Reviews

Performance Venice without the Carnival: Pierre Audi’s Monteverdi Cycle on DVD Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021

The Netherlands Ulisse: Anthony Rolfe Johnson Stage Director: Pierre Audi Penelope: Graciela Araya Set Design: Michael Simon Telemaco: Toby Spence Lighting Design: Jean Kalman Antinoo: Jaco Huijpen TV Director: Hans Hulcher Pisandro: Christopher Gillett Opus Arte DVDs, 2005 Anfinomo: Brian Asawa L’Orfeo Eurimaco: Mark Tucker Tragicomedia and Concerto Palatino Iro: Alexander Oliver Conductor: Stephen Stubbs Melanto: Monica Bacelli Costume Design: Jorga Jara Eumete: Adrian Thompson TV Recording: 1998 Minerva: Diana Montague Orfeo: L’incoronazione di Poppea Euridice: Juanita Lascarro Les Talens Lyriques La Messaggiera: Brigitte Baileys Conductor: Christophe Rousset La Musica: David Cordier Costume Design: Emi Wada La Speranza: David Chance TV Recording: 1994 Caronte: Mario Luperi Poppea: Cynthia Haymon Proserpina: Bernarda Fink Nerone: Brigitte Balleys Plutone: Dean Robinson Ottavia: Ning Liang Pastore I/Eco: Jean-Paul Fouche´court Ottone: Michael Chance Pastore II: Russel Smythe Seneca: Harry van der Kamp Pastore III: Douglas Nasrawi Drusilla: Heidi Grant Murphy Pastore IV: Dean Robinson Arnalta: Jean-Paul Fouche´court Ninfa: Suzie Le Blanc Nutrice/Famigliare: Dominique Visse Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria Valletto: Claron McFadden Les Talens Lyriques La Fortuna: Elena Fink Musical Director: Glen Wilson Amore/Damigella: Sandrine Piau Costume Design: Jorge Jara La Virtu`/Pallade: Wilke Brummelstroete TV Recording: 1997 Mercurio, Console: Nathan Berg L’Humana Fragilita`: Brian Asawa Soldato, Lucano, Tribuno, Famigliare: Mark Tucker Il Tempo: Jaco Huijpen Soldato II, Liberto, Tribuno II: Lynton Atkinson La Fortuna: Monica Bacelli Littore, Famigliare III, Console II: Romain Bischoff Amore: Machteld Baumans

At the Utrecht Early Music Festival in August 2006, a group of prominent Baroque scholars who were assembled for a symposium on Italian seventeenth- century music had the rare opportunity to engage in a dialogue with the directo- rial team for the festival’s production of Francesco Cavalli’s Hipermestra (1658).1

The Opera Quarterly Vol. 24, No.3–4, pp. 293–306; doi: 10.1093/oq/kbp015 Advance Access publication on November 3, 2009 # The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]. 294 heller on audi

We gleaned much from that exchange. For example, we discovered that the cos- tumes were inspired by the frescoes and paintings of the fifteenth-century Tuscan artist Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro), whose works were featured at a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition that year. What many of us felt was an uncharacteristic lack of distinction between aria and recitative was described as a desire to emulate the long lines associated with French music of the period. As a

scholar who has worked extensively on the representation of women in Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 seventeenth-century opera, I was particularly astonished to learn that a character in an American situation comedy—Estelle Getty’s portrayal of “mother Sophia” in The Golden Girls—served as the model for the characterization of Hipermestra’s elderly nurse. The tension in the room was palpable. There could have been no more vivid demonstration of the very different assumptions and aims that shape the expectations of scholars and directors in productions of Baroque opera. International opera audiences are by now accustomed to novel and inventive recontextualizations of standard repertory, often achieved through the transform- ation of a work’s social and political context. As with traditional productions, these have met with varying degrees of success and failure: what is bad taste in the eyes of one critic may well be regarded as an insightful interpretive move by another. Indeed, regardless of one’s personal preferences for one or another production, the new freedom in opera directing over the past few decades has provided a much needed revitalization for audiences and scholars, and the best work more than compensates for those productions that have seemed to some viewers more intent upon shocking audiences than thoughtfully interpreting the work at hand. The situation, however, is particularly complicated in the world of Baroque opera, where production conventions are not firmly established, reliable editions are less available, and the distance of several hundred years not only raises ques- tions about basic performance practices but also the aesthetic premises guiding the original conception, production, and consumption of the . While audi- ences undoubtedly are familiar with traditional productions of Carmen or La Traviata, the operas of Monteverdi, Cavalli, Lully, or even Handel are not “firmly ensconced in the canon.”2 Would the Wooster Group’s meshing of science-fiction film with opera have been as well received if the featured opera had been Le Nozze di Figaro or even Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, rather than Francesco Cavalli’s lesser known La Didone?3 On the one hand, this creativity has been exhilarating— and even may well have been an important factor in inspiring some directors and opera houses to try their hands at Baroque opera. Venetian opera, with its carni- valesque mixture of comic and tragic elements, often ironic perspective, and un- abashed play with gender and sexuality is in fact ideally suited for contemporary tastes. As a scholar who has written extensively about sexuality in Venetian opera, reviews: performance 295

