Opera: Amazing Monteverdi at Carnegie Hall

Tuesday’s amazing performance by Concerto Italiano of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea (1643) at Carnegie Hall reminded me that 17^th century genius was not limited to Galileo, Newton, Caravaggio, and Shakespeare. Monteverdi is often credited with moving music from the Renaissance to the Baroque period, and if not the inventor of opera, he certainly popularized and refined it as a new art form. But of the great geniuses of music, Monteverdi often seems the most unfamiliar to modern audiences. His madrigals, rich in Italian language and nuanced phrasing, are too difficult for amateurs and school madrigal groups; only 3 of his 18 operas survive, and these do poorly in large, conventional opera houses. So sadly, Monteverdi performances are usually limited to niche early music festivals and societies. It was wonderful to see his last piece superbly performed before a large and appreciative Carnegie Hall audience, even if the venue was just a bit too large and resonant for an ideal performance.

What was so striking in this performance was the oft-stated Baroque characteristic of “words before music”. I have never really bought into this generalization, at least in the late Baroque works of Handel and Bach, as their brilliant musical composition often makes the words seem subservient—for example, think of the traditional da capo aria, in which the same words are repeated multiple times as a vehicle for florid ornamentation or harmonic daring. But in Monteverdi “words before music” or perhaps “words determine music” is really true, and this performance demonstrated that. The paucity of traditional arias (not yet invented) led Monteverdi to truly refine the art of arioso, where short melodic phrases are carefully chosen to reflect the emotion and meaning of the text. The Concerto Italiano, led by Rinaldo Alessandrini, really gets this. They exemplify the second wave of period performers, taking over from Harnoncourt, Leppard, et. al. in the 1990’s. This group began its 30 year career by performing and recording Monteverdi’s nine books of madrigals, focusing their ability to express Italian text--only then did they move to the operas. Prior Monteverdi recordings were largely dominated by British groups like the Consort of Musicke; these performances, while stylish and pure, often seemed underheated, rather like sex in a cold Brighton hotel, rather than on the beach of the Adriatic. Not so those by Concerto Italiano. They live the words. Significant in this performance was the focus on the singers. Unlike Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s famous recordings of the 1970’s, Alessandrini used minimal instrumentation (2 violins, viola, cello, bass, 2 theorbos (oversized lutes), harp, and harpsichord). Note the difference in the opening of the opera in these performances by Harnoncourt and Alessandrini --Harnoncourt uses double the number of orchestra players, including cornets, flutes, and recorders. While creating less orchestral color than Harnoncourt, Concerto Italiano's performance better focuses us on Monteverdi’s amazing words set to music. Any risk of timbral monotony was overcome their passionate commitment to words and music and by conductor Alessandrini’s excellent choices of pacing and tempo. The dominance of the theorbos and harp heightened text delivery, giving the effect of accompanied minstrels. Violins were used only for color in big moments, rather like brass is used in the classical period, or percussion in the romantic.

And what words and music! The simple plot tells over three hours how Nero rejects and banishes his wife in order to crown his lover Poppea as the new empress. This was the first opera to focus on real humans rather than gods, and combines humor, pathos, romance, and violence in a way only matched by Mozart 150 years later. This is a real humanist opera. For example, immediately before the wonderful crowning passacaglia-duet by Nero and Poppea, the aged nurse sings humorously of her new lofty status as nurse to an empress, but, given the choice, how it may rather be better to be born rich and die poor, since death would then be a relief, not a source of dread. Nero, hearing that his mistress Poppea was nearly killed in her sleep by confederates of his jealous wife, first condemns the suspected murderers to sadistic torture and death, then relents and banishes them to a distant island, since putting them all together is a fate worse than death! The libretto was uniformly crisp, beautiful, funny, and moving, unlike the often overly long operas of Handel, Salieri, and contemporaries a century or so later. Something happened to the Baroque between 1640 and 1750—it became more German, less spontaneous, more structured, and less human(e). Perhaps this was inevitable given the advancing harmonic language and the need to organize it, but this performance reminded me of what was lost.

The cast was uniformly excellent. The alto castrato roles (e.g. Poppea’s husband Ottone, nurses, maids) were taken by a mix of female altos and male countertenors, while the high castrato role of Nero (Nerone) was transposed down an octave and sung by a tenor, to good effect, albeit changing the sound of his debauched, florid Act 2 duet with friend Lucano from soprano-tenor to tenor-tenor. Soprano Miah Persson was seductively conspiratorial as Poppea, while Roberta Invernizzi sang Nero’s estranged wife Ottavia’s two moving laments with beauty and expressive pathos. Monteverdi wrote a wonderful basso profundo role for Seneca, conscience of the people, and this was beautifully sung by Salvo Vitale. The performance was semi-staged without sets, but the often-hilarious costumes added considerably, e.g. the two comic nurses were performed by macho Italian men with facial hair, plus ridiculous long, multicolored wigs. Alessandrini, conducting from the harpsichord, sidestepped the endless specialist debates on instrumentation, editions (no original score exists), and casting in the service of drama and music. All in all, this was a compelling and triumphant night at the theater. What a tragedy it was to have lost 15 of the 18 Monteverdi operas!

New York notes: the intermediate levels of Carnegie Hall are set up as rings of 7-seat boxes, each perhaps purchased intact by wealthy families in the old days. Oddly, they still are kept locked from the outside, necessitating The Usher With The Official Key to grant entry before the concert and at intermission. I guess this should be reassuring, as it prevents a modern John Wilkes Booth from bursting into my box, shooting me in the head, crying “Sic semper tyrannis”, and jumping off the edge into the parquet section below.