ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 turns to the opera’s villain Vitellia, the author of the assassination-attempt against Tito executed by Sesto. It suggests how Vitellia’s anger and desire for revenge might have reminded a Catholic audience of Christian theological descriptions of sin as incurvature upon oneself through inordinate self-love (amor sui), pride (superbia), and the desire for domination (libido dominandi). These traits and her use of Sesto’s love to achieve her own political machinations would have made Vitellia appear to be another paradigmatic sinner. Over the course of the second act, however, the audience witnesses moments of grief and remorse—the first signs of what will eventually be Vitellia’s metanoia. For Catholics, her eventual conversion would have been more believable than many later commentators have been willing to acknowledge, because it is caused by the specter of Sesto’s substitutionary suffering on her behalf—a familiar soteriological trope in Christianity. A Catholic audience might have understood the vision of death in Vitellia’s Rondo towards the end of the opera as a mystical conversion experience and as a parable for the biblical claim that “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).
