Hearing the Sounds of the Past

By Michael Walsh

And staging a blood-boiling drama too

Ottone, a Roman nobleman, came home one night to discover his mistress, Poppea, in the arms of the notorious Emperor Nero. The Emperor finds time to dally with his male friend Lucano when Poppea or his Empress Ottavia is not around. Seneca, Nero's wise old mentor, advises him against marriage to Poppea and, for his counsel, is forced to commit suicide. Ottavia, whose crime is wanting to keep her husband and her throne, is exiled--set adrift alone at sea. Meanwhile, Ottone, who has tried to murder Poppea in her sleep, is banished. When Poppea finally marries Nero and is crowned Empress of Rome, vice has triumphed over virtue, and all at the command of the god of love.

A sequel to I, Claudius? Part 2 of Caligula? No, an opera: Claudio Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea, first performed in 1642 in Venice. History's first great opera, Poppea is infrequently performed not because of the plot, which set a high standard of treachery and lubricity, but because of the special demands of Baroque convention, which included the casting of castrati in principal roles. Further, the musical idiom of early 17th century opera sounds strange to audiences accustomed to the ripe lyricism of Bellini, Verdi and Puccini.

But Poppea can still hold the stage --for all of its nearly four-hour length. Last week the Banchetto Musicale and the Boston Lyric Opera joined forces on a production that was as faithful to both the spirit and the notation of Monteverdi's score as one is likely to find. The opera was the high point of the Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition, which brought musicologists, performers and instrument makers to the city for a week-long conference on the proper performance of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music. Abandoned now is the practice of booming Bach out of a modern grand piano; forsworn, too, is the "sewing machine" school of Baroque interpretation, which made 500 pieces by one composer sound like the same piece written 500 times. Today's early music specialists have developed techniques and virtuosity that allow them to perform with a freedom of interpretation that was unknown 30 years ago. And they play on replicas of authentic old instruments, among them recorders, harpsichords, viols, theorbos (long-necked lutes with extra bass strings) and dolcians (precursors of the bassoon). Nearly 100 instrument makers from several countries had their wares on display.

Poppea, of course, was performed on original instruments, as were the week's other concerts, which included "A Venetian Festival" presented by the excellent Boston Camerata. But producing a Baroque opera is more complicated than using the right instruments. One must also decide how many of them there are to be, and which; in those days, orchestration was rarely indicated. The accepted practice is to accompany the singer with a small ensemble called the continuo, which usually consists of a harpsichord and low strings. Other parts are added occasionally to provide color or a ceremonial touch.

In Baroque opera the voices have primacy. Some musicologists feel that the instruments have been overemphasized in contemporary performances of Baroque opera. Says Christoph Wolff, chairman of the music department at Harvard:

"Things are out of balance, because singers are not up to the level of the instrumentalists. There is much still to be learned about Baroque vocal technique. We are used to instrumental dominance in opera, and that is our problem."

For Poppea, Music Director Martin Pearlman told his singers to think of the opera as a play before they learned the notes, to put across the long stretches of parlando, or singing speech. His advice paid off, for the performance had an unselfconscious ease about it that helped to eliminate any difficulties the audience might have had with the style, dry by conventional standards but supple and expressive. Especially impressive was the Nero of Susan Larson, taking a part originally written for a male soprano; the Arnalta of Tenor Karl Dan Sorensen, playing a nursemaid in another of the opera's travesty roles; and the Ottone of Countertenor Jeffrey Gall. Kerry McCarthy made a vocally handsome, icily regal Poppea. Pearlman translated Giovanni Francesco Busenello's masterly libretto into idiomatic, singable English.

Stage Director Jack Eddleman's predilection for repeating certain stage pictures--such as lovers lying head to toe --was ultimately predictable. But Eddie-man was right in pointing up some of the decadence of Nero's reign: although the opera ends with the marriage of Nero and Poppea, set to one of the most beautiful love duets in operatic literature, Nero was, historically, not a man to be trusted. He later kicked the pregnant Poppea to death, and once married a boy--but only after he ordered the youth to be castrated.

Now there's an opera just waiting to be written.

--By Michael Walsh

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