of escape through the Circus—but yonder is a door; they can save themselves. And Fanuèl, crossing the threshold, utters a last farewell: ‘Rubria, addio!’ [‘Rubria, goodbye!’] For Asteria this name is a revelation: was this the virgin whom Nero outraged? Alone in the hideous Spolarium [recte: Spoliarium], amid the crashing vaults and the onrushing flames, Asteria interrogates the corpse of Rubria, clutching it: ‘Dimmi l’ardor del suo bacio vorace!’ [‘Describe to me the ardour of his voracious kiss!’] Then, seized by sudden pity, she kneels with the threefold invocation: ‘Pace!’ [‘Peace!’] While the vault crumbles, Asteria makes her escape, and the orchestra breaks out vivacissimo in a short cadence of fullest sonority.”
- 20.
- 21.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresteia explains: “The Oresteia (Ancient Greek: Ὀρέστεια) is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BC, concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and pacification of the Erinyes. The trilogy—consisting of Agamemnon (Ἀγαμέμνων), The Libation Bearers (Χοηφóρoι), and The Eumenides (Εὐμενίδες)—also shows how the Greek gods interacted with the characters and influenced their decisions pertaining to events and disputes. The only extant example of an ancient Greek theatre trilogy, the Oresteia won first prize at the Dionysia festival in 458 BC.” The précis of the second tragedy is as follows (ibid.): “In The Libation Bearers (Χοηφóρoι, Choēphóroi)—the second play of Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy—many years after the murder of Agamemnon, his son Orestes returns to Argos with his cousin Pylades to exact vengeance on Clytaemnestra, as an order from Apollo, for killing Agamemnon. Upon arriving, Orestes reunites with his sister Electra at Agamemnon’s grave, while she was there bringing libations to Agamemnon in an attempt to stop Clytemnestra’s bad dreams. Shortly after the reunion, both Orestes and Electra, influenced by the Chorus, come up with a plan to kill both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. ¶ Orestes then heads to the palace door where he is unexpectedly greeted by Clytemnestra. In his response to her he pretends he is a stranger and tells Clytemnestra that he (Orestes) is dead, causing her to send for Aegisthus. Unrecognized, Orestes is then able to enter the palace where he then kills Aegisthus, who was without a guard due to the intervention of the Chorus in relaying Clytemnestra’s message. Clytemnestra then enters the room. Orestes hesitates to kill her, but Pylades reminds him of Apollo’s orders, and he eventually follows through. Consequently, after committing the matricide, Orestes is now the target of the Furies’ merciless wrath and has no choice but to flee from the palace.”
As for the third tragedy (ibid.): “The final play of the Oresteia, called The Eumenides (Εὐμενίδες, Eumenídes), illustrates how the sequence of events in the trilogy end up in the development of social order or a proper judicial system in Athenian society. In this play, Orestes is hunted down and tormented by the Furies, a trio of goddesses known to be the instruments of justice, who are also euphemistically referred to as the ‘Gracious Ones’ (Eumenides). They relentlessly pursue Orestes for the killing of his mother. However, through the intervention of Apollo, Orestes is able to escape them for a brief moment while they are asleep and head to Athens under the protection of Hermes. Seeing the Furies asleep, Clytemnestra’s ghost comes to wake them up to obtain justice on her son Orestes for killing her. ¶ After waking up, the Furies hunt down Orestes again and when they find him, Orestes pleads to the goddess Athena for help and she responds by setting up a trial for him in Athens on the Areopagus. This trial is made up of a group of twelve Athenian citizens and is supervised by none other than Athena herself. Here Orestes is used as a trial dummy by Athena to set-up the first courtroom trial. He is also the object of central focus between the Furies, Apollo, and Athena. After the trial comes to an end, the votes are tied. Athena casts the deciding vote and determines that Orestes will not be killed. This ultimately does not sit well with the Furies, but Athena eventually persuades them to accept the decision and, instead of violently retaliating against wrongdoers, become a constructive force of vigilance in Athens. She then changes their names from the Furies to ‘the Eumenides’ which means ‘the Kindly Ones’. Athena then ultimately rules that all trials must henceforth be settled in court rather than being carried out personally.”
- 22.
After describing how the opera ends, Gatti explained (1924, p. 612): “Here ends the musical work; but the tragedy continues through a fifth act, of which we shall give our readers a brief summary. In his theatre Nero is banqueting with his courtiers late at night, while the fire still rages. After the banquet and lascivious dances, Nero, with the grandly terrible background of burning Rome, begins to recite the Eumenides of Æschylus, assuming the rôle of Orestes. At first he faithfully follows the Greek text; but when the Chorus breaks in with the cry ‘Matricide!’ delirium seizes him. In the arch of the portal appears the spectre of Agrippina. This falls in with the delirious ravings of Nero, and the action fluctuates between an interpretation of the Æschylean tragedy and the one actually visualized by the emperor. And now are heard lugubrious voices announcing the destruction of the world; we witness the slow development of a new Apocalypse; the figures of the mosaics take on life. Nero, in a voluptuous agony, clasps Asteria; she yields ecstatically—then stabs herself with a small dagger. The flames reach the walls of the imperial theatre, and they crash in; through the breach are seen the lights of the gardens and the Christians who are burning, bound to the stake. And Nero falls in a swoon, amid celestial harmonies and the vengeful maledictions of the spectres.”
- 23.
“These women are to personate the mythical fate of Dirce, bound to a bull and riddled with arrows; for Fanuèl the torture of Laureolus is planned” (Gatti 1924, p. 610). “Dirce, wife of Lycus, was bound to the horns of a bull and dragged to death. This form of torture, on a grand scale, was a favorite spectacle of the Roman populace” (ibid., fn. 1).
- 24.
“Rubria appears, garbed as a Vestal (the presence of whom, according the law, acts to liberate the victims); but her identity is discovered by Simon Mago, who tears the infula [i.e., the veil] from her head; then, by Nero’s order, she is placed among the other Christian women awaiting the sacrifice” (Gatti 1924, p. 610).
- 25.
The chorus director of the première of Boito’s Nerone was Vittore Veneziani (Ferrara, 1878–1858), who in 1921 had been made by Toscanini to come to La Scala, where he was the chorus director until the racial laws of 1938; afterwards he directed the chorus of the central synagogue of Via Guastalla in Milan (in a different period, he did the same for the synagogue of Ferrara). In February 1944 he fled to Switzerland. After his return to Milan in July 1945, he resumed his job at La Scala, which he retained until his retirement in October 1954. Vittore Veneziani is considered to have been Italy’s most prominent chorus director of the interwar period (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittore_Veneziani). See the obituary for Vittore Veneziani by Guido Lopez (1958).
- 26.
According to Section “Discografia” in https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerone_(Boito).
- 27.
- 28.
Ghinassi defined the verb indiarsi as “assimilarsi a Dio” (i.e., “to become assimilated to God”).
- 29.
Ghinassi defined the verb infuturarsi as “prolungarsi nel futuro” (i.e., “to prolong oneself in the future”).
- 30.
Ghinassi (1970) defined imparadisare as “innalzare a gioie paradisiache” (i.e., “to raise to heavenly joys”).
- 31.
