| “ | O monument! Open your recesses. Fling open your maw of darkness, even if blood should choke it! I am the ear and you the mouth: speak! | „ |
| ~ Barnaba at the end of his famous aria, dropping a letter revealing Enzo's escape into the Lion's Mouth. |
| “ | Stop! What mockery! Well ... you hate me ... and damned you die! Yesterday your mother insulted me! I drowned her! ... She hears no more! | „ |
| ~ Barnaba revealing he drowned Cieca in his final act of spite after Gioconda kills herself. |
Barnaba is the main antagonist of Amilcare Ponchielli's tragic 1876 opera La Gioconda. He is a Venetian minstrel who works as a secret spy for the Inquisition. Lusting after the titular street singer Gioconda, Barnaba is willing to do anything to have her, even if it means becoming the architect of her life's total destruction.
He was played by Gottardo Aldighieri in the opera's 1876 premiere. In the 1958 Giocinto Solito movie adaptation (known as The Fighting Prince in the US) he is played by Vittorio Vaser.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- He was a spy for the Venetian Inquisition who took pleasure in hunting down dissenting citizens and denouncing them to be imprisoned and killed, something he callously described as "picking off harmful gadflies".
- He lusted after the street singer Gioconda and attempted to assault her in the Square while she was out on a walk with her blind mother Cieca, forcing her to flee.
- To punish Gioconda for rejecting him, he accused her innocent mother Cieca of witchcraft, turning the crowd against her and nearly getting her tortured and burned at the stake.
- Discerning that Gioconda was in love with the banished nobleman Enzo Grimaldo, who was in love with Laura Adorno, the arranged wife of Inquisition leader Alvise Badoero, Barnaba tricked Enzo into eloping with Laura on the Dalmatian brigantine Hecate, secretly notifying Alvise of this escape.
- He held the scrivener Isepo in his thrall, having practically reduced him to the role of a slave.
- He led the Hecate into an Inquisition ambush after stealthily counting the ship had 80 men and boys aboard, which he described as "counting his dead", essentially sending the crew to their doom.
- The volley of cannon balls fired at the Hecate by the Inquisition galleys, as well as Enzo deciding it would be better to set the ship on fire and make an escape than fall into the hands of the enemy, resulted in the brigantine sinking as its sailors screamed of death and massacre.
- He captured Laura and delivered her to her husband Alvise's palace, wherein she was forced to commit suicide by consuming poison. While Gioconda changed the poison out with a narcotic that only gave the illusion of death, Laura died as far as Barnaba was aware.
- He threatened to execute both Enzo and Cieca if Gioconda didn't give her body to him. In so doing, Barnaba finally succeeded in crushing Gioconda's will entirely, and she submitted to him.
- Even then, he took her mother Cieca hostage, violently dragging her through a secret door.
- When alone with Gioconda in a ruined castle near the Orfano Canal, he ultimately attempted to rape her, which led her to stab herself to death in front of him.
- To make Gioconda suffer as much as possible in her final moments, Barnaba leaned over her body and sadistically revealed that he drowned her mother Cieca the night before merely for insulting him. He was enraged to discover Gioconda had died before she could hear this.
Trivia[]
- He is thus far one of the few operatic villains that is considered to be Pure Evil, alongside Vitellio Scarpia from Giacomo Puccini's Tosca and Iago, who is featured Gioachino Rossini's version and Giuseppe Verdi's version of Othello, both being operatic adaptations based on the Shakespearean play of the same name.
- Unlike Scarpia and Iago, Barnaba is not a Pure Evil character in the work from which La Gioconda was adapted, Victor Hugo's 1835 play Angelo, Tyrant of Padua. Rather, Barnaba is a unique villain, invented for the opera specifically.
- While a few productions play Barnaba's reaction to Gioconda's death as remorseful, the libretto does not support this, as it only describes him rushing out of the room in frustration.