Monday, April 11, 2011

“L’incoronazione di Poppea” and Emperor Nero


I watched Monteverdi’s opera “L’incoronazione di Poppea” (The coronation of Poppea) conducted by Emmanuelle Haim.

 I read that this opera is Monteverdi’s last and best opera. So I’ve watched bits of pieces of videos from various productions for this opera, which are filled with simple, but beautiful and rich music. I absolutely loved most of them. So I anticipated watching the complete opera specially if it’s by Haim.

I disappointed. She used too many classical instruments and made it too modern. And it was too fast and hastily done. The most singers sang in Classical style including the mezzo-soprano who played Nero. She had beautiful voice but had no weight in her voice and personally, I thought she was miscast. I did not care for how they treated the story and the characters either which they shallowly caricaturized.

The thing I did not like most about this production was that simply it did not sound like Monteverdi at all. I hardly recognized his signature sounds that I most love about his music.

The only good thing about this production was Danielle De Niese who played and sang Poppea in Monteverdian style with beautiful voice. Her portrait of Poppea was realistic, convincing and very charming like diamond.

This is very unconventional, dark, immoral, sensual, passionate and humanistic opera about Emperor Nero and his second wife, Poppea.

Until I watched “Agrippina”, my understanding of Nero was that he was tyrannical, brutal Roman Emperor who was the first persecutor of Christians. I also knew he was rumored to set fire which destroyed most of the city Rome in order for him to build his own amusement facility (this story sounds far fetch to me as much as the 9/11 conspiracy theory).

In order to understand the jokes in “Agrippina”, I read about him on Wikipedia with certain fascination. The true story about him was much more complicated and very contradictory. And there are several things in the articles intrigued me.

The first, he was very young Emperor (I imagined him to be middle aged). He became Emperor at 16 and committed suicide at 30.

The second, he was very popular among lower class, slave population and soldiers but hated by upper class, the elites and the senate. He was also popular in Eastern Empire because of the landmark peace treaty he made there. I also read when there was the famous fire, which destroyed most of Rome’s, he was said to be personally digging debris to rescue survivors and paid charitable contribution for the victims of the fire from his own money.

The third, he considered himself as an artist. He acted and sang publically which must be very unusual especially as an Emperor. He also played instrument and composed songs. When he realized he has to kill himself during the political coup d’état, he repeatedly said, “What an artist has to die within me!” 

The fourth, the articles mentioned that modern historians are questioning the factual authenticity of many negative writings about him through centuries. The first century Jewish historian, Josephus who was critical about Nero was also the first person to mention such wave of popular slanders against him.

The fifth, the Emperor who overthrew Nero was also overthrown by Nero’s friend, Otto, whose wife, Poppea, Nero stole. Otto became Emperor and praised Nero in various ways as the same ways as the Emperor who overthrew Otto. This tells you that Nero was not known as Hitler type in ancient times as he is described in modern days.

In other hand, his mother killed her husband to make Nero emperor. Nero also killed or executed his mother, his stepbrother, his first wife, his second wife by kicking (she might died from child birth for there was no eye witness account), his long time adviser, his friend, etc…  who all of them, except his second wife, might had involved in treasons against him.

The history also said he killed many Christians. But I don’t know how much he was personally involved in persecution of a small foreign religious sect for he must had so many other big political issues throughout Roman Empire to deal with as a world leader.

Because there are so many conflicting information including mentioned above, the true picture of Nero is not very clear. You really don’t know what to trust. But as it’s said, history is written by victors which is often far from truth.


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