Ghinassi (1970) defined inzaffirarsi as “ingemmarsi” (“to wear precious stones,” “to wear gems”), “adornarsi luminosamente come di zaffiri” (“to ornament oneself with light as though of sapphires”). The subject is the sky (“il bel zaffiro / del quale il ciel più chiaro s’inzaffira”).
- 32.
Ghinassi (1970) also listed inurbarsi “to enter the city” (Purgatorio 26.69); imborgarsi “to become replete with boroughs (neighbourhoods),” the subject being a city (Paradiso 8.61); indracarsi “to become as ferocious and violent as a dragon” or “to behave as ferociously and violently as a dragon” (Paradiso 16.115); inventrarsi “to stay in the belly, i.e., in the innermost place” (Paradiso 21.84); and inlibrare “to balance” (Paradiso 29.4), admittedly not an exhaustive list.
Ghinassi (1970) also listed verbs that Dante coined out of numerals: incinquarsi “ripetersi per cinque volte” (“to be repeated five times”) (Paradiso 9.40); intrearsi “congiungersi come terzo” (“to join as a third one”) (Paradiso 13.57), XIII 57; inmillarsi “moltiplicarsi in più migliaia” (“to be multiplied into thousands”) (Paradiso 28.93); internarsi “farsi terno” (“to become a threesome”); and “comporsi di tre” (“to be constituted of three elements”) (Paradiso 28,120).
Next, Ghinassi (1970) listed verbs that Dante coined out of adverbs: insemprarsi “durare per sempre” (“one’s duration to be forever”) (Paradiso 10.148), insusarsi “risiedere in su, in alto” (“to reside above”) (Paradiso 17.13), inforsarsi “essere in forse” and “risultare dubbio” (“to be dubious”) (Paradiso 24.87: Dante combines this with a negation: “nulla mi s’inforsa,” “nothing is doubtful for me in it”), immegliarsi “diventare migliore” (“to become better,” “to improve”) (Paradiso 30.87), and indovarsi “trovar luogo” (“to be situated”) (Paradiso 33.138). Next, Ghinassi (1970) listed Dante’s verbs coined out of personal or possessive pronouns.
Concerning the verb insusarsi “to reside above” (Paradiso 17.13), consider that suso is an old form of su “above” in Italian. There are two tableaux from Italian literary history I would like to mention in this connection. Alessandro Tassoni, famous for his mock-epic extolling Modena, his city, also inaugurated the seventeenth-century fashion of ironic titles of polemical texts. This he did by devising a personal name for a fictitious author of a riposte. Tassoni was an established author and polemicist when, in Considerazioni sopra le rime del Petrarca col confronto dei luoghi de’ poeti antichi di varie lingue (Modena, 1609), he attacked the Petrarchists and also (for the sake of better attacking those who were writing poetry in the manner of that great poet) the poetry of Petrarch himself, that is, Francesco Petrarca (Arezzo, 1304—Arquà, 1374). The young Giuseppe degli Aromatari (b. 1587) retorted by defending Petrarch’s first ten sonnets from his Canzoniere, in a book entitled Risposte di Giuseppe degli Aromatari alle Considerazioni di A. Tassoni sopra le Rime del Petrarca (Padua, 1611). Quickly, Tassoni published a riposte entitled Avvertimenti di Crescenzio Pepe da Susa a Giuseppe degli Aromatari intorno alle Risposte date da lui alle Considerazioni del Sig. A. Tassoni sopra le Rime del Petrarca (Modena, 1611), feigning that the riposte was by a man whose name was Crescenzio Pepe and that he was from the Piedmontese town of Susa (cf. in Dante, e.g., Purgatorio 16: 38, “vo suso,” i.e., “I ascend”).
It was so because Giuseppe degli Aromatari was born in the town of Assisi. Moreover, the fictitious surname Pepe (“pepper”) was responding to the young opponent being from a family which according to its name had been trading in spices (degli Aromatari). Moreover, the fictitious author of the riposte (supposedly friendly towards Giuseppe degli Aromatari and warning him that for the time being Tassoni would not reply, but that should he do so, he would use such and such arguments, as well as insinuating that degli Aromatari was merely a spokesman of his teachers in Padua) was given by Tassoni the first name Crescenzio, because its literal sense was the same (“increase”) as of the Biblical Hebrew name Yoséf, of which Giuseppe is the standard Italian form. Alberto Asor-Rosa (1962) remarked that much.
I would like to point out that one finds Susa “of above” vs. Jusa “of below” (cf. Italian su “up” vs. giù “down”) in early eighteenth-century Sicilian toponomastics: “In Veria v’è una gran gara tra due chiese e confraternità sotto il titolo dell’Annunziata, e perché una stà fabbricata nell’alto della terra, e l’altra nel basso, per distinguerle le chiamano la Susa, e la Jusa. Più volte i sudetti fratelli vennero alle mani” [“In Veria there is a great competition between two churches and fraternities of the Annunciation, and as one of them was built in a high place, and the other one below, in order to distinguish them from each other they are called the Susa [cf. Italian su ‘up, above’] and the Jusa [cf. Italian giù ‘down’]. Several times, those friars had violent rows. …”].
This is quoted from Pitrè (1885, §6 on p. 22), based on Avvenimenti Faceti, being MS Biblioteca Nazionale di Palermo XI. A. 20, a collection of facetious local anecdotes written by an anonymous Sicilian author, probably a cleric, an itinerant preacher, in the first half of the eighteenth century. Giuseppe Pitrè published the book in the original Italian with insertions in a dialect from the province of Messina in Sicily. Pitrè admitted he was unable to identify the place named as Veria.
- 33.
A special lyre/cetra/kithara was constructed for the 1924 première of Boito’s Nerone. This was discussed by Donatella Melini (2015).
- 34.
When casting aspersions on ideas of the Protestants, Don Giuseppe would say: “like that classmate of yours” (“come quel vostro compagno”), hinting at the classroom’s door, as that pupil had left the room before the “ora di religione” began.
- 35.
This non-Greek word appears in the Greek text of Matthew 5:22. The context is as follows (quoting first in Latin from the Vulgate, and then in English): “Qui autem dixerit fratri suo, Raca, reus erit concilio”, that is, “But whoever will have called his brother, ‘Fool’, shall be liable to the council.”
- 36.
The New York-based Hebrew and Yiddish journalist Gerson Rosenzweig published in 1892, just a few years after he arrived into the United States, a Hebrew-language satire on the social conditions of New York’s Jewish immigrant community, Tractate America, in the genre of the Talmudic parody (Nissan 2014). It begins in cosmic grandeur, with the creation of America, and Columbus realizing with prophetic (or rather astrological) insight what America would come to be, so he prayed that it would not be named after him. “And they call her ‘Amme Reiko (Worthless People)” (in Ashkenazi pronunciation, as opposed to ‘Amma reka in the now standard pronunciation of Hebrew), a pun on the name America. The following is my own translation into English of the incipit of Tractate America (braces enclose a translation of Rosenzweig’s own footnote). Rosenzweig was parroting how New York’s Anglo-Saxon nativist press was portraying immigrants in anti-immigration articles and cartoons. He was mock-parroting anti-immigrant canards. In his satire, he pointed out the gap between constitutional freedoms and social realities, such as the norms of behavior of policemen and judges or (see Nissan 2012) the racism of trade unionists (he was an American patriot and was the translator of the U.S. anthem into Hebrew).