I have been delighted to see directors explore rather than suppress the play with sexuality and desire that is so integral to these works. It is probably far better to overdo the sexual content in a work such as Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto (1651), as was arguably the case with David Alden’s production at Covent Garden (October, 2008), than to minimize or sanitize it.4 At the same time, at least for this critic, some of the raunchier moments in Alden’s production seemed at odds both with the inherent sensuality of the music—which tends more towards Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 languor than climax—and the playful tone of the libretto, with its seductive marriage of Ovidian imagery and early modern erotica. Does Alden intend to excite viewers by emphasizing the dissonance between sight and sound, or might this be an instance in which a staging that explored late Renaissance pornography might have further aroused viewers through the coordination of sight and sound? With Baroque opera, however, the potential problems in any given pro- duction are exacerbated by conflicting orthodoxies regarding historically informed performance. In many productions of Handel’s operas one might well be disconcerted by the apparent dissonance between the reverence with which the musical text is approached and the more casual attitude about the integrity of the libretto and apparent underlying anxiety about the dramatic via- bility of da capo arias.5 While even the boldest director might hesitate to reorder the scenes in a Da Ponte libretto or eliminate characters from any stan- dard repertory, productions of Baroque opera regularly combine substantial reworkings of the poetic text with ostensibly “authentic” musical performances. (This, in fact, contradicts seventeenth-century Italian practices in which the librettist was almost always given top billing and the text of the printed libretto was transmitted in a far more stable fashion than the manuscript scores). When such alterations are done in a capricious fashion—whether for the sake of practical considerations (length), a misunderstanding of scholarship, a dis- trust of the Baroque dramatic instinct or audiences’ historical imagination—the result may not be a reconceptualization that challenges viewers, but rather the codification of a new orthodoxy, in which many essential features of the original are lost. Commercially available DVDs of Baroque opera provide a peculiar reflection of these conflicting forces, preserving for posterity—seemingly by chance—an idiosyncratic assortment of approaches. One hesitates to complain. As a scholar and teacher, I welcome the increased commercial support and enthusiasm for Baroque opera, applaud the high professional level of singing and playing, rejoice in the possibility of hearing and seeing works that I first learned at an upright piano with a photostat of the microfilm. I happily use these DVDs in the class- room, where the productions bring these works to life and stimulate discussion. Yet, for many of us an underlying discomfort remains, born of unnecessary or 296 heller on audi

careless cuts, poorly translated subtitles, misreadings of music and text, and stage gimmicks that so absorb the attention of our students that they forget to listen. Among the most important of the increasing number of commercial DVDs of Baroque opera is the cycle of Monteverdi operas recently released by Opus Arte, produced by the Netherlands Opera and directed by Pierre Audi. The aim seems to have been to offer a coherent vision of Monteverdi the dramatist, presenting

