Verdi - Otello (Madrid, 2016)

Giuseppe Verdi - Otello

Teatro Real, Madrid - 2016

David Alden, Renato Palumbo, Ermonela Jaho, Gemma Coma-Alabert, Gregory Kunde, Alexey Dolgov, Vicenç Esteve, George Petean, Fernando Radó, Isaac Galán

Opera Platform - 27 September 2016

It doesn't matter how good a composer is and how skilled the adaptation, any opera version of a Shakespeare is necessarily going to lack the finesse and poetry of the original. Among some notable attempts however Verdi's Otello is rightly acknowledged to be among the very best, but even Verdi's musical sophistication and Boito's poetic reworking of the plot and its themes can't translate the full measure of Shakespeare's language. Not that it should have to; Verdi's Otello is a masterpiece in its own right.  Any performance however - whether this story is told as an opera or as a drama - will only as good as the creative artists and the performers involved.

David Alden's production of Otello in Madrid is one such account of the work that demonstrates the musical and dramatic qualities of Verdi's opera and the challenges that exist in delivering them. Alden even attempts to bring a little bit of poetic flair to the stage and there is enough poetry in Verdi's music for there to be room for expressive gestures. It can be quite difficult however to reconcile all the variations of character between Shakespeare and Verdi without a firm sense of purpose, and almost inevitably Alden's production is a little too uneven in its application and inconsistent in what it is trying to draw out of the characters and the situation.

In terms of paying attention to what Verdi is bringing out in the music however, Alden is almost faultless in setting the tone of each scene. It's all about choosing what to illustrate or emphasise. Act I of Otello is a masterful blend of mood, drama and emotion that very quickly - without even time for a traditional overture - establishes character and the range of human emotions and interests that are to come into violent conflict - love, jealousy, ambition and revenge. What is needed to set them into confrontation is an agent of havoc, willing to exploit the weak and the gullible.

The agent in question of course is Iago, and Alden no less than Verdi or Boito recognise that defining his particular mindset and motivations is vital. Boito of course famously goes further even than Shakespeare with the introduction of Iago's 'Credo' of philosophical nihilism. Whether this approach is valid or not, it does at least represent a setting out of a position and Verdi and Boito follow through on it. Alden is less successful, but then it's by no means easy to unpick or adjust emphasis away from this key tenet of the opera.

As far as Act I goes however, everything works wonderfully in the Madrid production. Renato Palumbo drives Verdi's score marvellously with attention to the emotional detail as well as the overall dramatic force of the work. Alden's introduction of a female dancer to stir up the excitable sailors and choreograph the fight scene with shadow boxing movement does seem a little overplayed, but in many ways it captures the sense of Iago's scheming, plotting and attempting to control violent and unpredictable forces. Or at least that's how I read it, but it's not something that is really followed through in the subsequent Acts and scenes.

The mood however is quite different in the subsequent Acts, and if Alden relies more on the conventional stage and lighting techniques, it at least matches the dramatic action well. Act II is dark and sombre, and Act III with the arrival of the Venetian delegation is unexpectedly funereal, picking up on the dark undertones of the underlying tensions that have been created. It looks fabulous, with the seemingly arbitrary early 20th century period of the costumes that appears to be a favourite of the director, at least looking stylish and elegant. Even though all this and the final Act take place within a single set that looks something like a troops barracks on Cyprus, Alden does enough with the opening and closing of the doors and using light and darkness (Desdemona always bathed in light) to ensure that it's versatile enough for every situation.

The second half of Otello perhaps needs a little more direction than this, certainly in terms of who the characters are and how they react to the escalating tensions. There's more reliance on the performers to get this across and, by and large, the cast give strong individual performances that also complement the musical accompaniment. Conducting the Madrid orchestra, Renato Palumbo directs a performance that is full of sound and fury (to mix Verdi-Shakespearean references), finding the subtle nuance within each character, but also allowing the dramatic force of those emotions to assert their dominance once they have been unleashed into conflict with one another.