It is stated: America was only created as a land of refuge, as when Columbus discovered America, the three parts of the Ecumene [i.e., Asia, Africa, and Europe] {note: As before America was discovered, in the world there only were three parts of the Ecumene} came before the Saintly One, Blessèd be He, and told him: “O Lord of the Universe, Thou hast written [hast not Thou?] in Thy Torah (Deuteronomy 19): ‘Thou shalt partition in three the borders of your land’. The Saintly One, Blessèd be He, replied to them [by continuing quoting that verse]: “So that any [unintentional] killer will flee thereto.” Said Rav Safro [i.e., a fictional rabbi whose personal name is Teacher]: “Columbus foresaw, by means of his astrology, that America would become a land of refuge for the worthless and heedless of the entire world, so he implored pity, so that she would not be named after him. And they call her ‘Amme Reiko (Worthless People).” {note: Because worthless and heedless ones came there from other countries} Is it so? As it is taught: “All countries are dough [suspected of containing an alien admixture], vis-à-vis America [instead of Babylonia, as in the Talmud], as America is assumed to stand as having [pure and high] lineage. Said rav Meivino: “What ‘lineage’ is? The disqualified ones of other countries. As it is stated [a modification of a talmudic statement about Ezra’s Returnees]: Ten [categories of] lineage immigrated initially {note: Except those one who immigrate now, who have no lineage} to America, and these are the following: murderers, thieves, informers, arsonists, counterfeiters, ones who sell people, false witnesses, bankrupt ones, transgressors upon cherem, {note: Transgressors on the cherem [i.e., deterrent excommunication] of Rabbi Gershom [i.e., bigamists]} and rebellious sons, and some say: also seduced maidens. Why are they called [good] lineage? As all disqualified ones of other countries, once they have come to America, become there [good] lineage. In the Mathnitha [lectiones extra vagantes, from collections of Mishnah outside the Mishnah of Rabbi Judah the Prince] it is stated: Why is she called America? Because she cleanses (memarekes) the sins of people, {note: As she enriches them, and their sins are cleansed ipso facto} the defiled become in her clean, and the disqualified ones become in her [good] lineage. And by what does she cleanse and promote them? By silver and gold, as it is stated (Job 28): “As silver has [a place: mines] where it comes forth, and gold, a place [where] they refine [it]”. What does this “where it comes forth” (motzo) mean? It means ‘lineage’, as it is written (Micah 5): “And his motzo’otov (origins) are ancient, as old as the world”.
Section 8 in Nissan (2013, pp. 226–231) was entitled “A Case Study Across Media, Visual vs. Literary: Beard’s 1885 Cartoon Columbia’s Unwelcome Guests, vs. Mock-Parroting of the Canard in Gerson Rosenzweig’s 1892 Satire Tractate America.” I proposed a reading of Rosenzweig’s self-deprecation of his own immigrant group, as being partly a tongue-in-cheek parroting of current stereotypes from elite culture in New York against his own and other immigrant communities. As a backdrop for that reading, I used an anti-alien cartoon, dated February 7, 1885, by Frank Beard, from his New York years.
Let us say something concerning the passage I have now quoted in my own translation from the Hebrew. The trope of America, and of the United States in particular, as an abode for the Old World oppressed is here reversed, tongue in cheek, into America as a receptacle for knaves. There are several intertextual references. Firstly, to the cities of refuge in the Promised Land. These were cities (three in Transjordan and three or rather six west of the river Jordan) into which perpetrators of accidental manslaughter were allowed to flee, so they could claim there the right of asylum, thus escaping blood vengeance by relatives of their victim. The prescription for this is found in Numbers 35:11–34, Deuteronomy 4:41–43 and (especially) 19:1–13, and Joshua 20:8. Tripartition of the territory is prescribed in Deuteronomy 19:3, for the purposes of allocating regional cities of refuge.
And secondly, there is a quite transparent intertextual reference to a statement in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Kiddushin (Betrothals), 69a, to the self-gratulatory perception on the part of the late antique cultural elite of Babylonian Jews, of superiority vis-à-vis the Jews of Palestine. This is counter-intuitive, as the return, led by Ezra and then Nehemiah, from the Babylonian Captivity reflected the lofty ideal of restoration to the Land of Israel. And yet, there was competition for prestige and authoritativeness between the late antique rabbinic establishments in the Land of Israel and Babylonia. So the text of the Babylonian Talmud claims (mythically) that when Ezra led the Returnees, he supposedly made sure not only to include among them categories with lesser genealogies, but also left none of these behind in Babylonia. He did not leave Babylonia, until he made Babylonian Jewry (those who remained in Babylonia) into “pure semolina flour” (ke-solet nekiyyah), as stated at Kiddushin 69a.
Hence, Gerson Rosenzweig’s Tractate America lists categories of social undesirables moving to America. But perversely, it does so by modifying and recycling the more accessible parts of the Babylonian Talmud, for this to reflect anti-alien perceptions in New York, and what is more, he does so while by no means excluding New York’s Gilded Age Anglo-Saxon nativists (anti-alien ethnic supremacists) from the lamentable knaves that supposedly went to America, so much so indeed that Columbus, having gained foreknowledge of this by means of astrology, prayed to be spared the indignity of his name being given to the place (cf. how in early rabbinic midrash, Jacob prays so that as the malfeasant Korah and Zimri are introduced in the respective passages of Scripture, the statement of their respective genealogies would not go as far back as to name him, Jacob). Tractate America is really a powerful satire.
The original list of categories of lineage (yoḥasin) and genealogical classes, with varying restrictions on marriage (e.g., an Aaronid priest not being allowed to wed a divorcee), are listed in the Mishnah text (tractate Kiddushin 4:1) which forms the basis for discussion in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Kiddushin 69a. “Ten yoḥasin went up [i.e., migrated] from Babylonia [in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah]: [Aaronid] priests, Levites, Israelites, ḥalalim [those born to an Aaronid priest and a woman he is not eligible to marry], converts, freed slaves, mamzerim [those born out of incest or to an adulteress from an act of adultery], Nethineans [descendants of Temple slaves, held to be Joshua’s Gibeonites], hushlings [of known mother but unknown paternity], and foundlings.” Tractate America replaces these categories with categories of social undesirables. On those genealogical categories, see Poppers (1958). Also see Shlomo Zuckier’s paper (2017) about the claim concerning Ezra made in order to assert Babylonian superiority.
- 37.
- 38.