his surviving operas as a “cycle”: L’Orfeo (1607) and the late Venetian operas, Il Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 ritorno di Ulisse in patria (1641) and L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643); you also get a “bonus” gift if you buy the whole set: a quite elegant production of Il combatti- mento di Tancredi e Clorinda. (One wonders what Monteverdi might have thought about the juxtaposition of Il combattimento with his other, grander sung dramas.) The productions are unified not only by the director’s distinctive vision and the use of the same generous theatrical space, Amsterdam’s Muziektheater, but also by employing the same lighting director, set designer, and TV production team, thus ensuring a consistent approach to the filming of the operas.6 Notably, a similar desire for uniformity did not extend to the musical direction. In fact, a striking feature of these productions is the extent to which the different choices made by the music directors were made to fit into the same stylistic box in an attempt to unify Audi’s vision. But perhaps the most fundamental question has to do with the premise of the entire project: what does it mean to produce all of Monteverdi’s extant operas under the artistic supervision of a single director? Or to put it another way: what are the consequences of imagining a unity of expression by means of directorial interpretation in three works of Monteverdi’s written over a period of more than forty years? It perhaps goes without saying that the notion of such a “cycle” derives from no less a work than Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen—that is, a series of musico-dramatic works of epic proportions, embracing universal mythic truths set forth in an imaginary, ahistorical space. Here a single, unified authorial vision might well lend itself to realization with a consistent directorial approach. Indeed, one can imagine why L’Orfeo might seem the perfect equivalent to the pseudo-Wagnerian in the Baroque: it exists in the realm of myth, enjoys a privileged historical position as the “first great opera,” and takes as its subject the passions and frailties of the artist. Yet Monteverdi is not Wagner; his three surviving operas were conceived of and produced under rather different circumstances, set to poetry penned by three very different librettists, inspired by dissimilar classical sources, and composed under the influence of changing aesthetic concerns.7 More than three decades separate L’Orfeo from Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea, both produced by the elder Monteverdi for the commercial opera theaters in the Republic of Venice, within the context of Europe’s most famous carnival, and for an audience already accustomed to the works of the next generation of reviews: performance 297 composers, such as Francesco Cavalli. Indeed, the changes that sung drama experienced between Monteverdi’s first and last operas are arguably more sub- stantial than any that would occur on the Italian stage for the next hundred years.8 These not only have to do with the shift between court and commercial opera, or even changes in the basic structure of dramma per musica—the stan- dardization of the three-act structure, reduction of chorus, and increased empha- sis on lyric expression and the aria as a discrete syntactic unit. The distance Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 between sung drama in the northern Italian courts and the Venetian theaters also reflects a shift from an aesthetic that prized a kind of dramatic unity akin to Aristotelian procedures to the Venetian delight in variety, eclecticism, eroticism, and the seemingly incongruous juxtapositions of the comic and the tragic—not to mention the curious combination of patriotism and licentious heterodoxy that Venetian opera inherited from the Accademia degli Incogniti.9 If there were to be a Monteverdi cycle, as Ellen Rosand has recently shown, it would include these two final operas.10 In fact, the flexible approach to dramaturgy that was to characterize mid-seventeenth century opera made it possible for Monteverdi to represent so successfully both the ambivalent ethics of Nero’s Rome, as described in Tacitus’s Annals of the Roman Empire, and the fragile morality of Penelope’s Ithaca, inspired by the concluding books of Homer’s Odyssey, albeit under the influence of the hyperbolic poetic idiom introduced by the controversial poet Giambattista Marino.11 Thus the dilemma of the cycle on DVD: to what extent does this directorial attempt at unity illuminate or obscure features of these extraordinary works? And what are the consequences, moreover, of the codification of these particular per- formances in a product such as a DVD set, which may well for many viewers come to represent the “definitive” version of all the extant Monteverdi operas for the foreseeable future?

Audi’s Vision

On the surface, there is much to recommend these performances. For the most part, the singing and playing are of an acceptably high quality, and the sheer wonder of Monteverdi’s music shines through with extraordinary beauty and pathos. Audi approaches Monteverdi’s operas with unmistakable reverence. He avoids the path taken by some of the most iconoclastic European directors: there is no blood, gratuitous violence, or live sex acts, despite the fact that sex and violence are intrinsic both to the volatile political universe of Nero’s Rome and the corrupt world of Ulysses’ Ithaca in the hero’s absence. Although L’incoronazione di Poppea was the first production to be recorded, Audi seems to take his cue from the first of the operas (L’Orfeo), placing the entire cycle in a mythic universe. This decidedly Wagnerian gesture has profound 298 heller on audi

consequences for every aspect of the productions, influencing the pacing, the set design, the singers’ movements, and even the camera work. In the introduction included as part of the DVD extras in disc 1 of L’incoronazione di Poppea, Audi explains that he seeks to “interest the singers in a very personal way to sing and act with the whole body, and to relate to each other as actors, and form together a complete unified ensemble ...much as in a great Shakespeare tragedy.” The par-

