Indeed, collusion within the court is a theme present in both La Cortigiana di Babilonia (1954) and Io Semiramide (1963). The power games and the poisoned bowl through which the king’s ruin is forged provide for the imposition of new powers. In Io Semiramide (1963) it is Semiramis herself who decides to put an end to her lover, handing the cup with poison to the suitor to the throne, named Kir. She thus prevents him from sharing the throne with her, which would make her a mere consort and not a queen de facto as she would be as regent for the late king’s son. The love that seemed to have guided the relationship between the two ends up succumbing to the ambitions of a Semiramis blinded by power.
As we can see, Italian cinema resorted several times to the past, to literature, and to opera to compose its narratives. As in previous centuries, Semiramis appeared as a perfect model for exploring aspects of contemporary society, as we will analyze in Chapters 7 and 8.
2.2.2 Sardanapalus, Myrrah and Their Fateful Destiny
Contrary to what happens with Semiramis, there is no literary and/or musical narrative in which Sardanapalus is presented in a positive way,37 although Byron adorns him with a mixture of affability and affection. One of the first musicals about the Assyrian king, dated from 1678, with libretto by Carlo Maderni and music by Domenico Freschi, summarizes the legendary character as follows: “Sardanapalo ultimo re degli Assiri fu un mostro il più lascivo di sfrenata libidine, che vivesse al suo tempo.”38 This image is reflected in all the works that follow. In fact, we can say that Sardanapalus contrasted with Semiramis in the fact that the queen, although lustful and ambitious, was an example of governance. The last king of Nineveh is in the antipodes of the courage demonstrated by his female counterpart, refusing even to preserve the authority of his dynastic lineage and to fight for his Assyria.
From Freschi’s opera, deeply inspired by Justin’s account,39 lust and eroticism stand out, two aspects that during 1647 were inseparable from a theatrical genre more close to comedy. Thus, Sardanapalus was gradually transformed into a caricature, an archetype of the eastern ruler. His persona was often used as a metaphor to characterize the excesses and lack of zeal that raged here and there in the European courts and within aristocracy. So, diverging from Semiramis, the tragic heroine par excellence, Sardanapalus’s story led to a less dramatic genre such as parody.40
Although other operas and tragedies from the seventeenth41 century based on Sardanapalus’s life are known, it is in the first quarter of the nineteenth century that the most famous composition about the king of Assyria appears, written by Lord Byron and published in 1821. Inspired by his work, several other operas and ballets42 were composed and produced during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The English author collects much of the narrative from Diodorus Siculus’s Bibliotheca Historica, but summarizes the action of his play in just one day. It is in this space of time that the fate of Assyria is played out.
Byron’s Sardanapalus, which would also influence cinema, namely Italian, with the films Sardanapalo Re dell’Assiria (1910) by Giuseppe de Liguoro and Le sette folgori di Assur (1962) by Silvio Amadio, develops around the character that gives name to the play and his affections. The English poet describes him as “brave (though voluptuous as history represents him) – and also as amicable,”43 at the same time distancing him and approaching him to the archetype of king in Victorian society. Notwithstanding, despite this description, the whole speech he places in Sardanapalus's mouth evokes a philosophy of life that, instead of being based on bravery and warlike strength, was based on the pleasures of the body. He is the monarch who cherishes “lascivious tinklings”44 and who speaks in “softening voices.”45 Thus, although amicable, Sardanapalus was still the eternal “man-queen.”46
But Byron’s greatest contribution to Sardanapalus’s story is the introduction of Myrrah, the king’s favorite who would suffer the same fateful destiny as him. The love expressed by both and the complicity they share in the play sometimes overlaps the bitterness of the fate for which they are precipitated. This slave and the love she stirs is also a central theme in Sardanapalo Re dell’Assiria (1910). Myrrah composes Sardanapalus’s character, asserting herself as his counterpart. The masculinity that Byron47 attributes to her, thus complementing the king’s femininity, as well as her frequent exhortations and advices to fight, prevent Assyria from falling without first facing the enemy in combat.48
Plus, in addition to the fire already present in Diodorus, Byron also adds to the final destruction of Nineveh a storm and the sudden rise of the river’s waters, gathering an overwhelming fury in the destruction of the city. This image is mirrored in Le sette folgori di Assur (1962), a film that places the emphasis of the city’s fall on an unthinkable act of Sardanapalus, which leads him to destroy the statue of his main god. Although very different from the typical Greek Sardanapalus,49 the character in the film also capitulates prior to the last battle and in face of the raging waters, leaving the city at the mercy of its misfortune. In Le sette folgori di Assur (1962), the slave Myrrah (Mirra played by Jocelyn Lane) is also the key element in the dramatic story of the Assyrian court, creating a love triangle between the two ruling brothers, Sardanapalo and Shamash. This loving relationship is associated with the events that precipitate the ruin of Assyria.
The fact that Myrrah represents, in Byron’s imaginary, the Greek world, being described as an Ionian slave, is a fundamental aspect to understanding the play. She is the positive element, associated with the heroism and militarism50 inherent to a ruler. As in antiquity, at the time when the English poet released his play, the West was struggling with the East, and the liberation of Greece from the Turkish yoke was demanded.51 Therefore, Myrrah’s exhortations in Sardanapalus give voice to the European society of the time. Her qualities, while values that could be considered Europeanist/Western, contrast with those of the effeminate eastern monarch, in an optic that denotes the overpowering, and perhaps imperialist, position of the European powers (England/Italy/France) vis-à-vis their opponent, the Ottoman empire. We had previously referred to this logic regarding Ercole contro i tiranni di Babilonia (1964). Furthermore, the whole speech that Byron puts in the mouth of the Greek concubine evokes this conception. Is it not, in fact, she who suggests that the king is threatened and “hated of his own barbarians?”52 The expression own is very significant of the dialectic we/the others that we have previously analyzed.
The behavior and sensibilities of Myrrah and Sardanapalus are the key points of the Byronian play. In effect, in Sardanapalus, the English author chooses to focus on the character, on personal identity, and not so much on social values or codes.53 Plus, his opus presents a very obscure and synthetic representation of the ancient city of Nineveh. Byron’s option certainly had something to do with the state of ignorance experienced at the beginning of the nineteenth century regarding ancient Assyria. But although the author was strongly opposed to the representation of his tragedy on the stage, after his death it ended up being performed in Victorian theaters, especially after the discoveries made by Henry Layard, which led to the identification of ancient Nineveh.54 Therefore, the scenarios that appear, for example, in the productions of Kean55 or Calvert,56 attest to a Nineveh that is no longer the shadowed and uncharacterized city of Byron, but one depicted in the image of the testimonies of the English archaeological campaigns in Mesopotamian lands.
The main objective of the plot gradually ceases to be the king’s behavior to focus itself on the hot topic of the time – England’s ability to assert itself as a centralizing and channeling power of the heritage of the past.57 In the twentieth century as well, historical reconstructions are concerned with transporting the viewer to the old culture, the old customs, the old architecture – in the end, the old city. The film sets are composed of multiple elements that
