George Frideric Handel (composer), Vincenzo Grimani (libretto) | Agrippina / 1709

everybody loves poppea

by Douglas Messerli

 

Vincenzo Grimani (libretto), George Frideric Handel (composer) Agrippina / 1709 / the production Howard Fox and I saw was at the HD Live film transmission of the Metropolitan Opera production of Saturday, February 29th, 2020, with Harry Bicket conducting

 

Yesterday Howard and I saw at a local theater the MET Live-HD performance of, so the host Deborah Voight explained, the oldest opera to ever be performed on the MET stage, Handel’s 1709 Agrippina.

     Given the existence of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (from 1643), his Orfeo (from 1600), and numerous other of such compositions, it seems amazing that this great institution has not attended to the early operatic works in the repertoire. We’ll see if, while embracing more contemporary compositions—something I very much support—whether or not they can reach back into the repository of Baroque and pre-Baroque works as well. Of course, I love the great Verdi standards, the lovely Puccini operas, etc. But we simply need a wider range, which I do believe the current director of the MET, Peter Gelb, is willing to embrace.

     Handel’s opera, written when he was just 24, is a fascinating glimpse into the Baroque world that one might never have imagined. Although, given the sometimes-narrative clumsiness of Agrippina, and the seemingly determined length of this work, there are some limitations.

     Yet, we must forgive all of this given the absolutely stunning singing and performances of the great stars performing this work, most notably Joyce DiNonato (as Agrippina), two countertenors—the wonderful Iestyn Davies (as the Poppea’s main lover, Ottone), and the more comic would-be lover Narciso (Nicholas Tamagna)—a “pants” female performer, the amazing Kate Lindsey (as Nerone), the endlessly beautiful singing of Poppea (Brenda Rae), and, representing the lower ranges of the score, Matthew Rose (as Claudio).

   All of these great performers sing so remarkably that it’s almost difficult to perceive just how morally awful most of them are, involving one another, through Agrippina’s evil machinations, into a serial descent into destruction and death. Besides, Baroque operas almost always end with a positive note, in this case everybody amazingly awarded what they most sought.

     It is difficult to even imagine why the lovely Agrippina, married to the Roman emperor Claudio, is so very determined to put her sociopathic son, Nero, covered from heel to toe with tattoos which represent his ostracization from the society in which he lives, into a position of leadership. Perhaps she imagines that she might be the power behind the throne; but in reality Nerone immediately had his own mother murdered. This is after all, a truly treacherous world in which Agrippina attempts to kill both of her would-be admirers—Pallante (Duncan Rock) and Narcisco—by encouraging them to do in one another (by gunshot and a heroin-like drug) along with Claudio’s favorite, who has just saved his life, Ottone.

      She’s totally ruthless—a role that the lively and assertive DiNonato totally embraces (in an intermissions discussion she revealed that she always wanted to portray a figure like Tosca’s Scarpia—in her character’s rather single-minded devotion to get her son to the top of the golden steps of the Roman throne. Perhaps the question of “why?” is simply meaningless in this work. Power is power even if it surely leads to death, including her own.

     The image which dominates this John Macfarlane and David McVicar production is a mausoleum in which all of these significant figures, by opera’s end, are entombed. These individuals were determined to be destroyed almost before they lived out their full lives.

     In this production, the characters engage in promiscuous sex, alcohol, drugs, and many other of the societal sins one might have imagined, along with what I might describe as a bit too much of McVicar’s shtick presentation of these dark events—although the director’s introduction of a harpsichord player as a sort of “cocktail-bar” piano player is quite brilliant.

     Both Agrippina, the most intense liar among them, showering intrigue upon each person she meets like a storm of terrible torments, and her young, almost autistic-inflicted son Nerone, who can hardly walk straightforwardly up to the gold throne he is inexplicably awarded by opera’s end, are self-devoted folks right out of the President Trump playbook. These are the most notable “them and us” figures of the early 18th century. They need to be destroyed, just as they soon are.

     Yet, one wonders at the musical arias they create, particularly in the end of Ottone’s denunciation sung by the tortured, wrongly accused hero, “Otton, qual portentoso fulmine" followed by "Voi che udite il mio lamento"; the later laments of Agrippina “Pensieri, voi mi tormentate”; and the cocaine induced fury of Nerone’s aria “Come nube che fugge dal vento” (“Like a cloud that flees from the wind”). 

     If much of this amazing opera seems rather rote, right out of the young Handel’s Baroque playbook, with a far too many repeated statements and implorations, with the splendiferous performances of countertenor Davies, the always amazingly-voiced DiDonato, and the rather startling tonsils of Lindsey (including her fascinating abilities to dance out the role of her Nerone) we are so captivated by this opera that it seems almost impossible to quibble about this piece. I cried at each of these fabulously wonderful moments of performance, so intense and beautifully expressed that you come to truly realize what great operatic singing is all about.

      This concert was dedicated to the former MET diva Mirella Freni, who died this year at the age of 84. A brief intermission performance of her singing talent revealed to all how significant were her abilities. The MET, apparently, now realizes just how much of an archive of great singing and music it represents. And I do believe under Gelb’s directorship it might continue to perceive itself as an impossibly endangered wonderland of operatic possibilities.

      The intelligent woman who sat next to me spotted the MET’s cameras focusing in a balcony seat on Jake Heggie, in whose opera Dead Man Walking DiDonato had also previously performed. I shared with her that his opera would be staged and presented at the MET (presumably in a live-HD production) in April of this year. My neighbor had evidently worked with Heggie at UCLA. I can never get over the fact that the people I meet in the theater are just as interesting as the stars I encounter upon the stage.

 

Los Angeles, March 1, 2020

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (March 2020).