Good News from 1643

What a nice surprise.  This is the one that will restore your respect for the audiences of the Baroque period, if it’s been damaged by the goofy mess of Vivaldi’s Il Giustino, from 19 years earlier.

Poppea is a real opera, and it is serious.  Captivating story, with some memorable music to go home with.  You have to wait a while for the memorable music, but it is worth the wait.

Big history lesson here, too.  If you watched Handel’s Agrippina, you know how Nero wormed his way onto the Roman throne, pushed by his weirdly kinky mother.  With Coronation, you see how Nero, still an intolerable snotnose, disposes of his wife and hooks up with a new one.

In the mid-1600’s, the Baroque era was grinding into gear, and Claudio Monteverdi worked with an unidentified assortment of helpers to construct his last opera.  Who knows who actually wrote all these chunks of music?  Nobody.  They didn’t write their names on the scores. Time passes, and manuscripts disappear in fires and wars and earthquakes.

Epic Poetry

All they agree on is that a fellow named Busenello wrote the lyrics.  And for me, the hero of this show is not any of the back-stabbers on the stage, and not Monteverdi and his apprentices, but Busenello.

Good lord, what Puccini could have learned about lyrics from Giovanni B.  This entire 3-hour play is written in florid and beautiful poetry, remarkable even in English translation.  You can hear statements of wisdom about life and love, touching metaphors and cunning analogies put out there as part of routine conversation. 

And I still return like a line to the center, like fire to the sun and the stream to the sea, and though no light shines, ah, I know well that my sun is within. And I still return like a line to the center. Dear beloved roof, abode of my life and my love, my steps and my heart bow down to you. Open your window, Poppea.

Or, as Puccini’s crack scripting team would have worded it:

I’m here.  Are you there?  I’m here.  Open up, hey you.  Consumption.

Find That Tune

Years ago, the car radio played some touching and beautiful music for me, identified as a piece from Coronation of Poppea.  Great, I said; must see.  But my Berlin trip was such that I chose not to use my Poppea ticket at Unter den Linden, and I went home unenlightened.

So here we go – the 2022-23 production at Royal Opera of Versailles.  Where is this sweet duet?  Not at the beginning, where we have Iestyn Davies as Ottone, pining for Poppea like fire to the sun, at careful countertenor pitch and wearing his signature pink shorts suit, with knee socks and sandals.

Not in the middle, where Nero tires of his stunningly beautiful wife Ottavia and whines at his advisor Seneca.  Seneca’s advice is to wise up and run Rome like man, but Nero doesn’t like that advice and tells Seneca to go kill himself.

Beloved solitude, refuge of the mind, retreat of thought, delight of the intellect, that discusses and contemplates the celestial images beneath the ignoble and earthly forms, to you my rejoicing soul returns. And here, far from the court which insolently and haughtily tries my patience, here among the leafy branches and grass, I repose in the bosom of peacefulness.

Not later, where one of the world’s few Indian sopranos, Maya Kherani singing Drusilla, hands off her clothing to Ottone.  She finishes the show in a small bathing suit with a swimming cap, banished from Rome with Ottone and Nero’s old (almost 22 now) wife Ottavia.

Woe is me! Rather than that atrocious torture force me to tell what I wish to remain unspoken, I shall take upon myself the fatal sentence and the death. You who call yourselves friends, look on and imitate what I do, for these are the services of a true friend!

From start to near the end, this music is an extensive series of songs, mostly solo arias, each seemingly designed to match the mood of the narrative.  They change a lot, from quick exciting pieces to slow romances or dirges. There is no chorus here, unfortunately, but thankfully no modo parlato spoken lines either.  Seems like most major scenes end with a nice duet.  All fine, but again, just watch the vibrant lyrics.

Almost finished, royal palace nearly emptied out, and young, foolish Poppea gets young, foolish Nero to marry her.  At 2 hours and 57 minutes – ah, finally – here is the song we’ve been waiting for.  Pur ti Miro, and it is a fabulous duet, better-defined and more easily remembered than anything else so far.  And, curtain.

Did Monteverdi himself write this wonderful song?  Again, no one is sure.

Come as You Are

This one’s fun to watch, since the production (initially from the Aix Festival, 2022) has almost everyone onstage nearly all the time, often sitting out the scene on a bench upstage.  Nice effect, because while Ottavia is lamenting her drift away from Nero, you can look back there and see Nero flirting around with Poppea, moving on already.

And I guess they get to wear what they want.  Davies is there in pink, the exotic Ambrosine Bré as Ottavia is dressed for a formal party, and Kherani’s just finished an in-office day in Palo Alto.  Jake Arditti skips the Roman toga picta to be Nero; he just wears regular pants and sometimes a shirt.  The gigantic tenor Stuart Jackson (looks like Jay Leno) is the nurse of the palace, in ‘50’s housewife getup.

Let’s Try This Again

Can’t say Coronation is great to listen to – this series of mysterious songs is not my style.  Worse, we have no fewer than three hot harpsichords popping away there, just in front of the stage.  Too much.

But now, at least we know the Baroque folk had something solid to offer.   Maybe time to give Vivaldi another chance, or even see another of Monteverdi’s remarkable compositions.

Tragically, while he wrote seven operas, only three are still around (none with Busenello).  In 300 years, the others have been lost to the fires and wars and earthquakes.  So probably we aren’t missing the best operas ever written, but certainly we lost a chunk of history.  And maybe a handful of meltingly beautiful songs.