A PROVOCATIVE POPPEA FOR OUR TIME

Cast of Poppea presented by BARE Opera

Bare Opera surely has their finger on the operatic pulse of 21st c. New York City, especially the pulse of young opera goers. Instead of waiting four long hours to hear "Pur ti Miro", the ravishing duet between Nerone and Poppea that concludes Monteverdi's last and greatest work, L'incoronazione di Poppea, the audience got the main points of the opera with as much glorious music as one would wish for, in the space of two hours.

Instead of sitting and yawning, staring through binoculars, the audience members were seated on three sides of the playing area, giving everyone an "up close and personal" involvement with the morally challenged characters whose lust and ambition resonate so well with our present time.

Instead of lengthy and abstruse program notes trying to justify the director's "concept", director David Paul wisely allowed the work to speak for itself. His focus was on the main characters of the drama. The Prologue and extraneous characters were eliminated and certain scenes were played out to highlight the eroticism. For example, Nerone and Poppea play out their drama in bed, for the most part.  And Nerone's homoerotic "song competition" with Lucano became a boxing exercise with a "happy ending". It was clear which man was the "top"! 

Let it be noted, before anyone protests the cuts, that there is really no definitive score remaining from the 1643 Venetian premiere. The opera was reworked several times (like Puccini's Madama Butterfly) before it was lost to oblivion for two centuries.  Since its "rediscovery" it has been performed frequently.

Musical values were excellent and, although the program was strictly "bare bones", we suspect that Maestro David Moody was responsible for the arrangement and the judicious cuts. His boutique baroque ensemble gave us everything we wanted. The string quartet was augmented by a bass, theorbo, and baroque guitar. A piano with a soft sound replaced the harpsichord.  If there were Baroque period purists in the audience, they did not complain. Nor did we. We loved every moment.

For those who do not know the story, it bears no resemblance to the history of 60 AD. The libretto was written by a wealthy poet by the name of Giovanni Francesco Busenello, a leading musical dramatist of the 17th c. One might call his writing that of a cynical realist. It has been suggested that the work, which premiered in Venice during the 1643 Carnevale season, was meant to draw a contrast between Venice and the morally inferior Rome, thus the glorification of lust and ambition depicted in Ancient Rome.

Nerone (Ariadne Greif) has tired of his wife Ottavia (Briana Hunter) and would like to put his mistress Poppea (Maria Lacey) on the throne. Ottone (Vivien Shotwell) is in love with Poppea and suffers intense jealousy, intense enough to try to kill her. Drusilla (Alexandra Smither) is in love with Ottone, enough to help him with his plot and enough to join him in exile when he is pardoned at the end of the opera.  All of the major characters had splendid voices and used them well, particularly in the melismatic passages and in the concitato genere, demonstrating ease with the Baroque style of singing.

Bass Christian Isaiah Simmons made a marvelously dignified Seneca who endured a death far more violent than he did in history. David Charles Tay in female travesti, created the character of a housemaid/confidant to Poppea, wise and nurturing, and with a marvelously resonant voice that made us think "That's what a castrato must have sounded like". We hope, of course, that Mr. Tay did not pay the price!

Timothy Stoddard played the parts of Lucano, most arresting in the boxing/sex scene with Nerone, and of Liberto. Anne Marie Stanley and Max Potter portrayed Nerone's henchmen. The casting was absolutely perfect.

Briana Hunter's Ottavia was sympathetic, in spite of her murderous impulses.  She was tied to the bed by her ankle and sang movingly about the plight of women who give birth to the very people who enslave them. We were happy that she got a second chance to live in exile.

There was no set to speak of in the cold brick-walled playing space at the Blue Building. Plenty of heat was provided by the acting which took place predominantly in two beds--the huge one for the romantic couple and a narrow one for poor Ottavia.

Costume design by Sara Jean Tosetti was contemporary. Poppea wore a mini-length shift which was covered by a diaphanous floor length vest for her coronation. Nerone wore a flashy red jacket. Ottavia wore a leopard print dress.  If we'd read about it beforehand we might have expected to disparage the look-- but actually, everything worked well with the story, even the punk looks adopted by Ottone and Nero's henchmen.

Titles were effectively projected onto beams in the ceiling. Lighting by Anthony Tornambene effectively highlighted the part of the playing area where the action was taking place.

We were completely absorbed for two hours with not a single longueur. We rarely get to see an adaptation that works this well.  More credit to the innovative Bare Opera and their visceral take on this work, bringing a four centuries old opera into the modern age.

(c) meche kroop

afterWARds

Maestro David Moody, Kirsten Scott, Renate Rohlfing, Boya Wei, Marco Cammarota, and Katherine Whyte

We believe a work of art should speak for itself and require no explanation from the playwright, painter, director, choreographer, or composer.  However, in the case of Bare Opera's reduction/expansion/ psychological illumination/distillation of Mozart's 1780 opera seria Idomeneo, we would like to quote Director David Paul, whose eloquence we could not equal.