An artistic movement. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapigliatura “The movement included poets, writers, musicians, painters and sculptors. The term Scapigliatura is the Italian equivalent of the French ‘bohème’ (bohemian), and ‘Scapigliato’ literally means ‘unkempt’ or ‘dishevelled’. Most of these authors have never been translated into English […]” (ibid.). “The term Scapigliatura was derived from the novel La Scapigliatura e il 6 Febbraio by Cletto Arrighi, pen-name of Carlo Righetti (1830–1906), who was one of the forerunners of the movement. The main Italian inspiration of the Scapigliati was the writer and journalist Giuseppe Rovani (1818–1874), author of the novel Cento Anni and the influential aesthetic theories of his essays Le Tre Arti, an anti-conformist and charismatic figure on the fringes of the literary world of Milan, the city where the movement first developed through literary ‘cenacles’ which met in taverns and cafes. It attracted attention and scandalized the more conservative and Catholic circles of Italy with many pamphlets, journals and magazines like Arrighi’s Cronaca Grigia, Antonio Ghislanzoni’s Rivista Minima, Cesare Tronconi’s Lo Scapigliato and Felice Cavallotti and Achille Bizzoni’s Gazzettino Rosa, which challenged the status quo artistically, socially and politically. A wing of the movement became politically active, and known as Scapigliatura Democratica was central to the development of both the Socialist and Anarchist movements, with leaders such as the poet Felice Cavallotti who entered the Italian parliament on the extreme left, and whose libertarian ideals attracted much popular support for his political group, known as the Radicali” (ibid.). “The major figures of the movement were the poet and painter Emilio Praga (1839–1875) and the poet and musician Arrigo Boito (1842–1918). The latter is memorable for the fact that he wrote both the libretto and the music (an instance which had no precedent in Italian opera) for his opera Mefistofele, which introduced elements of Wagner’s music into Italian opera. Composer and orchestra director Franco Faccio was another important figure for the movement” (ibid.). Faccio conducted the first Italian performances of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. “Franco Faccio was also responsible for two of the three Scapigliatura operas: I profughi fiamminghi (with a libretto by Emilio Praga) and Amleto, set to a text by Boito. It was on the lukewarm première of the former in 1863 that Faccio was fêted with a banquet where Boito read his ode All’arte italiana, which famously so offended Giuseppe Verdi that the composer refused to work with him when the publisher Ricordi first suggested a collaboration. The offending lines, Forse già nacque chi sovra l’altare / Rizzerà l’arte, verecondo e puro, / Su quel’altar bruttato come un muro / Di lupanare (‘Perhaps the man is already born who, modest and pure, will restore art to its altar stained like a brothel’s wall’). In later years, Boito wrote revisions to the libretto of Verdi’s opera Simon Boccanegra and the original librettos for Otello and Falstaff. Boito is widely considered by most scholars as the best librettist with whom Verdi collaborated” (ibid.). “The movement was later immortalized by Giacomo Puccini, a protégé of Arrigo Boito, in his opera La bohème in 1896, with a libretto written by Giuseppe Giacosa. Orchestra director Arturo Toscanini was another famous figure who shared the ideals of the Scapigliatura. Other exponents of the movement were the writers Carlo Dossi (1849–1910) and Camillo Boito (1836–1914), older brother of Arrigo and a well-known art critic, who wrote the short story Senso, which later inspired Luchino Visconti’s film by the same title in 1954 and Tinto Brass’s film of 2002” (ibid.).
- 39.
Italy was unified in 1860 under the lead of the reigning house of the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose actual metropolitan region was Piedmont (Sardinia was treated like a colony). Piedmont (formerly a clerical, militaristic absolute monarchy) since 1848 had a liberal constitution, and its monarchy favored the Italian national movement, and this put it on a collision course with the Papal States (whose territories it eventually annexed, during Italy’s unification), as well as with its local senior clergy. From 1848, Piedmont pursued a policy seeking to appropriate Church property, and some monastic orders were abolished. The war of 1867 against Austria was funded through the auctioning of Church lands throughout Italy, and this had the effect of establishing complicity with buyers in southern Italy, the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in regions that had been quite clerical.
- 40.
Especially with the non expedit, a boycott of Italian parliamentary elections promulgated at the beginning of the pontificate of Leo XIII (Mellano 1982). This was the Catholic Church’s prohibition for the faithful to participate as voters or candidates in the parliamentary elections of the Kingdom of Italy (as opposed to municipal elections). The non expedit policy was approved by the Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari of the Papal States in 1868 (Latium and Rome were conquered by Italy upon the fall of Napoleon III, in 1870). It had originated when a decree on January 2, 1861, called for elections in the Kingdom of Italy, to be held on January the 27th; the priest Giacomo Margotti, the editor of the Turin clerical newspaper L’Armonia, in an article published on January 7, 1861, called on voters to abstain.
It must be said that after in November 1876 the Historical Left won the parliamentary elections in the Kingdom of Italy and began to rule, Margotti had a change of heart about the advisability of the clerical camp abstaining at the elections. On October 29, 1878, in the newspaper L’Unità Cattolica (which he founded after new ownership and the Bishop of Ivrea forced L’Armonia into a more moderate political line), Margotti stated that Catholics taking part in the election may be advisable, in order to stem the spreading of the Left. At that time however, he could not urge voters to vote, and he just made it a topic to be debated, because since 1868 the Holy See had adopted the non expedit policy (the “né eletti né elettori” [“neither candidates, nor voters”] formula) that Margotti himself had proposed. At any rate, Margotti stressed the importance of political organization for the clerical camp.
What in practice happened was that the clericals took part in municipal elections while not in parliamentary elections. As local authorities had existed independently of their becoming part of the Kingdom of Italy, voting at the municipal election did not entail recognition of the Kingdom of Italy, whereas voting for the House of Representatives of the Kingdom of Italy entailed recognizing the latter.
- 41.
- 42.
In the nineteenth century, even Heinrich Heine was referred to, sometimes, as “Arrigo Heine” rather than “Enrico Heine.” I was raised next to a Milan street named after “Giorgio Washington,” that is, George Washington (but earlier on, there was a parenthesis when it was named after a close relative of Benito Mussolini). From 1860, Boito chose to sign himself “Arrigo Boito” rather than “Enrico Boito.”
- 43.
Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi is mostly remembered as a writer. In 1848 in Florence (the Grand Duke of Tuscany had fled), Massimo d’Azeglio, a quite prominent Piedmontese politician and writer, was ordered arrested by Guerrazzi, who was then the republican premier, for a short while a de facto dictator, of Tuscany. D’Azeglio narrowly escaped arrest in Tuscany. Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi was elected to the House of Representatives in 1848 and became interior minister in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany on October 27, 1848, while Giuseppe Montanelli became prime minister. In early 1849, a triumvirate was formed. Then on March 27, while Montanelli was in Paris on a diplomatic mission, Guerrazzi made himself a dictator, and such he remained during nearly fifteen days, adopting a more moderate line than the republicans desired. He sought a compromise that would bring back the Grand Duke, but on April 12, an insurrection overthrew him. In 1853, he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, but only served one month, and was sent into exile to Corsica. He fled in 1853 to Genoa and obtained Cavour’s permission to remain there. In 1860 he became member of the House of Representatives and attacked Cavour because he had agreed Napoleon III’s request that France obtain Savoy and Nice. An anticlerical yet a believer who claimed (in a letter to Carlo Massei dated September 8, 1854) that he hated priests precisely because he loved Christ (“Io non sono miscredente, bensì odio i tristi preti e li odio perché Cristo amo davvero”), Guerrazzi was an antimaterialist, and in politics he emphasized enthusiasm and claimed that destructive revolution carried out by the masses was necessary, and that improvement would necessarily(!) follow. Guerrazzi is an example of how in Italy’s liberal circles, there also was some antisemite. He comes out as such from his Note Autobiografiche. Already as a youngster, he was involved in brawls with Jews in his native Livorno, a city that until the Holocaust used to have a large Jewish community and (see Nissan 2022) exported abroad Jewish books.