ticipation of the whole body, moreover, requires slower, more concentrated Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 motion: “I invite the singers to feel the music from the inside, and from this feeling to develop a stage behavior which in itself was very pared down.” Thus all the movements are economical to a fault; characters move slowly— occasionally, excruciatingly so—with restrained gestures that are perhaps more effective for the video camera than in the theater. The pace sometimes infects the tempos, dampening some of the joyful enthusiasm that is such a memorable feature of Monteverdi’s music. Audi’s adherence to this ideal sometimes flies in the face of both dramatic and musical logic, as in the staging of the scene between Ulisse’s son Telemaco (Toby Spence) and the goddess Minerva (beauti- fully sung by Diane Montague) as she escorts him home to Ithaca on her chariot: although Minerva sings some of the most exhilarating music in the opera, the two stand completely still next to one another, as if frozen on stage. Characters are directed to express intimacy either by close physical contact (as, for example, in Ulisse for the staging of the sensual act 1, scene 2, duet between the promiscu- ous Melanto [Monica Bacelli] and her lover Eurimaco [Mark Tucker, who is effec- tive in multiple roles throughout the cycle]), or with an exaggerated distance that emphasizes their intrinsic emotional isolation and loneliness. Indeed, this dis- tance adds a curious quality to the very different endings of both Poppea and Ulisse, where the contrast between musical intimacy (in the intertwining voices of the duets) and physical separation has arguably different implications for the reunited Ulisse and Penelope and the postcoronation consummation of Nerone and Poppea’s love. Audi often uses the floor for deep emotional outbursts, with varying results. Orfeo’s performance of “Tu se’ morta,” which begins with John Mark Ainsley stretched out nearly face down on the stage, is extraordinarily moving. However, in act 4 of L’Orfeo, Proserpina’s caresses of the prone Orfeo seem dramatically improbable—are we to imagine that Orfeo’s eloquent pleading aroused more than pity in Plutone’s Queen? This sort of passionate groping on the stage floor becomes tedious in the other operas when, for example, Melanto massages the prone Penelope and Arnalta takes similar liberties with Poppea. Audi’s somewhat minimalist approach serves some singers better than others. While Ainsley’s Orfeo is entirely comfortable through this veil of myth, Graciela Araya’s Penelope, though beautifully sung, is hindered by her somewhat forbidding stiff- ness that suppresses some of that character’s innate warmth. Anthony Rolfe reviews: performance 299

Johnson is nonetheless an eloquent, dignified, and quietly impassioned Ulisse, whose rich tone and sure diction radiate confidence, clarity, and heroic elegance. The pared-down physical motion is complemented by sparse stage sets designed by Michael Simon, which are articulated by primordial elements that are more evocative than functional: a pool of water, a dilapidated stone wall, and wooden logs assembled in a colossal wigwam structure for L’Orfeo; a patch of sand, the wooden bow of a ship, a clifflike formation, and a spearlike object in Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 Ulisse; and craggy rocks and a ubiquitous sphere for Poppea. Audi notes that these set elements were added late in the rehearsal process and are secondary to the movements that should be internally motivated. Thus, they will sometimes provide a wall to lean on, a place to sit, or an object to hold in a suggestive rather than literal fashion. Restraint, minimalism, and a focus on a few poignant objects thus replace the visual splendor that would have been part of daily life in the Mantuan court, as well as of Venetian opera experience.

Orfeo and Myth

Not surprisingly, Audi’s approach elicits different degrees of success in each of the operas, a result not only of dissimilarities among the works themselves but also the palpably different approaches of the three music directors. In many respects, L’Orfeo is the most satisfying of all three productions—or, to put it another way, it is the opera that is best suited to Audi’s approach. This, after all, is the only one of Monteverdi’s surviving operas actually to treat myth, rather than epic or history. The stage elements work particularly well here. The pool of water, for example, serves not only as the river Styx and the murky underworld but also, in the elaborate staging of the opening toccata, as a baptismal pool for a Christianized Orfeo encircled by nymphs and shepherds. Lit by flames, the pool also defines the pathway for Euridice as she tries to follow Orfeo out of the underworld. The stone wall, which can be lowered into a slot in the stage, serves both as Euridice’s tomb and the path to the underworld, and it is used to great effect as Orfeo sings the opening of “Possente spirto” with only his head sticking up through the floor. A stunning visual image is achieved with Orfeo’s ascent to the Thracian fields in the opening of act 5: the stone wall reemerges from the bowels of the stage with Orfeo draped over a gap in it and bathed in a golden light. When Apollo appears (oddly attired in a golden dress) to fetch his son, changes in the set remind us of how Orfeo’s world has been transformed in the aftermath of Euridice’s second death: a golden meteor-like rock hovers in the sky, while only a single log remains from the wigwam structure, now stretched across the pool of water. The pregnant manipulation of these stage devices, the sudden contrasts between blue and golden lighting, and the deliberate pacing all work together elegantly within this mythic, stylized universe. 300 heller on audi

Some dramatic touches are more effective than others. In the prologue to L’Orfeo, the transvestite appearance of La Musica (David Cordier), whose baldness seems intended to mirror that of Ainsley’s Orfeo, adds a touch of unnecessary coarseness to a beautiful moment. Is Audi trying to tell us that La Musica is the feminine counterpart to Orfeo, or is he hinting at the unmanly nature of music making? Or is she yet another bawdy, elderly nurse from the Golden Girls tra-

