Abstract

This chapter investigates the influence of Seneca’s conception of mercy on later writers, focusing on Mozart’s last opera, La Clemenza di Tito. It argues that there are two distinct conceptions of mercy at play in the modern era: one, influenced by Christian doctrine, is hierarchical and monarchical; the other, influenced by Stoicism, focuses on the equal vulnerability of all human beings to error. The chapter studies the ways in which the music of the opera, going well beyond the words, exemplifies a Senecan conception of mercy. The opera carefully intermingles mercy and compassion, a combination which provides a transformation that can only come from the “imaginings of a sympathetic heart.”