relationship with her son; sexual conduct – her profane loves and incest; governance – the construction and ostentation of her city; tyranny – the excessive ambition for power; crime – the assassination of her lover in order to ascend to the throne. On the other hand, we must not forget Semiramis’s association with the city of Babylon, which the Greco-Roman authors claimed to have been founded and embellished by her. Therefore, appropriating the image of Semiramis was nothing more than a simple way to criticize or praise the exploits, excesses, and tyrannies of the absolute and monarchical powers that prevailed in Europe as well as to extrapolate about social injustices. The queen of ancient Assyria had everything to offer.
Already present in Manfredi and Virués were two central themes in the queen’s story: the sexual appetite she craved for her son and the murder of her husband/lover. These aspects would be recovered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with Desfontaines,15 Calderón,16 Crébillon, and Voltaire.17 When we reach the eighteenth century, there are three tragedies that stand out and that would influence later cinematographic compositions. The first is from Crébillon, Voltaire’s celebrated arch-enemy poet, who wrote the tragedy Sémiramis, first taken to the French stage in 1717. The French author focuses his plot on the murder of the husband carried out by the queen, who craved an incestuous love for her son.18 He adds important aspects to the story, such as the character of Belus,19 the one who intended to restore justice, and who would appear in other literary pieces. Years later, in 1748, Voltaire wrote his own Semiramis, intending to dethrone his rival. The Enlightenment philosopher created a woman stronger and more powerful than the one presented by Crébillon and, at the same time, made her more human by dividing the blame for the murder of the late Ninus with Assur, her lover, a character he introduced.20 Voltaire also recognized, contrary to what happened in Crébillon’s play, the queen’s final regret.21 Instead, in the latter’s plot, the queen never accepted her role as a mother.22 The Italian film La regina di Ninive (1911) by Luigi Maggi would follow this narrative closely, almost a century later, collecting the same ingredients as the murder of the husband, the son’s hideout, and the death of the mother, the regina, by his own hands. Although with different nomenclatures,23 the central story remains, focusing on the vile character of the queen, who kills her husband, just as she had done in Sémiramis (1911) by Camille de Morlhon, and on her disguise as a man to defend the honor of the city (Figure 2.2).
Figure 2.2 SéSémiramis, a film by Camille de Morlhon. Pathé frères, 1911. © Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé.
Between the tragedies of Crébillon and Voltaire, Italian Pietro Metastasio’s Semiramide riconosciuta was launched, first staged in Rome in 1729. Unlike some of his predecessors, Metastasio only uses in his tragedy the background of Diodorus Siculus’s and Justin’s accounts. The whole plot is pure invention, as evidenced by the introduction of characters like Scitalce, Idreno, Mirteo, Tamiri, or Sibari. Also contrary to what happens with his French counterparts, Metastasio does not attribute a violent character to Semiramis,24 relegating the acts of greater brutality to a past that is not part of the real time of the scene.25
Metastasio’s and Voltaire’s works correspond to those that were most often staged and adapted to librettos. The best-known opera on Semiramis is perhaps Rossini’s Semiramide, launched in 1823. The musical composition was inspired precisely by Voltaire’s tragedy. Of Metastasio’s play26 more than forty operas are known, from the one of Leonardo Vinci’s, dated to 1729, to that of Giaccomo Meyerbeer,27 dated to 1819; on his part, Voltaire’s work inspired operas such as the one of Marcos Portugal28 and the already mentioned Semiramide of Giacomo Rossini.29 Accordingly, we must analyze these two works in greater detail as they were the basis of future cinematographic adaptations; among these were gathered the main characters of the screenplays of pepla such as La regina di Ninive (1911), La Cortigiana di Babilonia (1954), or L’eroe di Babilonia (1963).
Between the libretto of Metastasio and the work of Voltaire several parallels can be drawn. Although kinship relations are altered, the subjects covered are the same. Themes such as betrayal and the fight between different factions within the court, mirrored in the excessive ambition of a high official or a competitor for power, are transversal to both authors. If in Metastasio’s work it is Sibari, confidant and hidden lover of Semiramis, who conspires against the queen,30 trying to make her fall from grace on suspicion of betrayal, in Voltaire’s it is the queen herself who, along with Assur, also her secret lover, plots against the Assyrian ruler, King Ninus.31 Sibari’s greed in the Italian’s work is thus transposed to the figures of Assur and Semiramis, with the French enlightenment writer clearly demonstrating the petulance of the famous queen. There is a moral aspect that is accentuated in 1749, certainly owing to the time when the narrative was written. Voltaire ends his play with a warning to future kings: “Que les crimes secrets ont les Dieux pour témoins;/Plus le coupable est grand, plus grande est le súplice;/Rois tremblez sur le thrône & craignez leur justice.”32
In addition, in Voltaire, the introduction of Arsace (the son Ninias who was thought to be dead) attenuates the queen’s most damning attitudes. At the end of the play the latter regrets her actions: “mort qui m’étoit due. (…) Je te pardonne tout.”33 The mother’s recognition of her son and vice versa is a crucial point in the plot, which to some extent alters the queen’s most negative impressions and gives her an obvious ambivalence. Over two centuries later, the film Io Semiramide (1963) by Primo Zeglio does not forget the importance of the heir to the throne and, although in the film he is still a minor and not Semiramis’s actual son (but merely her protégé, the king’s child), he is the one who makes possible the rise of the queen, as her tutor. In the end, it is up to him to grant Assyria a new destiny and glory after her death. In the screenplay, he also operates as an attenuating element. In the minor heir for whom Semiramis conceived a maternal affection, lay the hope of a new dawn. Ghelas, the monarch’s faithful confidant in the 1963 film, exhorts the boy to “ricorda Adath, cerca di essere degno di lei,”34 pursuing the same politics that the great ruler, according to his own opinion, had initiated.
Likewise, in La regina di Ninive (1911), the ruler of Nineveh’s son, named Assur, is similar in every aspect to the hero Arsace from Voltaire and Rossini. Just as in the play, upon the discovery of his true identity, it is up to him to assure the city’s administration. His mother’s accidental murder is the climax of the narrative, representing both the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. The life of the son of Semiramis, Ninyas, also inspired La vergine di Babilonia (1910), also by Luigi Maggi. However, this time it is not to exploit his kindness and the hope of his just government but to illustrate his dishonorable conduct. In fact, the screenplay seems to fall back to Diodorus Siculus when the historian indicates that “he spent all his time in the palace, seen by no one but his concubines and the eunuchs who attended him, and devoted his life to luxury and idleness.”35
As regards to other characters, we should stress that Mestatasio’s Sibari is transported to La Cortigiana di Babilonia (1954), by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, as a high official who conspires against the king’s life, similar to the way in which he conspired against the queen’s power in the seventeenth-century play. Both in the tragedy and in the film’s plot, it is the senior official who prepares a poisoned drink and devises the entire murder plan. Notwithstanding, he perceptively predicts that someone else will deliver the poisoned bowl or collect it from the ground after the victim falls due to the effect of the drink. In addition, the Semiramis who appears in La Cortigiana di Babilonia (1954), seems to be molded after Metastasio, who, in scene VI of the second act, recognizes her as “la Pastorella,”36 a simple and humble woman. Thus, in La Cortigiana di Babilonia (1954), although the good and naive shepherdess is charged with the death of the king of Assyria after innocently recovering the cup from the ground
