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Evening Standard (London), Mar
4, 2005 |
by BARRY MILLINGTON |
Monteverdi: L'Incoronazione di Poppea, London 2005
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Style to boost the substance
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L'incoronazione de
Poppea/Zurich Opera Royal Festival Hall |
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ALL semi-staged opera performances require some
imagination from audiences.
Some require a great deal. One such was Zurich Opera's presentation of
Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea at the Royal Festival Hall.
For this extra-minimal staging, the singers were ranged on tiered
platforms behind the orchestra. Since all were wearing concert dress, the
high tenor playing the part of Poppea's nurse, Arnalta (Jean-Paul
FouchEcourt) had to rely on his unusual voice to project the character.
Similarly, when Ottone (countertenor Franco Fagioli) borrowed his female
admirer's clothes as a disguise for his assassination attempt on Poppea,
our imaginations had to work overtime to relish the comic absurdity of the
situation.
Acting and gestures were intermittent, depending on the individual
singer's whim. The question "should we touch?" hung persistently in the
air, right up to the last moments of the rapturous final duet for Poppea
and Nerone.
In these days of specialisation, it is to the credit of Zurich Opera that
it can mount such a stylish performance of Monteverdi's final score. Many
of the singers were company ensemble members, though there were some
distinguished guests, most notably Vesselina Kasarova, in a class of her
own as a superbly nuanced Poppea.
Jonas Kaufmann managed to balance ardour with the demands of style in the
role of Nerone.
Fouchécourt did his best to inject some theatre into the whole thing, but
was also rather touching as he invoked Love to watch over his mistress,
accompanied by muted strings and plucked continuo in one of the opera's
most gorgeous numbers.
Masterminding the operation was Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conducting his own
edition of the work. His direction bore the characteristic hallmarks of
bite and urgency, but there was also an admirable sense of continuity
which went some way towards compensating for the lack of dramatic values. |
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