Much like Don Carlo, Otello can be a tremendously challenging work for singers, but one which can be highly rewarding when it has capable singers who are able to engage with it. It can also be a work that interestingly demonstrates the respective strengths and weaknesses of a singer's voice, and that's the case with the cast assembled here in Madrid. Gregory Kunde is one of the great dramatic Rossinians, capable even in the more testing arena of grand opera. Verdi is another challenge altogether, but Kunde acquits himself well. His Otello is one who is a victim of his own tormented mind, a warrior at war with himself, and Kunde takes the role with his usual commitment and personality. If certainly tested, it's nonetheless a fine performance.

That is also the case with Ermonela Jaho's Desdemona. The Albanian soprano has shown herself capable of tackling challenging roles like Suor Angelica and even Violetta Valery, and even if this exposes a little weakness in the middle range, it's a fully committed performance that again captures the anguish of an unjustly mistreated woman. Whether there should be more to Desdemona than this however, it didn't entirely come across under Alden's direction. Much hinges on the part that the scheming Iago plays in the opera and George Petean's capable performance exuded more calculating confidence than mindless malice. Alden doesn't seem to permit any over-playing of the role, but if that means that the work loses some of its bite, the tragic outcome is no less effective for it.

Links: Opera Platform, Teatro Real

Rossini - Semiramide (Munich, 2017)

Gioachino Rossini - Semiramide

Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich - 2017

Michele Mariotti, David Alden, Joyce DiDonato, Alex Esposito, Daniela Barcellona, Lawrence Brownlee, Elsa Benoit, Galeano Salas, Igor Tsarkov, Simone Alberghini

Staatsoper TV Live - 26 February 2017

It seems to me that the Bavarian State Opera have been much more successful in striking a balance between fidelity to the original intentions of an opera and a more modernised approach to presentation, where in the past they might have been a bit more radical and hit-and-miss. The production of Rossini's lengthy opera seria Semiramide with its setting in antiquity was however always going to be a good testing ground to see if the high standard set so far this season could be maintained. Happily, David Alden's production is perfectly pitched, and with an outstanding cast of Rossinian singers, this was an impressive account of a challenging work.

Challenging certainly as far as singing is concerned (with Joyce DiDonato playing the Assyrian Queen, you would feel that this critical element at least is well catered for), but challenging also in as far as striking a balance between the political machinations of Ancient Assyria and the traditional overheated romantic complications that are tied up in it. The director can't just indiscriminately impose a nice balanced viewpoint either - as directors might have done at this Munich opera house in the past - but needs to take into consideration the nature of Rossini's musical treatment, which does tend to exert a strong force and intent of its own.

So what does Rossini set out to achieve in Semiramide? Well, it's an opera seria written in 1823, the composer's last work in Italy before he moved to Paris, taking his work to a new level that would effectively influence the structure and tone of Italian opera for rest of the century. Semiramide can then be seen as the last of an older style of opera not that far removed from those of the 18th century, a style of opera fast growing out of fashion even then. It's as if Gluck's opera reforms had never happened, and as far as Italian opera is concerned the new rules never really applied, as the Rossini style would provide a direction for the opera seria form to morph into the even more extravagant style of bel canto.

What can already be seen in Semiramide however is Rossini's own method of expanding the set subjects of the older form into something involving far more dramatic expression. Instead of arias we have more confrontational duets, and the chorus is not there to comment on the situation but becomes the voice of the people involved and implicated in the dramatic events. Rossini's musical underscoring only intensifies the emotional charge and conductor Michele Mariotti brings all those familiar techniques out wonderfully with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. The racing rhythms are already in place, the melodies, the pizzicato plucked strings building into marching rhythms that speeding up into winding wild spins and crashing crescendos. It's not as sophisticated as Rossini's later work for Paris, but it's still highly effective.