As for secularization, consider that it was partly the work of politicians who were believing Catholics and yet reformers. Massimo D’Azeglio would not have become the son-in-law of the writer Alessandro Manzoni, had Manzoni not considered him a good Catholic. As liberalism became strong in Piedmont during the 1840s, and in the late 1840s and during the 1850s was in power there, governmental policy came into conflict with the local high clergy. As premier, Massimo d’Azeglio managed to preserve parliamentary rule following the promulgation of the 1848 constitution, and moreover, he embarked on secularizing the state. The jurist and senior judge Giuseppe Siccardi (1802–1857)—himself a believing Catholic and a reformer—as being the “ministro guardasigilli” (minister of Justice), in Massimo d’Azeglio government from 1849 to 1851, introduced the bills known as the Siccardi Laws, which abolished the clergy’s privileges in Piedmont and forbade for any body corporate (ente morale), including ones of the Church, the acquisition of the ownership of real estate without governmental authorisation.
The Camera dei Deputati (or simply Camera, i.e., the House of Representatives) approved the Siccardi Laws immediately, by a large majority. Among those who voted in favor, there was the lawyer, playwright, and author of short stories Pietro De Rossi di Santarosa, born in 1805, and who had been a government minister four brief times previously. Santarosa, like Siccardi, was a practising Catholic and yet a reformer (Briacca 1988). What makes his case important is that he died of tuberculosis in Turin on August 5, 1850, and even though he was a moderate and a devout Catholic, because of how he had voted, the Extreme Unction was refused to him when he was about to die, and the parish priest, Pattavino, refused his body a religious funeral. This caused a public outcry, which prompted the Archbishop of Turin, Luigi Fransoni, to let last rites for Pietro De Rossi di Santarosa take place.
In August 1850, the Archbishop was arrested nevertheless, because Pietro De Rossi di Santarosa had been denied the last sacrament and absolution. Fransoni was imprisoned at the Fortress of Fenestrelle, and later during the same year, he was exiled in perpetuity from the domains of the House of Savoy and went to Lyon, where he was to die in 1862. He had been Archbishop of Turin from 1832 (succeeding Columbano Giovanni Battista Carlo Gaspare Chiaverotti). It was only after Fransoni’s death that a new Archbishop of Turin was appointed, namely, Alessandro Riccardi di Netro. Fransoni never agreed to abdicate as archbishop, even as the Pope himself, Pius IX, put pressure on him in that sense, as the Pope would have preferred to appoint a new archbishop of Turin. Note however that in 1865, the Italian prime minister, General Alfonso Ferrero de La Marmora (1804–1878), sent Saverio Vegezzi (1805–1888) as an envoy to the Pope, on a delicate mission to solve the problem of several bishoprics having no bishop in the Kingdom of Italy. Pius IX rejected the request that the bishops would have to take an oath in front of the King, and the negotiations failed.
- 44.
Parliamentary elections in Italy being boycotted by the clerical camp also enabled a number of Jews entering politics, the military, and the judiciary. Such emancipation and integration brought from the clerical camp the charge that the Kingdom of Italy was a “Jewish state.” And yet, it is interesting that discomfort with policies against the Church was expressed by some of Italy’s Jewish politicians. In 1873, Isacco Maurogonato Pesaro (1817–1892), who was Jewish, was about to be appointed government minister (as member of the House of Representatives, he represented Venice’s first circumscription), when Francesco Pasqualigo (a lawyer and secularist politician from Venice) attacked that choice (actually, Maurogonato had already declined), based on the appointee’s Jewishness. For Pasqualigo, only birth determines nationality, and the Jews have their own messianic hopes and are unfit for political office in Italy. Pasqualigo falsified a quotation in order to prove that Jews do not deserve to hold posts in Italy. The King, to whom Pasqualigo had sent a telegram against Maurogonato’s appointment, indirectly condemned this accident of intolerance. Maurogonato nevertheless declined to take the post in the cabinet that had been offered to him. Isacco Pesaro Maurogonato was Vice President of the House of Representatives of the unified Kingdom of Italy four times (in 1874–1890). As Member of Parliament, Maurogonato had misgivings about the confiscatory policy Italy adopted towards the Church patrimony. Maurogonato was a committed Jew, with good relations with the famous Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto of the Collegio Rabbinico of Padua, who was the matchmaker for Maurogonato’s wedding in 1850. Another Jewish-born Member of Parliament, Giuseppe Finzi, a member of the Right (like Maurogonato who at any rate was a technocrat; whereas Maurogonato had always been a monarchist and conservative, Finzi had been a Mazzinian, thus an anti-monarchist republican), once the Left became the ruling camp in united Italy, criticized those members of the Right who claimed that out of coherence, they were contrary to attempting reconciliation with the Church. After Pasqualigo’s attack on his appointment (upon the initiative of Marco Minghetti, the new premier) as Minister of Finance (which made sense, as Maurogonato had criticized the policies of the previous Minister of Finance, Quintino Sella, and Giovanni Lanza’s government, the one that had conquered Rome in 1870, had fallen precisely because the House of Representatives refused to vote for Sella’s financial plan), Maurogonato declined the invitation, at first explaining his decision with the illness of one of his daughters, and later giving a different reason in a letter to the King, in which he stated: “Non avrei certamente saputo disobbedire agli ordini di Vostra Maestà se non avessi sentito nella mia coscienza l’inopportunità che un uomo di fede non cattolica sia chiamato ad eseguire la legge intorno alle corporazioni religiose in Roma” (“I would have certainly not disobeyed Your Majesty’s orders, had I not felt, in my conscience, it being inopportune that a man whose faith is not Catholic would be given the task of carrying out the law concerning the religious corporations in Rome,” which was conquered in 1870, and to which, too, the laws of 1866–1867 confiscating Church real estate had to be applied, a policy with which Maurogonato was uncomfortable). As for Pasqualigo, Maurogonato’s nemesis, Pasqualigo singled out Finzi as a more palatable Jew: Giuseppe Finzi, like Pasqualigo and Maurogonato a member of the House of Representatives of the Kingdom of Italy, was praised by Pasqualigo (who did not name him explicitly) because he had his children baptized, so they would be more easily integrated.
- 45.
Interestingly, in an edited volume devoted precisely to the limits of liberalism in that respect historically, Green and Levis Sullam (2021), Maurogonato is only mentioned fleetingly (Green 2021, p. 344), and this concerns not the 1873 “Pasqualigo case,” but rather Maurogonato’s role as a minister in the insurrectional government of Venice in 1848.
- 46.
The Italian epithet is il cigno di Busseto. Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 into a poor family in Roncole (the name is stressed on the antepenult), a hamlet near Busseto. His parents managed to buy for him a spinet (in a later period, a piano would have been the standard) and to pay for him to be taught. Then the merchant Antonio Barezzi of Busseto funded his secondary education in Busseto and musical studies. Then an event occurred that struck fear into the better off inhabitants of Busseto: robbers killed in Busseto a Jewish affluent man at home. Barezzi had Verdi come and stay at his home as a bodyguard. In 1836, Verdi wed Barezzi’s daughter, but Verdi soon lost to illness his wife and two little children. That was when he was beginning to become visible as a composer for the opera house.