dition? Ainsley is an elegant and moving Orfeo, albeit one whose passions are Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 sometimes constrained by the production, and Stephen Stubbs is quite successful at preventing the slow pacing of the movement from damping the inherently lively nature of the music, particularly in the first and second acts. One might want the nymphs and shepherds actually to dance rather than to mill about, sleep, or splash in the water; however, a tiny gesture in act 1—when one of the choristers puts on the horns of Pan and mimes the goat god’s attack on a nymph—is a clever insight into the violence underlying the pastoral realm. The large chorus has a marvelous sonic effect both in their guise as earthly nymphs and shepherds in the first two acts and as underworld furies clad in purple and gold in act 4. All the lesser characters make powerful contributions. If the musical and dramatic vision here is somewhat more sure-footed than in the other two operas, it might well be a result of the fact that Monteverdi himself supplied a host of performance instructions in the printed score which—unlike the Venetian operas preserved only in manuscript—includes vital information about scoring, ornamentation, and staging. Thus, for example, the antitheses between the pastoral realm and the underworld, despair and hope, love found and love lost that are so carefully inscribed in the opera’s instrumentation pro- vided a solid foundation for Audi’s imagination.

Monteverdi versus Homer

Certainty about music, text, and orchestration, however, is not a feature of Il ritorno d’Ulisse, and this is where the second offering in the “Monteverdi cycle” encounters serious problems. Indeed, Audi and Glen Wilson’s production of Ulisse demon- strates most eloquently the tensions between scholarship and performance. Again, the DVD extras are instructive. When asked about the relationship of Il ritorno di Ulisse to Wagner, given the appearance of gods and the supernatural, Wilson replies: “I got rid of the gods. I kept Homer, which only features Minerva, and has the best music. The other gods have less music, which probably isn’t by Monteverdi himself. So I got rid of it, as it’s irrelevant. So that leaves a core that corresponds with the Odyssey, and with what Monteverdi composed himself.” Misplaced fidelity to two authors—Monteverdi and Homer—combined with over-confidence becomes the rationale for a flawed performance and fundamental mistakes about Monteverdi’s role in the composition of Ulisse. That is not to say reviews: performance 301 that Monteverdi’s authorship of this work has never been in dispute. Discrepancies between the various surviving librettos, anomalies about the single surviving musical score in Vienna, as well as evidence that the work was con- ceived of both as a three-act and a five-act opera have long cast a shadow on the attribution to Monteverdi. Ellen Rosand’s recent book provides the most definitive discussion of the problems, putting to rest any remaining doubts about

Monteverdi’s authorship.12 Yet, even given the available scholarship when this Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 production was prepared, there is no justification for Wilson’s claims in the accompanying book that “as in the case of Poppea parts of the opera [mostly where the libretto is uninspiring] were clearly not composed by the aging and ailing Monteverdi.”13 The idea that Homer should guide the director in determin- ing the ultimate shape of the opera is even more problematic. Il ritorno di Ulisse is not Homer “weighed down” with the conventions of early Baroque opera.14 In fact, the hallmark of the Venetian operas of Monteverdi and his colleagues was the flexible, playful, and above all irreverent attitude toward the classical sources upon which their works were based. The librettist Giacomo Badoaro, like Giovanni Francesco Busenello and other Venetian librettists, took delight not in adhering faithfully to classical sources but rather in varying them in artful ways, often gleaning their variations from contemporary commentaries and vernacular travesties, which rarely aspired to anything resembling modern philological stan- dards. The “convoluted conceits” and Marinism that Wilson condemns in the program booklet—that is, a poetic style influenced by Marino, as noted above— was embraced fully by Monteverdi and his librettists.15 Opera in Venice, after all, was born of carnival and carnivalesque inversions. Spectacle too was of primary importance, and there is no evidence that Monteverdi would have rejected choruses of gods in favor of some notion of dramatic realism, and certainly not out of loyalty to Homer. Admittedly, the perennial problem facing presenters of Baroque opera in the modern opera house is if and where to cut, since union regulations and audience patience often defeat even the most sincere desire to present a “complete” per- formance. This, however, is not the case with a DVD that a listener can turn off at whim. One therefore wonders why it was not possible to present a longer version than the one heard in the opera house. Wilson does make substantial cuts in his Ulisse, and many seem to be based on misinformation and questionable aesthetic considerations. As in many modern productions, he changes Ulisse from a three-act (or five-act) to a two-act opera and—more seriously—reorders much material in his second act.16 Moreover, a detailed description of these changes is nowhere to be found in the supplementary material included with the DVD. One of the most drastic cuts, and one that Wilson fails to mention in his spoken explanation, is his elimination of Ulisse’s nurse, Ericlea, who—contrary to his own reasoning—plays a vital role both in the opera and in Homer’s epic. 302 heller on audi

