“L’Incolonazione di Poppea” by Rene Jacobs

I watched Monteverdi’s “L’Incolonazione di Poppea” conducted by Rene Jacobs in 1993.

The stage setting looked like Sci-Fi movie set, which looked neat and strangely unsuitable at the same time. They had cheep and ugly costumes and not so good make-up jobs.

The sound recording was not very good.  Also this production omitted many scenes.

The mot singers in this production are either good or good enough but not so great.

Soprano, Patricia Schuman who played Poppea had beautiful voice but it was little heavy.

The opening scene’s singing by countertenor, Jeffery Gall who played Otto was good. But the rest of his singing was weak.

I didn’t know until I watched it that Richard Croft played Nero. It was made almost 20 years ago, so he looked very young and handsome. His acting was awkward as a stick in mud though.

I usually don’t care so much for tenor to sing this role, but his light virtuosic vocal cord was well suited for Monteverdi. He makes very good tenor Nero. Only he sung it slower.

This is my biggest complaint for this production. All the singers sung so hastily. I love slow Monteverdi like the production of  “L’Orfeo” conducted by Jean-Claude Malgoire. Monteverdi’s music has such wonderful melodies and rich textures so I don’t understand why they have to be hasten to be cut so short.

This production was orchestrated by Concerto Koln. I listened to their orchestration in the recent Philippe Jaroussky’s album “Caldara” where they played very muscular tight music under the direction of another muscular conductor, Emanuel Haim.

There is close to 20 years difference between these two productions, so probably most of the instrumentalists are not the same but yet even in this production, they played very vital hardcore Classical style music. I liked their music, only if they played other than Monteverdi. This is my second biggest complaint. They played little too noisy in the face of the singers’ singing.

This is not very good production. Even within the older recordings, Harnoncourt’s “Poppea” which made in 70’s had much superior quality.