Landi - La Morte d'Orfeo (Amsterdam, 2018)

Stefano Landi - La Morte d'Orfeo

Dutch National Opera, 2018

Christophe Rousset, Pierre Audi, Cecilia Molinari, Renato Dolcini, Alexander Miminoshvili, Gaia Petrone, Rosina Fabius, Magdalena Pluta, Juan Francisco Gatell, Kacper Szelążek, Emiliano Gonzales Toro, Salvo Vitali

Naxos - Blu-ray

The myth of Orpheus has not only been the inspiration to some of the greatest works of opera ever written, it could even be said to have inspired the creation of opera itself. Certainly some of operas most important key works, namely Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607) and Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1774), are works that still carry every bit of their original power, beauty and meaning from several hundred years ago through to the present day. Every new production of these works seems to find endless inspiration in them and it's not difficult to see why since the story of Orpheus is about transforming life into art that lasts through the ages. The moral that there's a high price to be paid for the artist who pours his life into immortal works is however conveniently glossed over somewhat in these early opera versions of the myth. Not so in Stefano Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo.

Orpheus's journey to the Underworld to bring back his dead wife Eurydice is not the whole story, and there is certainly no happy ending of the kind that was imposed by dramatic convention on Gluck's opera, but rather there is more to be learned in the myth that makes its meaning even more tragic and illuminating. The fate of Orpheus is taken up from where Monteverdi left off in La Morte d'Orfeo composed in 1619 by Stefano Landi who, as a Papal composer, was nonetheless likewise adapting the story for his own audience. Orpheus does indeed pay a high price for his infractions against the order of the gods, and not just though his insistence on reviving the dead Eurydice, but for the sins of pride and artistic excess. For the sinning against the purity of women and the sacred bond of marriage, he is ripped apart by the women of the maenads.

Orpheus might have the power to charm the God and the spirits of the Underworld with his music, but there are other stronger forces at work on the artist and Orpheus is torn between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Landi personifies that struggle in the first scene of La Morte d'Orfeo, and Pierre Audi directing this Dutch National Opera production (his last production after 30 years as artistic director there) depicts that simply and directly. Fate has decreed that Orpheus die on his birthday and Orpheus is shown as helpless against the coming of the dawn, Aurora, and the breezes that sidle up against him, waking him to the fate that Fate has in store for him. All of these forces have physical form and are personified, as also is Fury.

Orpheus however is oblivious to his fate, a demigod who perhaps even believes himself exempt from the fate of ordinary mortals. Follow the path of virtue, advises his father, beware of women and their wiles. "He who does not honour love is better off dead". When Orpheus slights Bacchus however, his followers, the maenads call for vengeance. There is something typically anti-women in Laudi's depiction of this situation for his Roman Catholic commissioners, but there are two ways of looking at this and Audi turns it around for the #MeToo age where it becomes a cautionary tale not for the benefit of men to beware of women leading them into sin, but that a reckoning will come for those who mistreat and abuse women.

Up to that point much of the opera is fairly dry, delivered mostly through early opera style recititative and choruses, with little in the way of arias. There's little that Pierre Audi can do to enliven the lack of conventional dramatic action. He keeps the direction simple and doesn't clutter the smaller scale stage of the Muziekgebouw theatre in Amsterdam, restricting expression to costumes of pale colours and blood red lighting for the drama. The design has a few of the familiar Audi aesthetics but nothing that distracts from the purpose of the work, an upside down flowering tree with blood red blooms the only real symbolism on the stage.

If there's a lack of expression in the dramatic action and expression, all the colour is there however in the characters and personification of the forces of nature, and that is very much brought out by Landi's musical composition and the beautiful textures and colours of the baroque instruments. It's assisted considerably in that respect by Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques interpreting the score. There's less of the usual rhythmic drive that Rousset brings to this kind of period music, but this is not music for dance as it would be in a French tragédie lyrique. As anyone who has heard William Christie's revelatory Caen production of Landi's Il Sant'Alessio will expect, this is much more in the realm of spiritual or religious music that Landi more frequently worked in.

The greatness of the work then only really becomes evident with the death of Orpheus. Incredibly the dramatic scene of him being ripped apart by the maenads takes place off-stage and is instead recounted vividly in the music and singing of Fileno, who tells Calliope, the mother of Orpheus, how he witnessed her son destroyed even as he tried to appease the furies with his music and singing. It's by far the longest scene in the opera, the centrepiece, the emotional heart of the work and it's particularly impressive here for the lyrical singing and heartfelt delivery of Renato Dolcini. That tone is maintained for the remainder of the work, with organ music piping in behind Orpheus's funeral lament. It truly elevates the work to a thing of great beauty.

The structure and arrangement of the drama is not conventional then, and it doesn't put Orpheus at the centre of the opera - he actually has a lesser role in a small cast that play multiple roles - but rather as the title of the opera makes evident, it puts the death of Orpheus at the centre. Even the idea of Orpheus having some consolation that he might be reunited in death with his lost love Eurydice is taken from him. Charon and Mercury have bad news for him on that score, as Eurydice has taken the waters of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. If the artist is to live on it is through his legacy and Orpheus urged to drink the same waters, leave behind his earthly desires and become a star in the heavenly firmament.

The 2018 DNO production of Stefano Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo is released on Blu-ray and DVD by Naxos. It's a fine production and a good recording that really serves this beautiful rare work well, particularly on the High Definition Blu-ray release with its lossless High Resolution stereo and surround soundtracks. The DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 surround in particular gives space to that beautiful open percussive sound of the period instruments. The booklet included contains a full tracklist, a brief synopsis and an informative and insightful commentary on the work by Pierre Audi, who clearly understands the intentions of the work and brings those across wonderfully in this production. The disc includes subtitles in Italian, English, German, French, Japanese and Korean.