Ericlea serves as an essential foil to Penelope in her opening lament—at times instigating her changing emotions and directing some of the expressive tonal shifts—and her final aria in the last act is an integral part of the pacing of the denouement.17 Equally serious is Wilson’s reordering of scenes in the so-called second act. In the original five-act version, act 2 concludes with the duet between Ulisse and his

son Telemaco (act 2, scene 3, in the standard three-act version). Wilson uses this Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 duet to end his first act, and then skips ahead no fewer than six scenes and begins his second act with the the scene between Penelope and Telemaco, in which the latter describes his infatuation with the beautiful Helen of Troy (Act 4, scene 2 in the five act version and Act 2 scene 10 in the three-act version). To give Wilson and Audi the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they thought they were correct- ing a dramatic error on the part of the composer and librettist: the dialogue between father and son had ended as Ulisse tells Telemaco to go to his mother (“vanne alla madre”), so it may well have seemed logical for the subsequent scene to begin with the reunion of mother and son. But here is a prime instance in which much more might have been accomplished by trusting Monteverdi’s keen dramatic instincts. If performed in the order presented in Badoaro’s libretto and Monteverdi’s score, Telemaco’s heartfelt talk with his mother is postponed until after the audience has witnessed the misery that Penelope endures during the absence of husband and child: that is, the sexual licentiousness of Melanto and Eurimaco, the gluttony of Iro, and the unrelenting libidinous pleas of Penelope’s suitors. Without this musical and dramatic material, it is difficult to understand Penelope’s harsh reaction to Telemaco’s fascination with Helen’s beauty. Moreover, it becomes patently illogical for the shepherd Eumete to announce the return of Telemaco to a mother who has already seen her son several scenes earlier. I am not engaging in scholarly nitpicking here. Cuts and reorderings such as those Wilson indulges in are symptoms of a basic misunderstanding of the mech- anisms of this extraordinary work: a desire to replace Monteverdi’s embrace of variety and contrast—the essence of Baroque theater—with a dramatic aesthetic that would have been utterly foreign to the composer and his audience. Ironically, Wilson seems to reserve his commitment to authenticity only for choosing the instruments of his ; he insists upon a band of only eleven players, without extensive enriching of the orchestration. Although the gesture is admirable, Wilson might have taken heed of the fact that there were no recorders in Venetian opera . His preponderance of slow tempos is a problem, as is the use of only a harpsichord for so much of the recitative accompaniment. This serves to dissipate some of the innate energy of Monteverdi’s music, which would have been more effectively realized with a wider palette of timbres in the continuo group. This lack of variety is perhaps best shown by the treatment of the most per- plexing character in the opera, the parasite Iro, who kills himself after the death reviews: performance 303 of the suitors in despair over his hunger.18 Audi’s interpretation of Iro happily avoids the slapstick that other directors have adopted; the blood-smeared glutton, sung with remarkable skill by Alexander Oliver, nonetheless projects a monochro- matic emotional range that disallows the inherent tension between the comedic and the tragic in this unprecedented mad scene. Even the beauty of the final duet between Penelope and Ulisse, sung with great authority and depth, is lacking in commensurate dramatic passion because of a staging that keeps husband and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 wife separated until a chaste embrace in the final measures that is more typical of sibling affection than the love of man and woman. We might well imagine—as the staging implies—that Penelope and Ulysses were not quite ready to resume a full marital relationship after their long separation; but Monteverdi’s setting, in which Penelope bursts into glorious aria after three hours of recitative—suggests otherwise.

Myth and Antimyth in Poppea

The third entry in the cycle, L’incoronazione di Poppea, conducted by Christophe Rousset, is in many respects more successful than Ulisse. I am tempted to think that this is because it was the first of the operas to be produced, before the unify- ing concept had become hardened. It is far less mutilated by cuts, being presented in three acts, as is appropriate. Indeed, it is one of the most complete DVD pro- ductions of the Venetian score of Poppea currently available, although regrettably none of the information regarding the Venice and Naples sources is included in the accompanying material. The performance is helped a good deal by the pacing of the music; Rousset favors faster, more flexible tempos than does Wilson, with a more committed interpretation, a colorful continuo group, and a livelier approach to ornamentation. This allows much of the intrinsic humor and sensuality to come through. The staging is less static; Audi takes advantage of the upper recesses of the space, even allowing for the god Amore to arrive by machine. The singing is enthusiastic, if at times less consistent than in Ulisse. Brigitte Balleys is an impetuous, passionate Nerone, appropriately vulnerable to the joys of singing and the prospects of physical fulfillment; Ning Liang’s Ottavia is regal and sympathetic, somewhat less convincing in her ruthless moments. (I do find it hard to believe that the disprezzata regina would ever fall into the arms of Seneca in her moment of despair.) Michael Chance’s Ottone reminds us of why his work has been so admired over the years, and Cynthia Haymon brings a certain raw sexuality to Poppea. The lighter moments—such as the luscious duet between Damigella and Valletto and the scenes involving the two nurses—are particularly charming, showing how central these presumably “irrelevant” scenes are to the flow of the drama. Heidi Grant Murphy sings an exuberant Drusilla, oddly attired in a hooded cloak that makes her look all too much like Micae¨la in 304 heller on audi