The drama in Semiramide however remains a challenge, even with such music to probe the underlying dramatic tensions and conflict. Like most opera seria, the subject is not so much a political power struggle as a romantic melodrama with family complications. To sum the long opera up in a few lines, the Queen Semiramide is expected to hand power over to her consort Assur, the general who helped her murder her husband, the ruler King Nino. Semiramide however stuns everyone by announcing that she will marry the war hero Arsace, not realising that Arsace is actually her missing son, Ninia, nor - in true opera seria tradition - caring about the romantic complications this might cause for others. The turn of events force King Nino's ghost to rise from the grave to demand vengeance from Arsace who, when he discovers his true identity, knows who is the villain he must kill.

With a ghost scene, a mad scene (Assur furious to the point of derangement at Semiramide's rejection), religious intoning and dramatic revelations accompanied by peals of thunder, Rossini certainly ups the stakes of the opera seria, pointing the way towards not only bel canto but grand opera. David Alden's production captures perfectly this sense of something old given a new twist. Paul Steinberg's sets of elegant rooms with adjustable walls and large family portraits, convey a sense of shifting arrangements within a rich, corrupt family. That's the dominant tone, but there is room for the grand gestures that come out in Rossini's music, with a large statue of King Nino towering over several scenes in a display of power, and pictures moving and coming to life during the more melodramatic revelation scenes.

With the emphasis on home and family, what comes across more effectively in Semiramide is the underlying sense of love being a more important factor than power. Those who aspire to power without knowing true love end up the worse for their ambitions, eaten up with frustrations, their families torn apart by their desire for revenge. It's family as society as well then, and the chorus likewise have a large part to play in the drama as the citizens witnessing the upheaval that is taking place within the royal family. As far as Semiramide is concerned, it does soften how she is portrayed since there is love there for Arsace, which even though it is misplaced is transformed in an almost redemptive fashion when she becomes aware of his true identity.

Like any good director then, Alden's job is to be true to the story and the personalities as Rossini might have intended, respecting the work for the time it was written, but still making it appealing to a modern audience. Alden acknowledges the history and the location with a few nods in the costumes, but sets it more within what he describes as a combination of North Korea and modern Middle East. There's no need for historical reconstruction here; it's an opera. What matters more is that everything is geared towards drawing out the themes by whatever means necessary and giving the appropriate space for the music and the singers to elaborate upon those distinctive elements that Rossini specifically brings to the opera medium.

Which brings us to Joyce DiDonato. Now there's a singer who is more than capable of doing justice to Rossini's terrific writing for the voice for the role of Semiramide, Queen of Assyria. And it's not just her singing ability and the quality of the voice, which should already be very well-known. What is just as important is that there is 'presence' there too, the essential star quality that is necessary to carry a role like this and do justice to the vocal challenges and to the complexity that it reveals within the character. She assumes the role of the Queen brilliantly, looking every inch the diva, carrying the extravagances of the drama with complete authority and conviction. Without this kind of interpretation the opera would be a much lesser work in performance. Fortunately, it really doesn't get much better than this.

It's an excellent cast all round however, many of them experienced Rossinians. Alex Esposito sings comfortably within the bass role of Assur, but he still has a tendency to overplay the eye-rolling villain. It feels more like he is performing than really inhabiting the role. Assur admittedly isn't as nuanced a character as Semiramide and does go full-blown crazy, but Rossini's music makes this plain enough without additional emphasis being required. Daniela Barcellona is superb as Arsace, another challenging role that really needs a contralto voice and it's the kind of trouser role that Barcellona specialises in. Rossini generously gives lovely pieces to all the leads, which gives Lawrence Brownlee the opportunity to shine as Idreno. Elsa Benoit also makes a good impression staggering around as a confused Azema, but even Galeano Salas's Mitrane and Simone Alberghini's Oroe have their moments and take them well. The chorus work too is just tremendous, and the Bayerische Staatsoper just continue to go from strength to strength.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV

