636 linda l. carroll
romance L’Adamo [The Life of Adam, 1640], attributing adam’s betrayal
of an omnipotent god to the irresistibility of female beauty, enjoyed a
vast success augmented by numerous translations. it has even been con-
sidered a possible inspiration for Milton’s Paradise Lost, as were various
other versions of this popular tale, including giovanni battista andreini’s
Adamo (1613).27
the incogniti were also among the most active promoters of and par-
ticipants in the development of melodrama, which achieved its pinnacle
with the 1643–44 staging of L’Incoronazione di Poppea [The Coronation of
Poppea]. edward Muir considers this their signal achievement, which, in
an analysis very different from auzzas’s, he links to the unusual open-
ness of thought in Venice during the time of the Jesuits’ banishment,
as well as to opera’s role in diplomacy and its value as entertainment.28
the success of opera came, again, in the context of Venetian patrician
investment in paid public entertainment: the Vendramin family had the
teatro san Luca built early in the century, the giustinian the teatro san
Moisè in 1620, and the grimani the teatro s. Zanipolo, which provided the
venue for the landmark Incoronazione.29 it is noteworthy that the familial
associations with theater of all of these leaders stretch back a century or
more, including with ruzante. Loredan’s ancestors, for example, with one
exception belonged to families with at least one member in the immortali
[immortals] or the Ortolani, while the giustinian and the grimani were
the backbones of the Ortolani. Loredan’s wife belonged to the Valier fam-
ily, which had provided a female protagonist, and perhaps the author, to
the Veniexiana.30
Women’s intellectual endeavors were both favored and opposed by
members of the incogniti. they promoted the emotional female voice
in melodrama and allowed women into the accademia, though only
if masked. While the writerly nun arcangela tarabotti received the
27 roy C. Flanagan with John arthos, “introduction,” in gian Francesco Loredan, The
Life of Adam (1640) (gainesville, Fla., 1967), pp. iii–xxi; William hayley, The Life of Milton,
2nd ed. (1796; gainesville, Fla., 1970), pp. 233–80.
28 Muir, Culture Wars, esp. pp. 111–48.
29 ellen rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (berkeley,
1991), esp. pp. 79–81; beth L. glixon and Jonathan e. glixon, Inventing the Business of Opera:
The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-century Venice (Oxford, 2006), esp. parts 1
and 4.
30 archivio di stato, Venice, Miscellanea Codici i, storia Veneta 17, Marco barbaro,
and a. M. tasca, Arbori dei patritii veneti, vol. 4, pp. 329–30; Carroll, “Venetian attitudes”;
giorgio Padoan, “introduzione,” in giorgio Padoan, ed., La Veniexiana: commedia anonima
di veneziano del Cinquecento (Padua, 1974), pp. 16–18.