- 47.
I learned about that ketubbah from Busseto and saw a photograph of it in a PowerPoint presentation, when the curator of the Jewish Museum of Soragna, Roberta Tonnarelli, signalled it during a Zoom talk on May 18, 2022, organized by Ferrara’s MEIS, the Museum of Italian Jewry and the Shoah. My thanks to Amedeo Spagnoletto (the director of MEIS) and Roberta Tonnarelli, for providing me with the year and the names of the spouses whose 1860 wedding and ketubbah these were. Soragna, like the larger Busseto, used to have a small Jewish community, and both towns are in Italy’s province of Parma.
- 48.
As the journal PMLA is usually referred to by its acronym, which appears as its only name on its covers, I am sticking to the acronym, instead of adopting its full-fledged name Publications of the Modern Language Association. Had the present study only been in literary studies instead of being interdisciplinary, it would have been superfluous to explain PMLA.
References
Artom, Ernesto. 1906. Artom: L’opera politica del senatore Isacco Artom nel Risorgimento italiano. Bologna: Zanichelli.
Asor-Rosa, Alberto. 1962. Aromatari, Giuseppe degli. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 4. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuseppe-degli-aromatari_ (Dizionario_Biografico)/
Aycock, Roy E. 1972. Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi. The Musical Quarterly, 58(4), pp. 588–604. https://www.jstor.org/stable/741417
Barrett, Anthony A. 2020. Rome Is Burning: Nero and the Fire that Ended a Dynasty. (Turning Points in Ancient History, 2.) Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Bayley, Lynn René. 2018. A Great Recording of Boito’s “Nerone”. The Art Music Lounge, 24 June.
Benozzo, Francesco. 2015. Carducci. (Sestante, 33.) Rome: Salerno Editrice.
Bianchi, Ugo. 2005. Twins: An Overview. In: Lindsay Jones (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition. Detroit, Michigan: Macmillan reference USA (Thomson/Gale), Vol. 14, pp. 9411–9419.
Boito, Arrigo. 1924. Nerone. [Libretto.] Milan: G. Ricordi & C. Editori.
Bosco, Umberto (ed.) 1970–1978. Enciclopedia dantesca. 6 vols. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana.
Briacca, Giuseppe. 1988. Pietro De Rossi di Santa Rosa, Giuseppe Siccardi, Camillo Benso di Cavour, cattolici riformatori tra regalismo e liberalismo. Chieti: Libreria Universitaria Editrice.
Casana Testore, Paola. 1991. Dina, Giacomo. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani), 40. https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giacomo-dina_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/
Chailley, Jacques. 1968. La Flûte enchantée, opéra maçonnique. (Musique et ésotérisme.) Essai d’explication du livret et de la musique. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1968. Also La Flûte enchantée, opéra maçonnique: Revised, augmented edition in the Diapason series, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1983.
Chailley, Jacques. 1972. The Magic Flute, Masonic Opera: An Interpretation of the Libretto and the Music, translated by Herbert Weinstock. London: Gollancz, 1972. Reprinted, (Da Capo Press Music Reprint Series), New York: Da Capo Press, 1982. Reprinted as The Magic Flute Unveiled: Esoteric Symbolism in Mozart’s Masonic Opera—An Interpretation of the Libretto and the Music, Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1992.
Chiarini, Giorgio. 1935. Memorie della vita di Giosuè Carducci, raccolte da un amico, con un cenno introduttivo di Guido Mazzoni. Florence: Barbèra, 3rd edition.
Coleman, Kathleen M. 1990. Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Stages as Mythological Enactments. Journal of Roman Studies, 80, pp. 44–73.
Coleman, Kathleen M. (ed., trans.). 2006. Martial: Liber Spectaculorum. [On the dust jacket: M. Valerii Martialis Liber spectaculorum.] Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Contini, Gianfranco. 1970. Un esempio di poesia dantesca (il canto XXVIII del Paradiso). In Varianti e altra linguistica. Turin: Einaudi, pp. 477–497.
D’Angelo, Emanuele. 2007. Arrigo Boito (1842–1918). In: Gaetana Marrone (ed.), Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies. New York: Taylor & Francis, Vol. 1, pp. 271–274.
Di Porto, Bruno. 2010. Isacco Artom. L’ottimale segretario del Conte di Cavour. Il diplomatico nella formazione dell’Italia. Hazman Veharaion: Il Tempo e l’Idea, 18(19–24), pp. 109–117. [The article originated as a talk at the Convegno “Il Ghetto di Venezia”, held by the Centro di Studi Ebraici on 28 November 2010 in the Sala Montefiore of the Jewish Community of Venice.] Article posted at Cultura Italia: L’aggregatore nazionale del patrimonio culturale italiano, at: http://www.culturaitalia.it/opencms/export/sites/culturaitalia/attachments/stella_di_david_e_tricolore/isacco_artom.pdf
Di Pretoro, P.A. 1970. Innovazioni lessicali nella Commedia. Atti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, series 8, vol. 367, pp. 263–297.
Edwards, M.J. 1989. Gnostics and Valentinians in the Church Fathers. The Journal of Theological Studies, new series, 40(1), pp. 26–47. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23963761
Edwards, M.J. 1995. The “Epistle to Rheginus”: Valentinianism in the Fourth Century. Novum Testamentum, 37(1), pp. 76–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1561238
Ferreiro, Alberto. 2003. Simon Magus, Nicolas of Antioch, and Muhammad. Church History, 72(1), pp. 53–70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4146804
Friedman, Hershey. 2016. Talmudic Arguments: The Use of Insults, Reprimands, Rebukes and Curses as Part of the Disputation Process. SSRN Electronic Journal, June 28. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2801821; doi:10.2139/ssrn.2801821 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304012700_Talmudic_Arguments_The_Use_of_Insults_Reprimands_Rebukes_and_Curses_as_Part_of_the_Disputation_Process
Gatti, Guido M. 1924. Boito’s Nero. [Trans. Theodore Baker.] The Musical Quarterly, 10(4), pp. 596–621. https://www.jstor.org/stable/738477
Ghinassi, Ghino. 1970. Neologismi. In Vol. 4 of Umberto Bosco (ed.), Enciclopedia dantesca. 6 vols., 1970–1978. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/neologismi_ (Enciclopedia-Dantesca)/
Green, Abigail. 2021. 1848 and Beyond: Jews in the National and International Politics of Secularism and Revolution. In Green and Levis Sullam (2021), pp. 341–364.
Green, Abigail and Levis Sullam, Simon (eds.) 2021. Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism: A Global History. (Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Guerrero, León Ma[ría]. 1963 [1974]. The First Filipino: A Biography of José Rizal. [José Rizal was a patriot, poet and novelist executed on 30 December 1896, under the charge that his writings inspired the country’s insurrection against Spain.] Manila, The Philippines: National Historical Commission, 1963. The fifth printing, of 1974, is available online at this address: http://www.xeniaeditrice.it/firstfilipinoocrpdf.pdf
Henehan, Donal [sic]. 1982. Opera: Boito’s ‘Nerone’. New York Times, 14 April. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/14/arts/opera-boito-s-nerone.html
Herbert-Césari, E. 1918. Arrigo Boito. Born: Padua, February 24, 1842. Died: Milan, June 10, 1918 [Obituary.] The Musical Times, 59(906), 1 August, p. 357. https://www.jstor.org/stable/908892
Holzhausen, Jens. 2006. Valentinus and Valentinians. In: Wouter J. Hanegraaff with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek and Jean-Pierre Brach (eds.), Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism. Leiden: Brill, pp. 1144–1157.