Verdi - Un Ballo in Maschera

Giuseppe Verdi - Un Ballo in Maschera

The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2012

Fabio Luisi, David Alden, Sondra Radvanovsky, Kathleen Kim, Stephanie Blythe, Marcelo Alvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Keith Miller, David Crawford

The Met Live in HD, 8th December 2012

Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) is an opera of wild dynamism, marrying together scenes of jarring contrasts in a way that makes it difficult opera to stage dramatically and musically in any coherent or consistent way.  It certainly not an opera I've seen handled convincingly on the stage, but David Alden's production for the Metropolitan Opera, if it doesn't quite bring it all together, at least points towards a way that might work.  Not playing it entirely straight, not playing it up for laughs either, but playing it scene by scene the way Verdi wrote it.

Quite what Verdi's true intentions for the work were is of course open to speculation.  The work, originally entitled Gustavo III, based on the real-life historical assassination of King Gustav III at a Masked Ball in Sweden in 1792, was notoriously banned by the strict censorship laws of the period in revolutionary Risorgimento Italy, who were unhappy about the depiction of an assassination of a monarch, forcing Verdi to rewrite and rename the characters involved.  Even then, the changes applied to the new version, called Una Vendetta in Dominò, weren't enough to appease the censors in Naples, so a furious Verdi took the work to Rome where it was first performed with the setting changed to Boston in North America as Un Ballo in Maschera in 1859.  The work is now performed, as it is here at the Met, in its original Swedish setting, but clearly Verdi was forced or felt the need to make compromises to the work in order to avoid censorship even in Rome.

None of this however is likely to have had much of an impact on Verdi's choices for the musical scoring of the piece and, seeking to show off his range and work with musical arrangements and arias more along the lines of La Traviata than the more through compositional style that he was gradually moving towards, Un Ballo in Maschera consequently has some of the composer's most beautiful melodies, striking arrangements and dramatic situations.  Every dramatic situation is pushed to its emotional limits - whether it's the love of Gustavo for Amelia, the wife of his secretary, the friendship of Gustavo and Renato which is to fall apart on the discovery of the affair, or the hatred felt by the king's adversaries - all of it is characterised by Verdi with an extravagance of passion.

An extravagance of melody too which, accompanying the melodramatic developments of the plot's regal and historical intrigue, to say nothing of incidents involving gypsy fortune tellers, can lead the work to switch dramatically at a moment's notice between the most romantic of encounters to the deepest gloom, from declarations of love to dire threats of vengeance.  The key to presenting the work coherently - if it's at all possible - is to try to ensure that these moments don't jar, and with Fabio Luisi conducting the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera here, musically this was a much more fluent and consistent piece than it might otherwise have been, without there being any alteration or variation to the essential tone of the work.

Inevitably, any director is going to look for a consistency of style in the approach to the stage direction, but that's probably a mistake with this work.  It's not a mistake that David Alden makes.  I must admit, having seen Alden's fondly humorous day-glo productions of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Handel's Deidamia, I had a suspicion that Alden might settle for playing up the camp comic side of Un Ballo in Maschera - which is certainly there and probably a more convincing way of playing the work than attempting to do it completely straight if the Madrid Teatro Real production is anything to go by - but I was wrong.  Alden plays every single scene in accordance with the tone established by Verdi, light in some places, thunderingly dramatic and brooding in others, but always operating hand in hand with Fabio Luisi to ensure that this can be made to work musically and dramatically.

Where the staging has consistency of theme and a consideration for a meaningful context for the work however, was in Alden's typically stylish and stylised production designs, created here by set designer Paul Steinberg and costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel.  Evoking a turn of the twentieth century setting that takes the work entirely out of its historical context (notwithstanding the personages reverting to their original Swedish names), the production had the appearance of a Hollywood Musical melodrama, as lavishly stylised as a Bette Davis melodrama, but consistent within its own worldview, and it worked splendidly on this level.  The set was a little overworked in places, with dramatic boxed-in angles and heavy Icarus symbolism in a prominent painting, but it clearly responded to the nature of the work, playing more to the sophistication that's there in the music than the often ludicrous libretto.  Alden however even found a way to incorporate this into the production with little eccentric touches - such as the eye-rolling madness of Count Horn, which is not a bad idea.

