Programs · Episode

MONTEVERDI: The Coronation of Poppea

Program: At the Opera
Aired: Saturday, March 25, 2017 @ 6:00 pm
Hosted by Lisa Simeone

Monteverdi's Poppea proves that passion was plentiful in the opera house long before Verdi and Puccini hit the scene — and that virtue doesn't always win out in the end. The opera portrays an illicit love so strong that it threatens to bring down an empire, accompanied by one of the steamiest love-duets ever composed. On At the Opera, host Lisa Simeone highlights the opera using three recordings, led by acclaimed specialists in early opera: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Richard Hickox, and John Eliot Gardiner.

FEATURED RECORDINGS:

Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor

Concentus Musicus, Vienna

CAST:Helen Donath (Poppea); Elisabeth Söderstrom (Nero); Cathy Berberian (Ottavia); Paul Esswood (Ottone); Giancarlo Luccardi (Seneca)

(Teldec 2292-42547)

John Eliot Gardiner, conductor

English Baroque Soloists

CAST: Sylvia McNair (Poppea); Dana Hanchard (Nero); Anne Sofie von Otter (Ottavia); Michael Chance (Ottone); Francesco Ellero d'Artegna (Seneca)

(Archiv 447088)

Richard Hickox, conductor

City of London Baroque Sinfonia

CAST: Arleen Auger (Poppea); Della Jones (Nero); Linda Hirst (Ottavia); James Bowman (Ottone); Gregory Reinhart (Seneca)

(Virgin Classics 90775)

MORE ABOUT THE OPERA:

Remember the film Dangerous Liaisons? It was an edgy, 1988 Oscar-winner from director Stephen Frears, based on an 18th-century French novel with the same, distinctly appropriate title; the film is filled with liaisons, and they're all dangerous on any number of levels.

That same title might also have been given to Claudio Monteverdi's 1643 opera, The Coronation of Poppea, another story of troublesome, and even life-threatening relationships. But there is one, intriguing difference between the 20th-century movie and the 17th-century opera — one that shows us how times have changed, in perhaps unexpected ways.

In the film, all the characters seem to get what's coming to them, in conventional terms of right and wrong. The truly innocent characters are spared from ultimate harm, except for one who is actually martyred to the cause of righteousness. The villains get their just deserts. The amoral rake played by John Malkovich winds up dead after a duel of honor. And the scheming Marquise played by Glenn Close — a character who says her favorite word is "cruelty" — suffers what may be an even sterner fate, at least in her social circles. She's subjected to a humiliating, public "hooting," as she takes her box seat — at the opera.

Thus, as provocative as the film is, it's also a traditional sort of morality play: The good are sanctified and rewarded, while the evil are reviled and left in oblivion.

A similar conflict is set up in Monteverdi's opera, in which another pair of philandering lovers try to quench their desires at the expense of established, moral conventions. But the outcome is surprising, at least by today's standards.

The Coronation of Poppea was written in Venice, in the midst of a lively, intellectual debate over the relative value of spiritual ideals versus sensual pleasures. In the opera, that debate turns up in a conflict between loyalty and lust.

Lust is the runaway winner. A faithful wife is humiliated and cast aside. A noble champion of reason and civility is condemned, and commits suicide. And the two, flagrantly illicit lovers? They wind up with exactly what they wanted — the freedom to enjoy unfettered bliss, extolled in one of opera's most sensuous duets.

On At the Opera, host Lisa Simeone takes us through Monteverdi's Poppea in recordings spanning more than two decades, and featuring three conductors long noted for their work with early opera: a 1974 release led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a recording from 1988 featuring conductor Richard Hickox, and one from 1996, led by John Eliot Gardiner.

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