L’Incoronazione di Poppea by Emmanuelle Haim

This production of Monteverdi’s opera, L’Icoronazione di Poppea was orchestrated by Le Concert d’Astree under the conduction of Emmanuelle Haim.

As always, she plays very vibrant muscular music. Musically speaking, she’s someone you might want to follow when ship is sinking. Her music has such toughness and vibrancy.

This is the second production of this opera conducted by her I’ve watched. And it is much better than her previous 2008 Glyndebourne Festival production staring Danielle De Niese as Poppea. Her music is much slower, authentic and less Classical in this production (though my personal preference in Monteverdi’s music is much simpler, slower and more authentic than what she even plays here.)

All the singers sung in Baroque singing style well. And also there are less caricaturizations of the characters than her previous production.

The stage setting and direction of this production looked like an underground theatrical production played by young actors. The costumes were also the very basic mixture of period and modern as in low budget theatrical production. Even before the opera began, all the performers including the conductor in modern casual clothing were at-homely drinking, chattering and laughing with each other as they’re at rehearsal break. The opera started when the conductor was ready to come down to the orchestra pit from the stage.

This wickedly brilliant opera is the hippest and trendiest opera I know. It is very interesting considering the fact that it was written 370 years ago. And it is definitely not opera for kids.

I love the voice of Sonya Yoncheva as Poppea. Vocally, she sung this role really well. Her Poppea is beautiful, seductive and passionate. She looked like modern day wild mistress of powerful rich man with tattoo on her arm.

Portraying this character as tough trampy figure in such Hollywood style might appeal to modern audience, but personally I’m little tired of watching this type of characterization. Mockery or satire can be fun and clever. But caricaturization of character often cheapens not only the character but also production itself. But again, it is not so bad in this production as much as in the previous production.

Max Emanuel Cencic sung Nerone very well. Although I prefer singer with finer voice texture than his for this role because its vocal lines have finer nuances. He looked like 80’s eccentric tattooed punk/gram rocker. His illumines voice was electrifying as he was a Baroque’n-roller. His and Sonya Yoncheva’s duets were very beautiful.

Tim Mead who played Ottone was good with little less emotional shade.

Ann Hallenberg played the scary version of Ottavia. I’m usually very fond of her singing, but I was having hard time hearing Ottavia’s laments from her singing in this production.

The rest of the singers and over all quality of the production were very good even though they’re not the best.

Tamerlane by Trevor Pinnock

This DVD production of Handel’s opera Tamerlane was conducted by Trevor Pinnock with the English Concert Orchestra.

The storyline of this opera is almost identical to the one in Vivaldi’s opera Bajazet. The libretto in Vivaldi’s version had much deeper human drama than Handel’s although the music of Handel is well written enough to overcome the weakness of its libretto.

But unfortunately, this production does not live up to such wonderful quality of Handel’s music.

This production had the bare minimal stage setting comparably to the gorgeous costume designs. And it had rather cheap acting directions.

The sound quality of the orchestration by Trevor Pinnock is very good. It had wonderful amount of vibrancy with plenty of colors and clear crisp intonations.  I couldn’t see inside of the orchestra pit but it seemed and sounded like very small numbers of instrumentalists were used. I’m not certain if it’s because of this, his orchestration sounded less full, less melodious and less dramatic at times. I love the sound quality of his orchestration but it also had less musical zest than I prefer to hear in Handel’s music.

All the singers had beautiful, well-trained voices. But most of them fell short on maturity or depth in their singings.

The best singer in this production though was mezzo-soprano, Anna Bonitatibus who played Irene. Her singing was vibrant with the rich expression and manner of easiness.

The next best singer is alto, Monica Bacelli who played the title role of Tamerlane. Her voice was big and she sung well though her make-up and comedic acting were rather on cheap side.

Thomas Randel who played Bajazet had strong very good tenor voice. The role of Saltan, Bajazet lost everything except his daughter and his pride in the defeated war with Tartar emperor, Tamerlano. He’s the larger-than-life character who is on the life-or-death desperations. But I hardly felt any of them from Thomas Randel’s singing.

Soprano, Elizabeth Noberg-Shulz who played Asteria had beautiful voice but she sung in the same tone throughout her da capo arias as jazz or blues singer. Take any part of her singing and it all sounded the same.

Countertenor, Graham Pushee who sung Andronico had both not so good acting and singing.  His voice had beautiful texture but was artificially shallowly and his singing was full of emotion but overly cheap.

These last two singers specially did not make good use of the da capo arias they sung.

Libretto in da capo aria consists of the set of A and B sections but it is sung as in the order of A, A, B, A, A. Composers composed only one set of score for each A & B section and singer is expected to develop and ornament the rest of repeated sections on his or her own. It means that singer is part of composing process of music he or she sings. This is the exciting part of da capo aria.