Similar consideration was given towards the singing and the dramatic performances of the cast assembled here, which was - as it needs to be - forceful and committed.  The combination of voices was also well judged, the Met bringing together a few Verdi specialists well-attuned to the Verdi line - Marcelo Álvarez (who I've seen singing the role of Gustavo/Riccardo before), Sondra Radvanovsky and lately, Dmitri Hvorostovsky - all of them strong singers in their own right, but clearly on the same page as far as the production was concerned.  A few regular Met all-rounders like Stephanie Blythe and Kathleen Kim also delivered strong performances in the lesser roles of Madame Arvidsson and Oscar that really contributed significantly to the overall dynamic.  This was strong casting that brought that much needed consistency to a delicately balanced work where one weak element could bring the whole thing down.

Alden and Luisi were clearly aware of this and played to the strengths of the charged writing for these characters.  Act II's duet between Álvarez and Radvanovsky was excellent, hitting all the right emotional buttons, each of the characters delving deeply to make something more of the characters than is there on the page of the libretto.  Hvorostovsky brought a rather more tormented intensity to Renato in his scenes with Radvanovsky's Amelia that seemed a little overwrought, but this paid off in how it made the highly charged final scene work.  Un Ballo in Maschera is still a problematic work, but with Luisi and Alden's considered approach and this kind of dramatic involvement from the singers, the qualities of the opera were given the best possible opportunity to shine.

Handel - Deidamia

George Frideric Handel - Deidamia

De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam 2012

Ivor Bolton, David Alden, Sally Matthews, Veronica Cangemi, Olga Pasichnyk, Silvia Tro Santafé, Andrew Foster-Williams, Umberto Chiummo, Jan-Willen Schaafsma

Opus Arte

There has been some terrific work done in recent years in terms of critical editions, in the development and playing of period instruments and through inventive stage productions, all of which have gone some way to revive even the most obscure of Handel’s operas and help restore the composer’s reputation to the place it deserves. There was however a reason why the Baroque form of opera seria went out of fashion, consigning all but a few of Handel’s operas to obscurity for several hundred years. They can be frightfully dull.

Even Handel, towards the end of career, moved away from the overly restrictive conventions of the form in preference for the oratorio, but even his late operas show a diminishing of interest and invention, and they would certainly have appeared as rather old fashioned by the time that Gluck’s reforms and Mozart’s invention took the form into a dynamic new direction. Written in 1741, Handel’s last opera, Deidamia - which only ran for three performances - is not the most involving work by the composer in its subject or treatment. With its classical theme, limited dramatic action and interaction, it might as well be an oratorio, composed as it is around da capo arias, brief recitative and the occasional duet. On the other hand, it’s still Handel, and with a little involvement and invention, even the driest of Handel’s opera serias can be enhanced with a strong and sympathetic production.

There’s a tendency to take Handel very seriously indeed, but his works are littered with comic references and many of his classical opera seria works - Flavio, Partenope and even Serse can be seen as playing with or even parodying the form. Robert Carsen recognised this in his Glyndebourne production of Rinaldo, and David Alden likewise approaches Deidamia the only way that would make it watchable for a modern audience, by exaggerating the humour that is very much a part of Handel’s musical palette and certainly a part of this opera. The influence of Neapolitan opera buffa shows clearly in the situation that Handel develops through a minor figure in the story of the Greek-Trojan war, and - much like Mozart would do in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and later to perfection in Le Nozze di Figaro - Handel recognises that there’s lots of humour to be derived from hidden identities and cross-dressing. It’s evident immediately from the moment that Deidamia, on the island of Scyros, expresses her frustration that her lover - the great hero Achilles - is unable to keep in character in his female disguise. Having been sent there by his father to hide - an oracle having warned him of Achilles fate should he join the war with Troy - Achilles is disguises as a young girl, Pyrrha. Instead of picking flowers and doing some needlework, Achilles is unable to resist his red-blooded masculine urges and is off in the woods hunting wild animals.