Istel, E. and Baker, T. 1927. Mozart’s “Magic Flute” and Freemasonry. The Musical Quarterly, 13, pp. 510–527.
Jastrow, Marcus. 1903. Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (2 vols., New York & London, printed in Leipzig by Trübner & Co., and in London by Luzac, 1886–1903). Often reprinted by various publishers; New York: Choreb (2 vols. in 1, 1926, later reprinted in Jerusalem by Chorev); London: E. Shapiro [i.e., Shapiro, Vallentine] (1926); New York: Title Publ. (1943); New York: Pardes Publ. (1950, 2 vols.); and with a new title, Hebrew–Aramaic–English Dictionary… (2 vols., 1969). Also (with the standard title), New York: Judaica Press, 1971 (2 vols. in 1); New York: Jastrow Publishers, 1903, repr. 1967 (2 vols. in 1); Brooklyn: Shalom (2 vols., 1967); Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publ., 2005 (in 1 vol. of 1736 pp.). The Jastrow dictionary can be accessed and downloaded for free in 2 vols. online; Vol. 1: http://www.etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/14906.pdf Vol. 2: http://www.etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/14499.pdf. Moreover, one can find Jastrow’s Dictionary arranged for alphabetical access online at Tyndale House at: http://www.tyndalearchive.com/tabs/jastrow/
Kalligas, Paul. 2000. Plotinus against the Gnostics. Hermathena (Dublin), 169, pp. 115–128. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23041324
Klein, John W. 1928. Verdi and Boito. The Musical Quarterly, 14(2), pp. 158–171. https://www.jstor.org/stable/738359
Layton, B. 1980. The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, Vol. 1: The School of Valentinus. Leiden: Brill.
Leeper, Elizabeth A. 1990. From Alexandria to Rome: The Valentinian Connection to the Incorporation of Exorcism as a Prebaptismal Rite. Vigiliae Christianae, 44(1), pp. 6–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1584244
Loevinson, Ermanno. 1910. Camillo Cavour e gli Israeliti. Nuova Antologia, 5th series, 148, pp. 453–464.
Lopez, Guido. 1958. Ricordo di Vittore Veneziani. La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, third series, 24(4), pp. 156–165. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41278485
Luzzatto Voghera, Gadi. 2008. Maurogonato Pesaro, Isacco. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 72. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/isacco-maurogonato-pesaro_(Dizionario-Biografico)/
Luzzi, Joseph. 2010. “As a Leaf on a Branch…”: Dante’s Neologisms. PMLA,Footnote
As the journal PMLA is usually referred to by its acronym, which appears as its only name on its covers, I am sticking to the acronym, instead of adopting its full-fledged name Publications of the Modern Language Association. Had the present study only been in literary studies instead of being interdisciplinary, it would have been superfluous to explain PMLA.
125(2), pp. 322–336 and 511. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25704428Maeder, Costantino. 2002. Il real fu dolore e l’ideal sogno: Arrigo Boito e i limiti dell’arte. Florence: Franco Cesati Editore.
Markschies, C. 1997. Valentinian Gnosticism: Toward the Anatomy of a School. In: J.D. Turner and A.M. McGuire (eds.), The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years. (NHMS, 44.) Leiden: Brill, pp. 401–438.
Melini, Donatella. 2015. “Or che i Numi son vinti, a me la cetra, a me l’altar!” Kithara Constructed for the Premiere of Arrigo Boito’s Nerone. In the thematic issue “Neoclassical Reverberations of Discovering Antiquity”. Music in Art, 40(1/2), pp. 267–272. https://www.jstor.org/stable/musicinart.40.1-2.267
Mellano, Maria Franca. 1982. Cattolici e voto politico in Italia. Il «non expedit» all’inizio del pontificato di Leone XIII. (Chiesa sotto inchiesta: collana di storia della chiesa. Nuova serie.) Casale Monferrato: Marietti.
Mola, Aldo A. (ed.) 2002. Isacco Artom e gli ebrei italiani dai risorgimenti al fascismo. Foggia: Bastogi.
Morelli, Giovanni (ed.) 1994. Arrigo Boito. Florence: Olschki.
Nardi, Piero. 1942. Vita di Arrigo Boito. Milan: Mondadori.
Nettl, Paul. 1956. Musik und Freimaurerei: Mozart und die königliche Kunst. Esslingen: Bechtle.
Nettle, Paul. 1957. Mozart and Masonry. New York: Philosophical Library. Repr., (Da Capo Music Reprint Series), New York: Da Capo Press, 1970; repr. in the same series, New York: Dorset Press, 1987. Repr., Whitefish, Montana: Literary Licensing, 2011. Repr., [n.p.:] Scholar Select, 2015.
Nissan, Ephraim. 2012. The Sweat of the (Low) Brow: New York Immigrant Life in Gerson Rosenzweig’s Satire. Facets of his Talmudic Parody Tractate America. (With the pre-headline: 2011: The Sesquicentennial of the Birth of America’s Top Hebrew Humorist.) Israeli Journal of Humor Research, 1(2), pp. 29–85.
Nissan, Ephraim. 2013. Exploring Two Histories of American Political Cartoons. With a Digression: Late-19th-Century Treatments of the Theme ‘Immigrants from Europe’s Gutters’ as Conveyed Visually, vs. Its Mocking by Parroting in Immigrant Literature (Tractate America). International Studies in Humour, 2(1), pp. 178–244.
Nissan, Ephraim. 2014. Conniving with the Learned: Gerson Rosenzweig’s Humour on New York Communal Life, in his Talmudic Parody Tractate America. (With the pre-headline: “2014: The Centennial of the Demise of Gerson Rosenzweig”.) International Studies in Humour, 3(1), pp. 15–93.
Nissan, Ephraim. 2022. Sui nomi di Livorno nel mondo ebraico arabofono. Annali di Ca’ Foscari: Serie Orientale, 58(1), June 2022, pp. 9–34. https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/media/pdf/article/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-orientale/2022/1/art-10.30687-AnnOr-2385-3042-2022-01-000.pdf
Orbe, A. 1953. A propósito de un nombre personal del 1. eón valentiniano. Gregorianum, 34(2), pp. 262–270. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23570503
Pitrè, Giuseppe. 1885. Avvenimenti faceti raccolti da un anonimo siciliano nella prima metà del secolo XVIII e pubblicati per cura di Giuseppe Pitrè. (Curiosità popolari tradizionali, 2.) Palermo: Luigi Pedone Lauriel, Editore. http://www.liberliber.it/online/autori/autori-p/giuseppe-pitre/avvenimenti-faceti/
Poppers, H.L. 1958. The Declassé in the Babylonian Jewish Community. Jewish Social Studies, 20(3), pp. 153–179. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4465617
Procter, E. 1995. Christian Controversy in Alexandria: Clement’s Polemic against the Basilideans and Valentinians. (American University Studies, Series VII: Theology and Religion, 172.) New York & Bern: Peter Lang.