"afterWARds is an opera about the emotional battles that continue to rage after war is long over.  It's an opera about displaced refugees, and the lingering post-traumatic effects of war. But most of all, it's an opera about love, healing, and the resilience of the human spirit."

Until last night, we had sat through this opera several times--three plus hours of gorgeous writing for massive choruses, elaborate late 18th c. costuming, gods and monsters and shipwrecks--without ever being emotionally moved. What Mr. Paul has done is to strip away everything except the four main characters, to focus on their psychological struggles. The music by Mozart and libretto by Giambattista Varesco remained intact. Like us, the characters struggle to find love and peace in a world gone mad with the carnage of war.

War is often waged for the most trivial of reasons. King Menelaus of Greece wanted his wife back after Paris, Prince of Troy, "abducted" her (we know not whether or not she went willingly). Menelaus enlisted the services of his brother Agamemnon and Agamemnon enlisted his ally Idomeneo, King of Crete. We all know how Agamemnon and his family fared--badly! And his daughter Electra appears in this opera enduring her own grief--unrequited love for Prince Idamante, Idomeneo's son.

During the Prologue we were treated to the piano reduction performed by Renate Rohlfing whilst films of war and shipwrecks were projected (Projection Design by Caite Hevner) along with a narrative of the backstory. Princess Ilia of Troy (King Priam's daughter and Paris' sister, now one of the spoils of war) was rescued from drowning by none other than Prince Idamante.

Poor Ilia is torn between her growing love for Idamante and her hatred for the Greeks who slew her entire family. How can love invade the territory of revenge? Soprano Boya Wei used her elegant instrument well in conveying the emotional ambivalence which tormented her. She eventually finds peace in accepting her enemy as a substitute father.

The role of Idamante was performed by mezzo-soprano Kirsten Scott in travesti ; this character has a different kind of emotional roller coaster to ride and she rode it so intensely that we had goosebumps.  Her character is secretly in love with Ilia but is dealing with a far larger issue. The father he loves whom he hasn't seen in some years had sworn to sacrifice him and, to protect his son from this fate, tries to send him away with a ruse of escorting Elettra back to Argos.

Elettra, powerfully sung by soprano Katherine Whyte, is living in despair due to the loss of her family (recall that her brother Orestes murdered their faithless mother who was betraying her husband Agamemnon with his brother Aegisthus) and also due to her unrequited longing for Idamante and jealousy of Ilia.

Her rage aria is chilling, with wild flights of coloratura, but she also has moments of tenderness and beauty when she begs Idamante for his love.  And that's her roller coaster.

In the title role we heard tenor Marco Cammarota who sang with a rich full tone and successfully conveyed the despair a father must feel in denying his own son and the horror of perceiving the need to sacrifice this dear son. Mr. Cammarota evinced great skill in his dynamics. He returns home with joy, but also guilt over all the deaths caused by the war.

The ending was a bit different than that to which we are accustomed but it worked. A peaceful resolution is found with Idamante and Ilia taking over the throne of Crete.  Poor Elettra is left with her demons but that's another opera, written by Richard Strauss.  

Come to think of it Mozart's masterpiece has been tinkered with before, and by that very composer! In 1931, whilst Munich commissioned Ermanno Wolf-Ferarri to revise the opera, the Vienna State Opera commissioned Richard Strauss who did a complete revision, employing a German libretto. We have heard neither revision.

We were pleased with the vocal performances overall but found several moments that were outstanding. The Act III quartet did full justice to Mozart's artistry with voices perfectly balanced. The love duet between Ilia and Idamante allowed the voices of Ms. Wei and Ms. Scott to melt together. Ms. Whyte's expression of rage was stunning as was her despair at the end in "D'Oreste, d'Ajace ho in seno i tormenti".  No happy ending for her!

"Vedrommi intorno" was given a stirring performance by Mr. Cammarota with the aforementioned attention to dynamics and a beautiful resonance.

It was particularly rewarding to witness the artistic development of Ms. Wei and Ms. Scott whom we began reviewing about five years ago when they were students at Mannes. Ms. Scott has appeared frequently in our reviews but the only time we saw the two together was in Nozze di Figaro, in which Ms. Wei sang the role of Susanna and Ms. Scott performed the role of Cherubino.

Once more, Bare Opera has succeeded in their mission to provide an intimate experience of opera-- minus the pomp and circumstance--that is very 21st c., filling an important niche on Planet Opera. There are many dwellings on Planet Opera and there is room for all, from the palatial mansion of the Metropolitan Opera to the intimate dwellings of flexible companies like Bare Opera.  We are all smiles thinking of the nomads of Central Asia who pull up their yurts and move on. Bare Opera is on the move.  We have reviewed every one of their events and have no intention of missing the next.

More on that later but it has something to do with a barber turned personal valet.

(c) meche kroop