In David Alden’s production for the De Nederlandse Opera - beautifully stylised as well as humorously inclined - Achilles (a trouser role, just to add to the confusion and humour about the nature of the character) stomps onto the stage at this moment in a frilly pink dress throwing air punches, a bloody deer carcass slung over his shoulder with what looks like a few bits chomped out of it by the Greek warrior in his predatory zeal. It’s evidently not the image that Pyrrha should be projecting, particularly since Ulysses/Odysseus has just arrived in Scyros. Ulysses (disguised as Antilochus) has managed to gain the support and warships of the Scyros’ ruler Lycomedes in the war against Troy for the abduction of Helen, but he has heard reports that Achilles is on the island and is currently looking for him. Ulysses however is not blind to the charms of Deidamia (and with Sally Matthews sporting a series of attractive swimsuits in this production, it’s not difficult to see why), and Deidamia for her part is inevitably flattered by his attentions, which only enrages the headstrong Achilles when he observes them flirting with each other from his hiding place.

Deidamia then, apart from the classical Trojan war subject populated by figures of mythological standing, is an opera that is filled of lovers who express their woes in anguished da capo arias - “You are unfaithful, you do not love me” and “You have robbed me of my happiness” are sentiments expressed here and there are others along the same lines. That’s not to say that some of the arias aren’t exquisitely beautiful - it’s still Handel after all - and, to take Odysseus’ ‘Perdere il bene amato‘ as an example, capable of expressing genuine feeling and emotion, particularly when it is sung as finely as it is here by Silvia Tro Santafé. That’s the great strength of Alden’s production - it might look tongue-in-cheek and visually stylised with little concession to reality - but it doesn’t neglect to give Handel’s beautiful musical arrangements the expression they deserve, and with Ivor Bolton conducting the Concerto Köln wonderfully through this elegant score, there’s not much chance of it being anything but respectful and attuned to all the colours of the work.

And, despite being an opera seria, despite the repetition of the aria da capo arrangements, Deidamia is indeed a colourful work that blends the humour and parody of the situation with some genuine expressions of beauty and feeling. Appropriately then, the actual set designs are equally colourful, elegant and beautiful in their simplicity. You could even see the three main characters reflected in the three acts. Deidamia’s nature is exotic, based around a tropical island theme of Act I, the little island of Scyros an Aegean paradise surrounded by a limpid sea that reflects the sun-tinted blooms of cloud in its clear blue skies. Achilles’ wild and untameable nature is reflected in the jungle of Act II, while the Greek classicism and nobility of Ulysses is the theme of the third act’s developments. There’s maybe nothing naturalistic about the sets or the costumes - submarines that convey the Greeks to the island where they hop off and walk along the reflective surface of the sea - but it relates to the characters well and looks simply gorgeous from whatever angle it is viewed (and it is beautifully filmed here on this BD release). There are more than enough reasons in Handel’s music alone for this lesser work to be of considerable interest, but Alden’s stunning sets and the stylised costumes enhance the majesty and beauty in the music even further. And the comedy.

The combination of Handel, Bolton and Alden provides good enough reason alone, but the best reason for watching this production is for the singing performances. There are a few weaker elements in the cast - Victoria Cangemi’s Nerea isn’t always capable of sustaining a pure line and has a tendency to come apart on the high notes, and Umberto Chiummo’s Lycomedes isn’t the steadiest either - but in the three main roles where it counts, the performances are utterly delightful. There are considerable singing challenges in the roles of Deidamia, Ulysses and Achilles, which are compounded by the three of them having to find a way of bringing these character’s fairly routine sentiments to life and work together dramatically. Silvia Tro Santafé, I mentioned earlier brings a forcefulness of expression and depth of sentiment that is perfectly matched by beauty and lightness of Sally Matthews’ nonetheless robust singing and her eye-catching performance, each of them further contrasted by Olga Pasichnyk performance of Achilles’ impetuous masculine vigour and enthusiasm. Although the aria form doesn’t give much of an opportunity for these characters to interact, the strength of Handel’s work is in providing just such a contrast of personalities, situations and emotional tones, and this cast really makes that work in a way that is simply spellbinding.