Questa, Cesare. 1998. I Romani sulla scena operistica. [1991] In his L’aquila a due teste. Immagini di Roma e dei Romani. (Ludus philologiae, 8.) Urbino: Quattro Venti, pp. 173–227.
Quispel, Gilles. 1974. The Original Doctrine of Valentinus. Gnostic Studies I, Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, pp. 27–36.
Ratta, Cesare. 1920. Aqua-fortistes Italiens. 3 vols. Bologna: Cesare Ratta.
Ricci, Guido. 1991. Dominiceti, Cesare. In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Rome: Treccani, Vol. 40. https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/cesare-dominiceti_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/
Rosenzweig, Gerson. 1892. Massekhet Amerika / Masseikhes Amerike (Tractate America). From the Talmud Yanka’i (Yankee Talmud). New York, 1892, and Vilna, Lithuania, 1894. Reprinted as part of: G. Rosenzweig, Talmud Yanka’i: mekhil be-kirbo shesh [masekhtot] halo henah: Masekhet hedyotot, Masekhet Hanukah, Masekhet nekhasim, Masekhet masveh, Masekhet katzavim, Masekhet Amerikah; ve-nilveh be-sofo Midrash Ester ve-Haggadah le-sofrim (Hebrew: The Yankee Talmud), New York: Sh. Drukerman, 1907.
Silveira, Fernando José. 2009. José Lino de Almeida Fleming: notícia de concertos. [Title inside the document.] /José Lino de Almeida Fleming: Compositor Brasileiro [Title in the contents.] ICTUS Music Journal, 9(2). Posted at https://periodicos.ufba.br/index.php/ictus/article/view/34320/19811 doi:https://doi.org/10.9771/ictus.v9i2.34320
Slonimsky, Nicolas; Kuhn, Laura; and McIntire, Dennis. 1900 [2001]. Dominiceti, Cesare. In: Theodore Baker (ed.), Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1st edition, 1900; 9th edition, 2001. On p. 389 in the 1958 edition. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/dominiceti-cesare
Smith, Morton. 1981. History of the Term gnostikos. In: B. Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism. Leiden: Brill, Vol. 2, pp. 796–807.
Sofia, Francesca. 1993. Su assimilazione e autocoscienza ebraica nell’età liberale. In: Vittore Colorni, Fausto Pusceddu, Giuseppe Sermoneta and Shlomo Simonsohn (eds.), Italia Judaica. Gli ebrei nell’Italia unita, 1870–1945. Atti del IV convegno internazionale, Siena, 12–16 giugno 1989. (Pubblicazioni degli Archivi di Stato, Saggi, 26.) Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistici, pp. 32–47. http://www.archivi.beniculturali.it/DGA-free/Saggi/Saggi_26.pdf
Talamo, Giuseppe. 1962. Artom, Isacco. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani), 4. https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/isacco-artom_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/
Tintori, Giampiero (ed.) 1986. Arrigo Boito musicista e letterato. Milan: Nuove Edizioni.
Tocchini, Gerardo. 2000. Massoneria, cultura della rappresentazione e mecenatismo musicale nel Settecento. Studi Storici, 41, pp. 471–531.
Tocchini, Gerardo. 2004. La religione degli antichi nell’Italia dei Lumi. Simbologie sapienziali e culti misterici in Carli e in Filangieri. Quaderni Giuliani di Storia, 25, pp. 37–96.
Tocchini, Gerardo. 2006. Massoneria e musica italiana nel Settecento europeo in G.M. Cazzaniga (ed.), La massoneria (Storia d’Italia. Annali, 21), Torino: Einaudi, pp. 90–119.
Tocchini, Gerardo. 2014. Opéra maçonnique. In Dictionnaire de la franc-maçonnerie, Paris: Armand Colin, pp. 191–195.
Tollemache, F. 1960. I parasinteti verbali e i deverbali nella Divina Commedia. Lingua Nostra, 21, pp. 112–115.
Tommasi Moreschini, Chiara O[mbretta]. 2011. «Immenso Fthà»: Verdi tra antichità e patriottismo. Paideia: rivista di filologia, ermeneutica e critica letteraria (Cesena: Stilgraf Editrice), 66, pp. 339–363. https://www.academia.edu/9504316/Immenso_Fth%C3%A0_Verdi_tra_patriottismo_risorgimentale_ed_antichit%C3%A0_egiziane_Paideia_66_2011_pp._339-363
Tommasi Moreschini, Chiara O[mbretta]. 2015. Il sole dai sette raggi: eredità antica di un’immagine nella Zauberflöte. In: Concetta Giuffré Scibona and Attilio Mastrocinque (eds.), Ex pluribus unum. Studi in onore di Giulia Sfameni Gasparro. Rome: Edizioni Quasar, pp. 213–231. https://www.academia.edu/13546646/Il_sole_dai_sette_raggi_eredit%C3%A0_antica_di_un_immagine_nella_Zauberfl%C3%B6te_in_C._Giuffr%C3%A8_Scibona_A._Mastrocinque_edd._Ex_pluribus_unum._Studi_in_onore_di_G._Sfameni_Gasparro_Quasar_Roma_2015_pp._213-231
Trevor, Claude. 1916. Boito’s ‘Nero’. The Musical Times, 57(880), 1 June, pp. 291–292. https://www.jstor.org/stable/911141
van den Broek, Roelof. 2006. Cerdo, before 150. In: Wouter J. Hanegraaff with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek and Jean-Pierre Brach (eds.), Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism. Leiden: Brill, pp. 251–252.
Villa, Angela Ida. 1992. Arrigo Boito massone, gnostico, alchimista, negromante. Otto/Novecento, 1992(3/4), pp. 5–51.
Villa, Angela Ida. 1994. Arrigo Boito teorico e poeta scapigliato. Otto/Novecento, 1994(2), pp. 135–195.
Visser, A.J. 1958. Der Lehrbrief der Valentinianer. Vigiliae Christianae, 12(1), pp. 27–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1582112
Volpe, Maria Alice. 1994. Música de Câmara do Período Romântico Brasileiro: 1850–1930. Dissertação de Mestrado em Música. [Master’s thesis in Music.] São Paulo, Brasil: Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP).
Wilson, R[obert] McL. 1957. Simon, Dositheus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, 9(1), pp. 21–30. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23895754
Wilson, Robert McL. 1980. Valentinianism and the Gospel of Truth. In: Bentley Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism I. (Studies in the History of Religions, 41.) Leiden: Brill, pp. 133–145.
Zuckier, Shlomo. 2017. Hu Ezra Alah mi-Bavel: Ezra as an Exemplar of Babylonian Superiority in Rabbinic Literature. In: Joel Baden, Hindy Najman, and Eibert Tigchelaar (eds.), Sybils, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy. Leiden: Brill, Vol. 2, pp. 1453–1472. https://www.academia.edu/29596929/Hu_Ezra_Alah_mi_Bavel_Ezra_as_an_Exemplar_of_Babylonian_Superiority_in_Rabbinic_Literature
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ferreiro, A., Nissan, E. (2023). Simon Magus in Arrigo Boito’s Opera Nerone (Ephraim Nissan). In: Receptions of Simon Magus as an Archetype of the Heretic . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12523-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12523-2_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-12522-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-12523-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)