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RECORDINGS
Video
MONTEVERDI: L'INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA
 De Niese, Coote, Arnet, Mumford; I. Davies, Battaglia; Glyndebourne Chorus, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Haïm. Production: Carsen. Decca 074 3339 (2 discs), 193 mins. (opera), 41 mins. (extras), subtitled
Viewers' reactions to this 2008 Glyndebourne Festival production will depend on how they like director Robert Carsen's slant on the libretto. It isn't really an "updating," although putting the cast in mundane modern dress dilutes the ceremony and pageantry once considered essential to Baroque opera. But beyond the costuming, there's no gratuitous point-making; there are imaginative, witty bits of stage business — Amor settles down to a champagne picnic at the end of Act II, as, presumably, will the Glyndebourne audience — but the staging rightly accepts the characters and their states of mind as universal.
It's the emphasis among those universals that may be distracting. Carsen makes a point of spelling out the libretto's sexual undercurrents, even finding a few that aren't necessarily there, as when the drunken Nerone climbs into a bathtub with Lucano and starts caressing him, misdirecting part of his paean to Poppea's beauty to the fellow. At almost every point, the venal side of the characters is played up. After three hours of lust, conniving and opportunism, we're completely unprepared when Poppea, here played by Danielle de Niese, launches the final love duet, "Pur ti miro," with real tenderness and awe.
The execution of these ideas, at least, is beyond reproach. Constance Hoffman's modern costumes are unobtrusive. Michael Levine's spare design uses comparatively few set pieces and places much of the opera in front of the stage curtain, allowing the viewer's mind to fill out the scenes. The lighting, credited to Carsen and Peter van Praet, can be beautiful and atmospheric.
The musical end of things is in good shape. Emmanuelle Haïm, alternating continuo harpsichord duties with arm-waving, finds the right flow and energy for each scene, so the music retains the appropriate grandeur. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment plays with more commitment in the pit than on its audio recordings.
The principals are well chosen. The best singing, overall, comes from Tamara Mumford (Ottavia) and Marie Arnet (Drusilla), who sing clearly and expressively, undistracted by the director's glosses. Alice Coote, an intense, sometimes manic Nerone, and de Niese are fine singers, but they both drive their voices over the top at peak intensities; de Niese's sex-kittenish posturings in Act I strike a further false note. Iestyn Davies, as Ottone, projects dramatic immediacy, but his countertenor simply can't expand to fill out the lines; his expressive face, rather than his voice, carries the acting. His soft singing in Act II is lovely, and his Italian inflections are the most natural in the cast. Both tenor Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, as Arnalta, and countertenor Dominique Visse, as Ottavia's nurse, squawk in chest register as shamelessly as any East Village drag queen. Paolo Battaglia is a sympathetic and dignified Seneca, but he sings and acts stiffly.
The video production has been handled well. The inherent problem of maintaining interest over long swatches of repetitive music and text can tempt producers to cinematographic excesses, but here a nice balance is maintained between close-ups and distance shots, with reaction shots held to a minimum. Only the Page's entry in Act I needed a closer perspective: it's difficult to track down Lucia Cirillo in the full-stage establishing shot. Occasionally, judicious cutting lets us discover that Amor has entered a scene to observe his handiwork.
The DVD extras, based on François Roussillon's interviews with director, designers, de Niese and Haïm, are informative. Oddly, the English subtitles render the heroine's name as "Poppaea" throughout, though the menu titles and box cover use the standard spelling.
STEPHEN FRANCIS VASTA
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