Beautifully staged, with wonderful colour schemes and lighting, this spectacle looks outstanding in High Definition on Blu-ray, but the HD audio tracks are most impressive. There’s a brightness and clarity and luxuriousness of tone in both the PCM stereo and the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mixes that really highlights the qualities of the period instruments in a Baroque orchestra. Directed by Ivor Bolton, the qualities of the score, the construction and rhythm of the music are all the more apparent and impressive. The BD also has an interesting 24-minute featurette that looks behind-the-scenes at the music and stage rehearsals, interviewing those involved, as well as a Cast Gallery. The booklet examines the themes in Handel’s work in more depth and there’s a full synopsis. The disc is all-region, BD50, Full HD, with subtitles in English, French, German and Dutch only.

Monteverdi - L’incoronazione di Poppea

Claudio Monteverdi - L’incoronazione di Poppea

Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona 2009

Harry Bicket, David Alden, Miah Persson, Sarah Connolly, Jordi Domenèch, Franz-Josef Selig, Maite Beaumont, Ruth Rosique, Dominique Visse, Guy de Mey, William Berger, Judith van Wanroij, Francisco Vas, Josep Miquel Ramón, Marisa Martins, Olatz Saitua

Opus Arte

As if it’s not enough to be attributed with inventing opera itself – the first through-composed work being L’Orfeo in 1607 – Monteverdi advanced the artform even further with his last work, L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643), written at the age of 76. Previously operas were based only on classic mythological subjects – opera being a 17th century attempt to return to the ideals of Ancient Greek drama, which was then believed to have had a musical form – but, having moved into public theatres, and no longer a diversion for royalty and nobility, L’incoronazione di Poppea would be the first opera to deal with a historical subject and real people. The composer (there is still uncertainty about the authorship of the work, some believing that parts of the work at least may have been written by one of Monteverdi’s students) takes full advantage of this fact, revelling in the possibilities of extending the qualities associated with the musical-dramatic form to show less elevated and more down-to-earth human behaviour.

Directing Monteverdi’s final opera for the Liceu in Barcelona in 2009, David Alden emphasises this aspect in his colourful, modernised production (first produced in Munich in 1997) which certainly takes liberties with the characters and the setting to draw out the bawdiness and humour that is undoubtedly a part of the work, while Harry Bicket’s sensitive conducting of the Liceu’s Baroque orchestra finds the delicacy and sensitivity that it also part of the make-up of the human historical figures caught up in the drama of Nero’s reign in Rome around AD72. It’s a tricky proposition not only to achieve that magnificent balance, but also to find a way to make a 350 year-old work as vital and meaningful to a modern audience as it would have been to its original intended public. There’s no one right way to this, but it helps if you can achieve some balance between the traditional and the modern that captures the spirit of the work.

For Monteverdi, the Prologue to the opera sets out this clash between classicism and modernity in his new approach to representing historical drama in opera, where the typically allegorical figures of Virtue and Fortune battle it out for supremacy only to concede that it’s Love that holds greater sway in human affairs. In this story of revenge, infidelity, murder, lies and deceit, Virtue really doesn’t get a look in. Within this framework, away from the classical allusions to gods and mythological figures, Monteverdi finds a whole new wealth of emotions and personalities – most of them not entirely noble or honourable – to be explored through his innovative musical approach to continuo instrumentation, recitative and arioso. Busenello’s libretto also revels in the irreverence of the satire of these historical figures and the scandalous behaviour depicted, and, in its own way, Alden’s production taps into this for its rich vein of humour and presents it in a way which may be more meaningful to a modern audience.

