FULL-LENGTH GRAND OPERA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 761, 19 February 1954, Page 18

FULL-LENGTH GRAND OPERA

OMETHING of a new deal for grand opera listeners is planned by the NZBS for this year, with the use of LP recordings that will ensure high fidelity reproduction. The first work to be heard in a link of the four YC stations (from 7.0 p.m. to 9.45 p.m. on Sunday, February 28) is one of the earliest operas, Claudio Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea. It has been recorded by the Concert Hall Society of New York under the direction of Walter Goehr. The broadcast will be preceded by a short talk in which Frederick Page, of Wellington, will give an evaluation of the work, noting its essentially dramatic nature and outlining its importance in the history of opera. Monteverdi has been described as opera’s first genius, but he did not write the first opera. That honour probably goes to Jacopo Peri, whose Dafne was staged at Florence in 1597, the year when Shakespeare was writing The Merchant of Venice. Peri’s success with Dafne and the work that followed it, Euridice, led to Monteverdi, already well known as a writer of madrigals, being invited by his patron the Duke of Mantua to try his hand at the new art form. His Orfeo had a quick success, and was followed by other operas, the last of which was The Coronation of Poppea, which had its first performance in 1642. Monteverdi was then 74,

but nothing in the lively and sensuous score reveals signs of age: The opera recreates Imperial Rome, Nero, his wife Octavia, Seneca his tutor, and Poppea’s husband Ottone play leading © parts. "The libretto by Busenello," writes Oscar Thompson, "gave Monteverdi the opportunity to depict scenes of love, of crime, of orgies, of fetes, of banquets.’

The intensity of the dramatisation takes possession of the audience from the moment when the first act opens to Ottone’s restless "E Pur Si Torno," until at the end Poppea and Nero sing the’-triumphal "Pur Ti Miro, Pur Ti Godo". The-ritornelli are few, fewer still "the sinfonia. Nothing interrupts the unfolding of the "bitter and extremely immoral" plot» between the singers. Scenes such ‘as the death of Seneca and the | lullaby: sung to Poppea by her nurse in | Act Two, or the love scenes between | Poppea and Nero in Acts One and | Three, are more deeply felt and more delicately treated than anything that Monteverdi had previously written. The characters are finely developed and keep | their individuality to the end. The plot, based on a story by Tacitus | in his Annals, centres on the passion of Nero, the Roman Emperor, for Poppea, the wife of a courtier. Poppea herself schemes cunningly to become Empress and to oust Nero’s wife, the childless | Octavia. Her main adversary in this intrigue is the philosopher Seneca, who is compelled to commit suicide. Ottone returns secretly to Rome, discovers | Poppea’s adulteryy and at Octavia’s urging steals into her garden at night | disguised as a woman, and tries to kill her. Poppea is rescued by Amor, the God of Love, and the opera ends with the banishment of all participants in Octavia’s plot and Poppea’s final elevation in a solemn session of the Imperial court.