Berenice (daughter of Herod Agrippa I) - Berenice in The Arts

Berenice in The Arts

From the 17th century to contemporary times, there has been a long tradition of works of art (novels, dramas, operas, etc.) devoted to Berenice and her affair with the Roman Emperor Titus. The list includes:

• Lettres de Bérénice à Titus (1642), a French novel by Madeleine de Scudéry
• Bérénice (1648–50), a French novel by Jean Regnauld de Segrais
• Tite (1660), a French drama by Jean Magnon
• Il Tito (1666), an Italian opera by Antonio Cesti (mus.) and Nicola Beregani (libr.)
• Bérénice (1670), a French drama by Jean Racine
• Tite et Bérénice (1670), a French drama by Pierre Corneille
• Titus and Berenice (1676), an English drama by Thomas Otway
• Tito e Berenice (1714), an Italian opera by Antonio Caldara (mus.) and Carlo Sigismondo Capace (libr.)
• Berenice (1725), an Italian opera by Giuseppe Maria Orlandini (mus.) and Benedetto Pasqualigo (libr.). Also set to music by Niccolò Vito Piccinni (1766)
• Tito e Berenice (1776), an Italian opera by Raimondo Mei (mus.) and Carlo Giuseppe Lanfranchi-Rossi (libr.)
• Tito e Berenice (1782), a ballet by Paolino Franchi (chor.)
• Tito; o, La partenza di Berenice (1790), a ballet by Domenico Maria Gaspero Angiolini (mus. and chor.)
• Tito e Berenice (1793), an Italian opera by Sebastiano Nasolini (mus.) and Giuseppe Maria Foppa (libr.)
• Tito che abbandona Berenice (1828), a painting by Giuseppe Bezzuoli
• Titus et Bérénice (1860), a French opera by Leon-Gustave-Cyprien Gastinel (mus.) and Edouard Fournier (libr.)
• Berenice (1890), a German novel by Heinrich Vollrat Schumacher
• Bérénice (1909), a French opera by Lucien-Denis-Gabriel-Alberic Magnard (mus. and libr.)
• Titus und die Jüdin (1911), a German drama by Hans Kyser
• Lost Diaries: From the Diary of Emperor Titus (1913), an English novel by Maurice Baring
• Bérénice, l’Hérodienne (1919), a French drama by Albert du Bois
• Bérénice (1920), incidental music by Marcel Samuel-Rousseau
• Berenice (1922), an English drama by John Masefield
• Bérénice (1934), a French parody by Noel Ouden
• Berinikah (1945), a Hebrew drama by Eisig Silberschlag and Carl de Haas
• Le reine de Césarée (1954), a French drama by Robert Brasillach
• Berenice, Princess of Judea (1959), an English novel by Leon Kolb
• Mission to Claudies (1963), an English novel by Leon Kolb
• Agrippa’s Daughter (1964), an English novel by Howard Melvin Fast
• La pourpre de Judée: ou, Les délices du genre humain (1967), a French novel by Maurice Clavel
• Bérénice (1968), a French TV-film by Piere-Alain Jolivet
• Tito y Berenice (1970), a Spanish drama by Rene Marques
• Bérénice (1983), a French TV-film by Raoul Ruiz
• Cross Triumphant, The (1898), a historical fiction novel by Florence M. Kingsley

The love story between Berenice and Titus is also the premise of La clemenza di Tito (1734), an Italian opera by Antonio Caldara (mus.) and Pietro Metastasio (libr.), later set to music by more than 40 other composers, including Johann Adolph Hasse (1735), Giuseppe Arena (1738), Francesco Corradini (1747), Christoph Willibald Gluck (1752), Andrea Adolfati (1753), Niccolò Jommelli (1753), Ignaz Holzbauer (1757), Vincenzo Legrezio Ciampi (1757), Gioacchino Cocchi (1760), Marcello Bernardini (1768), Andrea Bernasconi (1768), Pasquale Anfossi (1769), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1791). More recently it was used as the backdrop for the Caroline Lawrence novels the Assassins of Rome and the Enemies of Jupiter. Lindsey Davis mentions it, though without making it the central plot line in novels such as Saturnalia. It is also the stimulus for the new ballet piece by Kim Brandstrup, 'Invitus Invitam' which premiered in the Royal Opera House in October 2010.