Links: Dutch National Opera

Monteverdi - L'Incoronazione di Poppea (Salzburg, 2018)

Claudio Monteverdi - L'Incoronazione di Poppea

Salzburg Festival, 2018

William Christie, Les Arts Florissants, Jan Lauwers, Sonya Yoncheva, Kate Lindsey, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Carlo Vistoli, Renato Dolcini, Ana Quintans, Marcel Beekman, Dominique Visse, Lea Desandre, Tamara Banjesevic, Claire Debono, Alessandro Fishe, Davic Webb, Padraic Rowan, Virgile Ancely

Medici.TV - 18 August 2018

The importance of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea in the world of opera lies in its innovation, in extending the boundaries of opera beyond classical myths and bringing real historical figures to the stage. The strength of the work and the reason why it still holds such power almost 400 years later however lies in Monteverdi and librettist Busanello's fearless examination of human nature caught up in a powerplay and tyranny of love. And it's not just the interplay of the central figures competing, gossiping and plotting but the impact that this has on peripheral characters and society as a whole is very much a part of the wider remit of the opera.

Or at least it ought to be. Such is the strength of characterisation and the accumulation of events, plots, murders, suicides and, yes some of the most passionate expressions of love committed to music, that there can be a tendency for the drama to revolve around and turn inwards on the relationship between Nero and Poppea and forget about the devastating impact that their scheming and actions would have on the rest of the world. Directing for the 2018 Salzburg Festival production Jan Lauwers wants to keep that wider context present in the mind and visible, but essentially do it without detracting from the intensity of the musical content of the work.

That would be hard to do and not a wise move to make when you have William Christie conducting Les Arts Florissants, and when you have a cast like the one assembled here, one that combines experienced practitioners of Monteverdi and the Baroque (Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Ana Quintans, Dominique Visse) with a few major stars in the making not often heard in this repertoire (Sonya Yoncheva, Kate Lindsey). It's a tall order for any singer; there are few heroes or noble actions in L'Incoronazione di Poppea, all of them display at the very least meanness, arrogance and self-importance - arguably even Seneca, and certainly the gods of the Prologue.

As such, it's easy to get lost in these characters, and the superb cast make the most of them. Stéphanie d’Oustrac plays a particularly embittered Ottavia and takes it with relish, holding back on grand gestures but putting it all into the voice. Sonya Yoncheva puts everything into her singing and performance, an alluring presence that convincing turns Nero's head, but you don't get the same sense of engagement with her Poppea and I'm not certain she connects with the audience either, which has always been my experience with her at least. Full credit to her however for this ambitious venture out of standard repertoire that she takes well.

Kate Lindsey is a marvellous Nero. It's a stylised performance rather than a naturalistic one, but Nero is and should be seen as a larger than life character, albeit one with deep human feelings and failings. Lindsey navigates between anger and tenderness in a flash as Nero is driven by lust and power. "The heart is a poor counsellor. It hates laws and scorns reason", Seneca tells Nero, who retorts that "Laws are for those who serve". "Those who don't know how to rule gradually lose their power" warns Seneca, incautiously as it turns out, and therein lies the brilliance of what Monteverdi and Busanello observe and achieve in L'Incoronazione di Poppea, daring to put on stage sentiments that had never quite been expressed like this on an early opera stage before.

The challenge is to make the impact of all this visible on the stage and it's too easy to get overpowered by the scandal of powerful people behaving abominably to realise that it has consequences for everyone else. Monteverdi's opera however has many other parallel situations and characters that show that such behaviour is common across all social classes and sexes. Jan Lauwers however not only takes on the challenge of expressing the wild and contradictory facets of larger than life character like Nero or the ambition and ruthless single-mindedness of Poppea, but he extends it out and makes it vivid and real for each of the secondary characters and applicable to the wider world as well.

The quality of the performers in the  supporting roles accounts for the success of this endeavour to some extent - Carlo Vistoli's Ottone, Ana Quintans' Drusilla, Lea Desandre's Amore/Valletto and Marcel Beekman's Nurse all impressive - as does the presence of dancers of BODHI PROJECT and SEAD Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance, who are given more to do than just the typical interpretative double mirroring of characters. A constant presence in the background, spinning and whirling, they occasionally move forward and interact with the characters, deepening relationships, expressing and visualising those contradictory elements as well as helping force the sense of real relationships between characters who could typically and easily be left to express solitary sentiments in individual arias.

That's extended to keeping other main characters on-stage, such as Poppea wandering past when Ottone is expressing his secret feelings for her, and it also extends to some limited interaction with the musicians who are all there in a shallow pit on the stage. There should be a very definite interaction between the music and the performance, more so in the semi-improvised measures and accompaniment of music that is not fully scored. Interpretation is very much a feature of Monteverdi's operas and there's no right or wrong way, but there certainly ways that bring the music to life better so that they connect with the tone of the drama and communicate it to the audience. There's no doubting the ability of William Christie and Les Arts Florissants to do that exceptionally well here.

It's Jan Lauwers however who manages to most successfully focus all those elements of music, dance, characterisation and expression and push them out beyond the stage. The stage itself is covered with images of classical paintings, a mass of bodies that remind you that this is not just a heated drama of consequence only to a little group of self-interested and self-serving people, but that their actions have consequences out in the wider world. That's a lot to take on, and much more than would normally be considered necessary when you have Monteverdi's music to express and enchant, Jan Lauwers' production for Salzburg, with its fine cast, make this ancient work feel as fresh and modern and relevant as many contemporary works, and perhaps even more so.

Links: Salzburger Festspiele