search of Don Jose´ rather than Ottone. The costumes, unfortunately, are on the whole both unattractive and distracting. It is difficult to understand why Poppea’s nurse Arnalta would be attired so differently than Ottavia’s nurse—or more to the point, why she should look like a bedraggled Queen of Hearts escaped from the Disney production of Alice in Wonderland. More important, the rustic “fuzzy” (bath)robes worn by all the leading characters may have been intended to evoke

the primordial world, but they erase the class distinctions and even the sexual Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 desirability of the characters in an opera so concerned with imperial ambitions and eroticism. The costumes, however, are but one symptom of an overall conception of Poppea (and the entire cycle, for that matter) that does not do justice to the complex political and moral world portrayed in this great operatic work. Audi per- ceptively notes in his introductory remarks that Poppea is “not just about passion but the effect of that passion on the political atmosphere around those people”; he then claims, tellingly, that Monteverdi “elevates the work to myth.” Passion indeed abounds, and Audi is sensitive enough to the sensual implications of Monteverdi’s music to exploit it thoughtfully, as he does, for example, with the erotic undertones of the Lucano–Nerone scene and the duets between Poppea and Nerone—though the stasis of the sometimes erotic, sometimes awkward groping can become tedious.19 Yet his insistence on elevating Poppea to the mythical realm removes the very real political element that is such a vital part of Monteverdi’s and Busenello’s view of the Roman Empire. In this case, attention to the relevant classical author, Tacitus, is particularly instructive. Tacitus’s Annals of the Roman Empire, the primary source for Poppea, is more antimyth than myth; his goal was to demonstrate the failings of imperial rule and to expose the under- belly of Roman politics with an acute and penetrating eye, employing a succinct, pithy prose that is the antithesis of the stylization of Audi’s production. Ironically, it is precisely the antimyth of the Roman Empire that was to serve the myth more relevant to Monteverdi and his colleagues: the so-called “myth of Venice” and the oddly hedonistic, patriotic glorification of republican freedoms that were so vital to Venetian opera in the 1640s. In some respects what Audi has achieved is the opposite of what Patrice Che´reau and Pierre Boulez accomplished with their cen- tennial production of Wagner’s Ring that has become so well known through tele- vision, video, and now DVD. Where their Ring turned myth into politics, Audi has turned politics into myth, and in so doing erased the tension between eroti- cism and ambition that is central to L’incoronazione. We are then left with a pseu- doprimitive soap opera, with enticing, albeit badly behaved, heroes and heroines, and a misplaced echo of Senecan stoic restraint. The larger problem is that Monteverdi’s three surviving operas are not a true cycle, no matter how much we may wish to see them as such. Audi’s focus on myth and minimalism is somewhat plausible for the world of L’Orfeo, but is not reviews: performance 305 relevant to the aesthetic of Monteverdi’s late Venetian operas, which are rich in tension, contrast, humor, carnivalesque madness, and sheer Baroque variety— one that I believe would be embraced enthusiastically by modern audiences nur- tured on the epic dramaturgy and startling juxtapositions of HBO’s The Sopranos. If these DVDs bring Monteverdi’s magnificent works to a broader audience, they will have made an important contribution. However, if they freeze their perfor- mance choices into a pseudoauthoritative version, codifying an approach to Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 music and drama that will be imitated by some and regarded as definitive by many, then a vital part of Monteverdi’s sublime and eclectic vision—the carnival in Venice—will have been lost. Wendy Heller

