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The Spectator, 12 March 2005 |
by Michael Tanner |
Monteverdi: L'Incoronazione di Poppea, London 2005
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Crowning glory
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Monteverdi’s last and greatest secular
masterpiece, L’Incoronazione di Poppea, is an opera we get far too few
chances to see. The last time it was performed on stage in London was in the
largely brilliant ENO production of 2000, which has never been revived. That
does have the consequence, however, that one is always pleasurably shocked
by it anew, and though the Zurich Opera’s one-night stand at the Royal
Festival Hall was only a partly acted concert performance, the impact was
undimmed.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt brought with him the Orchestra La Scintilla of Zurich
Opera, around 30 players of authentic instruments, and a starry cast, the
most surprising feature of which was possibly the tenor casting of Nerone,
whom we are used to hear sung by a counter-tenor or a mezzo, even, in the
case of Harnoncourt’s first recording, by a soprano. Considerations of
authenticity aside, the higher voice has the sovereign advantage of making
the outrageous love duets still more sensuous by having a lot of singing in
thirds, with almost Straussian effects of lushness. Still, with the casting
we had at the Festival Hall, I wouldn’t want to complain.
Harnoncourt’s versions of the score have varied a good deal over the
decades, as they are perfectly entitled to do. Mainly, he is still austere,
with a limited range of colour, and that only employed sparingly. He seems
above all concerned with the clearest and most forceful enunciation of the
text, and the only case of vocal occlusion was in the Prologue, when the
Tadzio-like Amore of Tino Canziani, a member of the Zurich Boys’ Choir, was
momentarily swamped. Later on, when he came back (the only goddess to put in
a second appearance, which has always seemed to me a rather casual handling
of them by the otherwise brilliant librettist Busenello) to prevent the
murder of Poppea by her rejected suitor Ottone, he was far more impressive,
as (s)he needs to be: this is the point in the action where gods can’t be
seen as only metaphors for human drives. If Amore didn’t intervene as a
person, rather than merely as a force of love, Poppea would be killed — but
this line of intervention is not pursued.
Indeed, apart from this moment of divine meddling, one can see Poppea as the
most thoroughly realistic opera ever composed. By contrast with this, ‘slice
of life’ operas from the veristi, even from Berg, seem and are hugely
rhetorical. Monteverdi’s music does nothing to glamourise the participants’
feelings, it merely makes them clearer to us. The truth to life here, and
only here, is of such an order that it knocks over the next 140 years of
opera seria like a terrace of cards. There are lots of things to be said in
favour of the stylisation that rapidly sets in, but we have to wait until
the Mozart–Da Ponte partnership for a return to recognisably human figures
interacting with one another. It isn’t a question of base feelings and
motives versus elevated ones, but of rounded and identifiable creatures,
mixtures of activity and passivity in the way that we bewilderedly feel that
we are, rather than absolutely single-minded beings either wholly in charge
of their lives or wholly subservient to powers that are, which is what we
see during the long post-Monteverdian arrest.
The central couple couldn’t be more aptly cast than here: Vesselina
Kasarova, in a state of acute décolletage, and Jonas Kaufmann at last having
a chance to act and sing as he looks, their behaviour towards one another
casually intimate, at the same time that their mutual desire almost awes
them, if anything could. Harnoncourt has adjusted things so that Poppea is
motivated entirely by desire, whereas the ambition to be Empress which
blends so smoothly with the lust is a thought-provoking element in the plot
as I see it. Kasarova, with her sultry tones and reckless manner, is well
suited to either interpretation. Kaufmann has the wilfulness, petulance,
tenderness and hauteur, not to mention the creamy tenor tones, to make a
Nerone both alluring and frightening. My only reservation about them was in
the final duet, a matter of whispered endearments, but elaborately
ornamented by Harnoncourt and sung more as a proclamation of their love by
the blissful wicked pair. None of the happy pair’s opponents stands a
chance. The Ottavia of Francesca Provvisionato, grand and passionate as
she is, is locked in misery and incapable of sensible planning; Ottone, an
ungrateful role which Franco Fagioli did nothing to inflate, is at the mercy
of whichever woman is lecturing him. Seneca, gloriously projected in the
black tones of Laszlo Polgar, manages to be both impressive and an
irritating bore, so one sympathises with the offensive Liberto of Gabriel
Bermudez, telling him to get lost and quickly. And one sympathises utterly
with the nurse Arnalta of Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, this marvellous singer and
artist who can’t help stealing the limelight whenever he appears, yet who
never seems to want to be anything more than a contributor to the whole
action. Without a hint of weakness in the cast, and urgent projection of the
drama on all sides, this was yet another of those non-staged performances
which, without the impertinent intervention of a director, enable one to
think about the work in the light of receiving its full emotional impact.
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