Reviews 2002
Reviews 2002
✭✭✭✭✩
by Claudio Monteverdi, directed by Marshall Pynkoski
Opera Atelier, Elgin Theatre, Toronto
April 24-28, 2002
"Amor Vincit Omnia"
Opera Atelier has become renowned for the splendour of its productions and its "L'Incoronazione di Poppea" ("The Coronation of Poppea") is no exception. The exquisite music-making by the singers accompanied by Tafelmusik under Hervé Niquet and the meticulous staging by Marshall Pynkoski make clear that Monteverdi's final opera is not merely one of greatest of early operas but one of the greatest operas period.
The beauty of its music is enough to insure its fame, but "Poppea" is also historically important as the first opera ever to be based on historical subject matter. Mythological and allegorical characters do make an appearance, but the presence of historical characters allowed Monteverdi to go beyond the expression of generalized states of mind to explore distinctly individual, even aberrant, psychologies.
The opera begins in a conventional way with an allegorical précis of the action to follow. Virtue and Fortune debate who is the most powerful until Amore (Love, i.e. Cupid) arrives and proves he is the strongest of all. That Love is stronger than Fortune is a standard 17th-century truism; that Love is stronger than Virtue is not. Monteverdi's librettist G.F. Busenello, drawing on Tacitus's "Histories", illustrates this theme with one of the most amoral plots in opera.
The Roman beauty Poppea has been cuckolding her husband Ottone with no less than the Emperor Nero himself. Seeing Nero ensnared by her charms, she demands that Nero marry her, banish his wife Ottavia and have his Stoic tutor Seneca killed. In a parallel plot, Drusilla is in love with Ottone and, when Ottavia asks him to kill Poppea, he consents and sets about it with Drusilla's help. Love himself intervenes to foil the plot. Seneca takes his own life, Ottavia, Drusilla and Ottone are exiled, Poppea is crowned Empress of Rome and Nero and Poppea celebrate their love in a gorgeous duet. In this way, Love, or rather Desire, triumphs over the baseness of Fortune and the constraints of Virtue.
The opera seems to be a celebration of evil. In his director's notes, Pynkoski says he approached the work with mixed feelings: "How does one deal with a gloriously beautiful work in which there is not one estimable human being?" Pynkoski's solution is to direct the opera from the point of view of what Monteverdi's contemporary Venetian audience knew not from what a present-day audience would construe from the events. To this end Pynkoski has had set designer Gerard Gauci paint two large portraits of equal size. One of Venus and Cupid dominates Poppea's bedchamber, the other of Nero dominates a room in his palace. When Nero is with Poppea he spends more time caressing the painting of Venus than he does Poppea. When Ottavia vents her rage at the absent Nerone she does so at his portrait. The paintings emphasize for us the Stoic view Monteverdi's audience would recognize that the world is a world of appearances. Those most engaged with the world are also the most caught up in illusion. It is her outward beauty alone that fascinates Nero not Poppea herself. As for Poppea she desires only the power Nero can bring her not Nero himself.
Pynkoski's approach makes the action very clear but it dilutes the work's irony and leads him to false step at the conclusion. In their final love duet, Pynkoski has Nero sing to the portrait of Venus and Poppea to her crown, radically altering the meaning of the pronoun “you” in "Pur ti miro, pur ti godo" ("I adore you, I desire you"). Then he adds a final tableau of Poppea lying dead beneath an angry Nero. Monteverdi's audience may have known that Nero would kill Poppea soon after their marriage, but it is false to Busenello's purpose (viz. the title) not to end the work with Poppea's triumph and a beautiful though deeply ironic love duet.
Personally, I would have liked the inherent irony of the work to have remained intact. A modern audience has enough smarts on its own to see through the ulterior motives of the powerful and power-hungry. Despite this, it must be said that Pynkowski has brought out wonderfully detailed performances from the entire cast. The manuscripts of the opera are without stage directions, but Pynkoski has seen the dramaturgy inherent in the music itself, finding precisely the right movement, glance, gesture for every musical phrase.
He has assembled an excellent cast. Meredith Hall's Poppea uses her silvery, beautifully controlled voice to caress and cajole like one of Balzac's great courtesans. After seeing Hall play so many virtuous maidens, it's a treat to see her ply her skills as a temptress. Nero would originally have been sung by a castrato but American Michael Maniaci is a natural male soprano. He tosses off Nero's ornamented lines with ease moving from a velvety lower range to a bell-like top. Matthew White and Peggy Kriha Dye are well-matched as the contrasting pair of Ottone and Drusilla. White's intensity and his agile, characterful singing combine in a powerful portrait of a flawed man. Dye's bright, clear soprano is perfect for the effervescent Drusilla, but when her time comes to contemplate possible torture and death, Dye darkens her tone for a moving portrayal of a woman glimpsing the reality beneath the illusion.
Stephanie Novacek is riveting as the raging, vengeful Ottavia, her "Addio Roma" sung with great emotion. The strength of her performance in "Poppea" augurs well for Charpentier's "Médée" in the fall where she will assume the title role. Alain Coulombe as Seneca gives the kind of assured, refined performance we've come to expect from him. Even as his sonorous bass lends gravitas to the philosopher's great final scene, he suggests a man forcing his emotion to bend to his will. Laura Pudwell shines as Poppea's comic servant Arnalta, making "Oggi sarà Poppea", a fantasy of how she too will rise in status, a highlight of the opera. Through always adept at comedy, Pudwell also has a chance to display the richness of her voice in Arnalta's lullaby to her mistress. Fine contributions also come from Michiel Schrey as Nero's lubricious friend Lucano, Vicki St. Pierre as Ottavia's earnest Nurse, Kelly Campbell as a sprightly Amore and especially Curtis Sullivan as the heart-broken messenger Liberto.
Dora Rust-D'Eye's sumptuous costumes closely reflect how the 17th-century interpreted Roman costume on stage. Her headdress for Fortune of a ship's wheel with crossed swords is an inspired flight of fancy and her decorating Poppea for her coronation like a Byzantine Virgin Mary adds profanation to Poppea's other crimes. Jeannette Zingg provides the tasteful choreography for Amore and three female spirits who pass across the stage during musical interludes thereby reinforcing the opening allegory. In contrast, Kevin Fraser's lighting is thoroughly modern whether isolating the isolated Ottavia in a pool for light or in alternating cues contrasting Drusilla's meditation versus the wrath of her accusers.
Conductor Hervé Niquet draws an incredibly lush sound from the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, here reduced to only twenty players, almost entirely of plucked or bowed strings including three theorbos and three harpsichords. He shows an unerring sense of pace and reflects the interplay of characters in recitative by an interplay of different accompanying instruments.
"Poppea" is a co-production with the Houston Grand Opera where it premiered in March 2001. "Poppea" was last seen on stage in Toronto in a COC production in 1983. With the work now part of Opera Atelier's repertoire, it's comforting to think we may not have to wait another twenty years to enjoy its subversive pleasures.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Michael Maniaci as Nero and Peggy Kriha Dye as Drusilla. ©2002 Bruce Zinger.
2002-04-26
L’Incoronazione di Poppea