notes Wendy Heller is a professor of music at Alec Ross, “Unsung: Rediscovering the operas of Princeton University. Her work focuses on Francesco Cavalli,” The New Yorker, May 25, 2009, Baroque opera from an interdisciplinary 84–86. perspective, with particular emphasis on gender 4. On sexuality in La Calisto, see Wendy Heller, and sexuality, art history, and the classical Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices tradition. She is the author of Emblems of in Seventeenth-Century Venice, chapter 4. La Calisto Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in was performed at the , Covent Seventeenth-Century Venice (University of Garden with the Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble California Press, 2004), which was named a and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, finalist in the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the conducted by Ivor Bolton and directed by David American Musicological Society and received the Alden. best book award from the Society for the Study 5. For varying views on modern stagings of of Early Modern Women. A Fellow of the Handel, see Winton Dean, “Production Style in American Academy in Rome and the Villa I Tatti Handel’s Operas,” in The Cambridge Companion Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance to Handel, ed. Donald Burrows (Cambridge: Studies, she is currently finishing a book on the Cambridge University Press, 1997), 249–261; uses of antiquity in Baroque opera. This past Andrew Jones, “Staging a Handel Opera,” Early January, she produced a production of Music 24 (2006): 277–288; Barry Emslie, “Handel Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno di Ulisse with the the Postmodernist,” Cambridge Opera Journal 15 Princeton University Opera Theater. (2003): 185–198. 1. Francesco Cavalli’s Hipermestra, with music 6. Of the production team, the only change direction by Mike Fentross and stage direction by was in the costumer designer for L’incoronazione Wim Trompet, was the central part of the 2006 di Poppea, which was taped for television in 1994, Oudemuziek festival in Utrecht, dedicated to several years before the other two. seventeenth-century Italian music. For a 7. See Giuseppe Gerbino and Iain Fenlon, discussion of Hipermestra within the context of “Early Opera: The Initial Phase,” in European the festival, see Margaret Murata, “Variety Reigns Music, 1520–1640, ed. James Haar (Woodbridge, in 2006 Utrecht Concerts,” 17th-Century Music UK: Boydell, 2006), 472–86. 16, no. 2 (2006): 10, 12–13. 8. The classic essay on this topic is Nino Pirrotta, 2. David Levin, Unsettling Opera: Staging “Monteverdi and the Problems of Opera,” in Mozart, Verdi, and Zemlinsky (Chicago: University Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to of Chicago Press, 2007), 1. the Baroque: A Collection of Essays (Cambridge, 3. Ben Brantley, “Lost in Space with Dido and MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 235–53. Aeneas,” New York Times, April 17, 2009, http:// 9. Both Giacomo Badoaro and Giovanni theater2.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/theater/ Francesco Busenello, the librettists for the reviews/06dido.html (May 27, 2009). See also Venetian operas, were members of the 306 heller on audi

Accademia degli Incogniti. On the influence of 15. Ibid. The passage reads as follows: their philosophies on opera, see my Emblems of “Badoaro was a prisoner of his times as any of us, Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in and he weighed down Homer’s sublime Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley: University of tautly-told story with all the conventions of early California Press, 2004), chap. 2. See also Ellen baroque theater. The poetry, though sometimes Rosand, Monteverdi’s Last Operas: AVenetian very beautiful, suffers from the convoluted Trilogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, conceits and prolix verbal virtuosity of the 2007), esp. 17–19. Marinism of the period.”

10. Rosand, in Monteverdi’s Last Operas, 16. The practice of transforming operas Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/oq/article/24/3-4/293/1579248 by guest on 28 September 2021 presents compelling evidence of the links from three to two acts is particularly widespread between Monteverdi’s three final operas, Il ritorno for Handel, allowing for a single intermission d’Ulisse in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and that shortens the performance time. This has an opera for which the music is lost, Le nozze been standard practice for the Handel revivals d’Enea con Lavinia, in terms of overall conception, at the New York City Opera, which intellectual milieu, and expression of the myth of nonetheless have constituted a vital step in Venice. contemporary appreciation of Handel’s 11. On the sources for the Venetian operas, see operas. Rosand, Monteverdi’s Last Operas. On the use of 17. It is indeed possible to reduce the length of Tacitus, see Wendy Heller, “Tacitus Incognito: Il Ritorno di Ulisse without eliminating characters Opera as History in L’incoronazione di Poppea,” in such a draconian fashion. In January of 2009, Journal of the American Musicological Society 52 the Princeton University Opera Theater’s (1999): 39–96. Marino, whose epic poem Adone production came in at under three hours, and was banned in the aftermath of the poet’s included Ericlea, and many of the scenes premature death, was a hero for the Incogniti and involving the gods and goddesses. The a strong influence on their poetic style. For a production, conducted by Michael Pratt (based more negative, albeit influential assessment of on Alan Curtis’ edition [Novello, 2001]) and the influence of Marinist poetics on Monteverdi, directed by Andrew Eggert, was set on Long see Gary Tomlinson, Monteverdi and the End of Island in the aftermath of World War I—a the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California reconceptualization that elegantly captured Press, 1989). fundamental issues in Badoaro’s libretto and 12. For a full discussion, see Rosand, Homer’s epic. We retained the original five-act Monteverdi’s Last Operas, 52–60 (on the libretto structure, placing a single intermission between sources) and 69–88 (on the surviving score). the second and third acts. 13. Glen Wilson, “A Performing Version of 18. On Iro, see Rosand, Monteverdi’s Last Monteverdi’s Ulisse,” program booklet Operas, 337–42. accompanying Il ritorno di Ulisse, Opus Arte DVD, 19. On the eroticism of Lucano and Nerone, 2005, 7. see Heller, “Tacitus Incognito.” 14. Ibid.