Seneca is a stoic philosopher - a character very conducive to hypocrisy and self-righteousness as well as honor and virtue. Monteverdi does an excellent job illustrating the trite and melodramatic nature of Seneca by employing a variety of different musical techniques. He depicts Seneca’s vain and pompous pontificating in ordinary sequences and occasionally in emotionless phrases in which none of the words are emphasized (Harnoncourt 141). Seneca likes to use proverbs and maxims that are little more than clichés in his responses, and this trait is accentuated by the rigid musical form of these lines (Harnoncourt 141) .
For example, in Act 1, Scene 6, Seneca tries to explain to Octavia that Nero’s infidelity is a blessing because it gives her a chance to be moral, strong, and virtuous. As he says:
Be grateful, be grateful now to Fortune
Who, at a stroke, at a stroke has brought you
A diadem of glory.
Until the flint, until the flint be hammered
We see no spark, we see no spark arising.
(Monteverdi 61)
This passage exemplifies “stiff.” It is very symmetrical, and the only ornamentation is on the word “arising,” the last and most uplifting word of the phrase. This kind of phrasing is overdone to the point of cliché; and Monteverdi is quite aware of this. He chooses to paint the text in this way in order to give insight into Seneca’s character.
Seneca has the bass part and usually sings slowly, deliberately, forcefully and generally within the same octave. His singing style, combined with the dogmatic nature of the text, lead one to conclude that Seneca is a very conceited and melodramatic man. Whenever he sings, his voice rumbles powerfully, intending to give the material incredible amounts of meaning. It ends up, however, sounding bogged down and very sensational.
Seneca rarely uses vocal ornaments; his singing is not very virtuostic. The only times he
uses ornaments are when he wants to place emphasis on big words like “reason” and “virtue” and
“conformity.” He breaks loose from the recitative only when he sings of fate, beauty or joy (Silke
208). Seneca’s character personifies the cold, stiff, colorless and symmetrical nature of virtue,
according to Monteverdi.