The-not-so exciting part of da capo aria is that because it depends on how skilled a singer is in developing da capo aria, it could be very long 5~15 minutes for listeners or it could be very short 5~15 minutes of amazing experience.

Handel strongly believed in da capo aria. Almost all of arias in his operas I listened to are in da capo form. Da capo aria is very restricted form but it is also very artistic and liberating style of human expression.

In spite of all these shortcomings in this production, I liked the orchestration and I love the opera. I would look for better production for it though.

Messiah by John Eliot Gardiner

John Eliot Gardiner conducted this recording production of Handel’s Messiah in 1982. The orchestra is English Baroque Soloists and the choir is Monteverdi Choir.

John Eliot Gardiner’s orchestration is agile and highly polished. But because I was expecting the very vibrant orchestration like the one in his Gluck’s opera Orphee et Eurydice, I was little surprised to find out that his orchestration in this recording sounded more formal and stately. It was still vibrant and lively but sounded gentler, softer and gracious. And everything about this recording felt genuine, natural and heart-felt.

This must be the very conscious choice of the musical direction by him because these can be said also about the solo singers and the choir. They all have softer, gentler and pristine beautiful voices. And they all sung very well in such manners.

Tenor, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson’s voice is beautiful and richer than when I listened to him in Vivaldi’s La verita in cimento in Jean-Christophe Spinosi’s production. He sung really well in this production. He sung, “Comfort ye”,  “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted” and “Thou shalt break him” especially well.

Soprano, Margaret Marshall has very beautiful, pure pristine voice. I love her aria “Rejoice greatly” which has the refined simplicity.  This aria was not my favorite aria until I listened to her rendition.

Mezzo-soprano, Catherine Robbin has similar voice texture with Margaret Marshall’s. She has decisive, very illumines beautiful voice. She sung “Thou didst not leave” and together with Margaret Marshall, she sung aria “He shall feed his flock” wonderfully.

Countertenor, Charles Brett’s light voice is clean, clear, bright and pristine. His voice also has the genuine simplicity. And his aria “He was despised” was the most heart felt wonderful rendition.

Boy soprano, Saul Quirke also sung very well.

Bass, Robert Hale has beautiful and powerful rich voice. But he’s the only solo singer who is not as strong in emotional expression as the rest of the other solo singers.

The choir by Monteverdi Choir is another best quality of this production. They used only 31 singers for all the four voice ranges. And there is no single mezzo-soprano singer and all mezzo-soprano parts are sung by countertenors. As the result, the transition between the head voices and the chest voices are smooth as the suave flows of different voice ranges within the choir.  Their sounds are so smooth, there are times I couldn’t tell apart the tenor from the countertenor voices.

I read the very interesting story about the performance history of this oratorio. This oratorio was one of Handel’s a few most famous works, which had escaped complete obscurity as the rest of his other great large amount of works during Classical and Romantic eras. As matter of fact, this oratorio has been performed most frequently but over time, it has been performed with increasing number of instruments and choir singers (Mozart also rescored it with additional wind instruments for the larger production.) The sheer scale of these performances had skyrocketed over time and in the1881 NY performance, they used 250 instrumentalists with 2,750 choir singers. Another US performance used 500 instrumentalists with close to 10, 000 voices. Romantic era was the peak of large-scaled music. They’d thought these changes are something Handel would naturally welcome.

But in this last 50 years, with Baroque music revival, there has been the movement to perform Baroque works in more authentic style using authentic instruments and smaller number of performers as Handel performed in his time.

And according to the production note written by John Eliot Gardiner himself, they tried to perform this production as much as authentic methods accordingly to the Handel’s original scores. This production used only 31 instrumentalists and 31 choir singers. Many performances of this oratorio I watched or listened to had much larger number of performers. 

As the result, the effect is immediate. The music is more detail nuanced, gentler and more intimate that is well matched with the deeply meditative libretto by Charles Jennens.

Messiah is different from the two other Handel’s oratorios, Saul and Theodora I listened to. These two oratorios had specific characters, the narratives and the story lines. But Messiah doesn’t have any of them. In itself is like poetry, or more like sonnets. The excerpts for libretto came mostly from the Old Testament, which is often more poetic than the New Testament.

It can be said in both Messiah and Saul; the words Jennens picked from the Bibles for these oratorios are very simple but appealing, mythical and thoughtful.  Along with Handel’s psychologically deep and overwhelmingly beautiful music, they created masterpiece work, which falls and sinks into people’s hearts deeply and profoundly. Messiah is such great work of art.

And this is such wonderful recording.