The Plum'd Serpent: Antonio Borgese and Roger Sessions's ‘Montezuma”

The Spanish Conquest of Mexico provides stirring drama for an epic opera on an American subject It has been set by some 30 composers; the earliest is Graun's Montezuma (1755), and the best-known Spontini's Fernand Cortez, ou la Conquête de Mexique (1809). Antonio Borgese, a Sicilian who ‘fell in love with the English language’, retold the epic story to music by Roger Sessions.How did such an unlikely alliance—a Sicilian poet, an American composer, and Mexican history—come about? Sessions first met Antonio Borgese in 1934 in his home town of Hadley, Massachusetts, when Borgese was teaching at Smith College. In 1935 Borgese made a trip to Mexico, where he was overwhelmed by the early history of that country; on his return, he proposed collaborating on an opera on the subject, although he had never written a libretto. Sessions knew nothing of Mexico's history, but did possess a first edition of Prescott's Conquest of Mexico given to his grandfather, possibly by Prescott himself. Sessions read the Prescott and Bernal Diaz's account, and he too became enthralled. Borgese wisely advised against Sessions's proposed title, Tenochtitlan, arguing, ‘The opera is written for titans; we don't need a title for titans, too’. Instead, he suggested the title Montezuma.