If that approach at times resembles that of a Carry On film, that’s perhaps not as inappropriate as it sounds for this particular work. There is a great deal of sauciness in how Monteverdi and Busenello treat the scandalous behaviour of Nero’s infidelities and Poppea’s scheming. There is real passion in the seductive lines in which Nero and the music describe the hold that Poppea has over him, and there is some suggestiveness and homoeroticism in Nero and Lucan’s drunken celebration at having overthrown the stabilising influence of Seneca, but the activities of the Emperor and his affair with Poppea seems to promote a general licentiousness and scheming elsewhere among their associates. Brought together in this way, if Drusilla were to ask Ottone “Is that an axe in your trousers or are you just pleased to see me?”, or Nero to exclaim, “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in f’ me!”, it wouldn’t be any more out of place than what is actually suggested there in the music and the libretto itself.

That’s essentially how Alden approaches this aspect of the work, using incongruity to play up the humour in the situation. Hence we have Roman soldiers lolling about on a red leather sofa-bed, much play on the cross-dressing and travesti roles (Nero is usually played by a female soprano, as it is here, but it can be done with a tenor), and obvious visual jokes such as the page Valletto being dressed as an old-fashioned hotel pageboy from 1930s movies, and the Nurse dressed in – yes, you guessed it – a medical uniform. The production creates a recognisable environment then for the modern viewer to relate to, one that is attractively designed with plenty of variety in the arrangements, beautifully lit and coloured, witty, ironic and referential without being overly-clever, keeping the spirit of that aspect of the work intact.

There is however much more to L’incoronazione di Poppea than that and the directorial approach is not quite so successful when it comes to approaching the more lyrical qualities of the work. This is best demonstrated by Seneca’s death scene, which should be one of the most moving moments in the whole opera, but it fails to strike the right tone here. Musically, it’s perfect. Harry Bicket’s arrangement and Franz-Josef Selig’s bass have the right measure of gravity, nobility and tragedy, but the staging and the curiously dressed pupils of the philosopher work against the deeper implications that this event is to have on the subsequent course of events. Much of the balance in the production is left then to Bicket and the Baroque orchestra of the Liceu to pick up and, indeed, they do so brilliantly. It’s a sparser arrangement that doesn’t have the same rhythmic verve as the 1993 René Jacobs recording (on Arthaus DVD) that I am familiar with, but every note of the sparingly used chitarrone and harpsichord continuo is beautifully weighed and balanced, all the more to highlight the flute, harp and other affetto instrumentation that gives colour to the characters and emotions through their arias.

The emotion and verve of the singing and acting performances also makes up for the slight lack of dynamic in the staging. Miah Persson is terrific as Poppea – much more animated and lyrical here than in anything else I’ve heard her sing (Britten and Stravinsky) – and Sarah Connolly is a fine impassioned Nero, not essentially evil, but in thrall to his passions and power. Jordi Domenèch is a little light as the countertenor Ottone, but the variety of his tone balances the other singers well. Maite Beaumont is outstanding as Ottavia and Franz-Josef Selig, as mentioned earlier, suitably dignified as Seneca. The real highlight of this production however is Dominique Visse, who is also the Nutrice in the above mentioned René Jacobs version, but here he takes on the contralto roles of the Nurse and Arnalta, fully entering into the spirit of Alden’s production. It’s the variety of singing parts that is one of the great qualities ofL’incoronazione di Poppea and the casting here is superbly balanced in this respect.

Just as important, in this context, is the quality of the recording, and this release is absolutely stunning to look at and listen to in High Definition. There is a beautiful clarity to the singing and the instrumentation with a wonderful sense of ambience. This is sheer perfection as far as technical specifications go and, as far as this production is concerned, it brings out all the qualities of an extraordinary work of early opera. Extras on the DVD and Blu-ray consist only of a Cast Gallery and a narrated Synopsis, while an essay in the booklet takes a closer look at aspects of David Alden’s production. The subtitles are in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Catalan.