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Conducted
by
Daniel Reuss
Production
by
David Mcvicar
Agrippina
Sarah Connolly
Nerone
Christine
Rice
Poppea
Lucy Crowe
Ottone
Reno Troilus
Claudio
Brindley
Sherratt
Pallante
Henry Waddington
Narcisco
Stephen Wallace
Lesbo
Richard
Suart
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London
Coliseum
English
National Opera
5
Feb - 1 March 2007 |
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This
is a brilliant performance
of a brilliant production,
and a must-see even for those
who are not into Handel or
his operas.
The composer was in his mid-twenties
when he wrote Agrippina
, his
third opera, in 1709. It was
performed to great acclaim
at the Teatro Grimani in Venice
in January 1710 ("viva
il caro Sassone!").
He had been living in Italy
for three years, and this
work is the culmination of
his Italian apprenticeship,
opening the way for his move
to London, a year later, and
the composition of Rinaldo.
The music is colourful and
varied, successfully re-using
material which he had previously
written for other contexts.
The overture is one of his
best, and is well-known apart
from the opera. Among the
famous arias from the piece
are "Cade
il Mondo"
sung by Claudio, with its
downward plunge through two
octaves to the low bass D,
and "Con
saggio tuo consiglio"
in Act I.
Sarah Connolly is now a well-established
leader in the world of baroque
opera (recently seen at the
ENO in La
Clemenza di Tito).
As Agrippina she sets a standard
in the combination of virtuoso
singing with first-class acting
which calls forth matching
contributions from the ENO
newcomer Lucy Crowe as Poppea,
and from Christine Rice as
the louche
adolescent
Nerone. At first the lyric
counter-tenor of Reno Troilus
as Ottone seemed a little
light-weight for the role
‚ but the appropriateness
of his casting became increasingly
apparent as the plot unfolded:
his preference for love in
private life over power in
public life makes him the
nearest thing to a hero in
this tangled tragic-comic
tale. The distinguished bass,
Brindley Sherratt, commands
the stage in the sole Alpha-male
role as the emperor Claudio.
(But he needs to work on some
of his low note...).
A special word needs to be
said about the crisp, tight,
conducting style of Daniel
Reuss, the Principal Conductor
of the RIAS Kammerchor, here
making his debut at the ENO.
In this opera pace is everything,
and Reuss keeps the whole
show in rapid motion without
a moment of sagging. I hope
we will hear more from him
on this side of the Channel.
Unusually in a baroque opera,
the libretto makes a powerful
contribution to the total
effect. It is attributed to
Vincenzo Grimani, whose family
had founded the Teatro Grimani,
and who was serving at the
time as the Spanish Viceroy
in Naples. The background
to the libretto is thus not
the usual one for the period,
of the impoverished semi-professional
scribbler or the secular abbe.
It is that of serious power,
with a polished and elegant
aristocratic take on the real
life of politics.
It is worth dwelling on this.
The complicated "machine"
of the plot is taken, with
some liberties, from the classic
Roman Imperial histories of
Tacitus and Suetonius. These
histories were written from
an ultimately tragic perspective
- the point of view of the
old Roman aristocracy, now
subjected to arbitrary one-man
rule. But Tacitean tragedy
resembles that of Euripides.
The irony is so pervasive
that tragedy is poised on
the brink of comedy. It is
this feature which was picked
up in the Viceroy Grimani's
libretto, and successfully
infused into Handel's music.
The result is a complex and
rapidly unfolding tragic-comic
drama of high politics and
court intrigue, which highlights
the farcical aspects of tyranny.
In this respect, and in its
combination of intricacy with
fast pace, it strikes the
same note as Ben Jonson's
Sejanus,
so memorably revived last
year (after 350 years of unwarranted
neglect) by the National Theatre.
Another comparison might be
with Handel's much later opera,
Ariodante
, put
on by the ENO in 2006. Here
the libretto demanded from
Handel a succession of the
static, set-piece depictions
of complex emotional states
which were the essence of
the aesthetic of opera
seria.
In Agrippina
, by
contrast, the libretto is
all action and intrigue, pausing
only occasionally for moments
of emotively-coloured reflection.
Here they come as a refreshing
contrast with the rest of
the material: they do not
strike the modern ear with
the frigidity which is a problem
in Ariodante's
set-pieces. This makes Agrippina
much more accessible to a
modern audience than Ariodante
‚ a fact which is brilliantly
exploited by the producer,
David McVicar.
The production was created
in 2000 for the Theatre de
la Monnaie in Brussels, and
in this English version it
retains the flavour of that
period, coming to the end
of the Clinton presidency
in the United States. Although
that cheesy version of Camelot
‚ the world Bill and Hillary,
and Monica Lewinsky ‚ is now
fading into history, there
is still enough of it about
(even perhaps close to home)
to give satirical point to
the transposition of Roman
Empire into the modern US/UK
scene. The Roman emperor,
Claudio (fresh from conquering
Britain), is a convincing
version of Clinton, as is
Agrippina of Hillary, and
Poppea of Monica (or someone
in the same position as her).
But in this Washington-oriented
farce the dressing of the
military in British army uniforms
does not jar: the nouveau
political culture it mocks
is a transatlantic phenomenon.
The English version of the
libretto, specially written
for the ENO by Amanda Holden,
succeeds very well in catching
the farcical element in the
text ‚ although perhaps the
Viceroy might have been pained
at some of the crowd-pleasing
vulgarities she allows herself.
This is four solid hours of
Handel, with only a twenty-minute
intermission. But from every
point of view ‚ the music,
the singing, the acting, the
orchestra, the drama itself
‚ this is time that could
not be better spent.
Robert
Jackson |
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