L’INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA
Monteverdi
Norwegian National Opera
EuroArts 2058928 [DVD]
I’ve been thinking about Seneca, the Roman dramatist who had a considerable influence on Shakespeare. I’ve never read any of his plays, and was getting ready to find some online when I remembered that he was ordered to commit suicide by the Emperor Nero, and that this scene appears in Monteverdi’s opera L’Incoronazione di Poppea (‘Poppea’s coronation’). Which was the best DVD of that extraordinary opera, I wondered, and started rooting around.
First stop, as usual, was YouTube, and there was the complete opera conducted in 1979 by the then youthful Nikolaus Harnoncourt, in a sumptuous stage production from Zurich by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, and with the incomparable Finnish bass Matti Salminen as Seneca. In a way this is a classic rendition — period costumes, Baroque sets and the highest musical standards.
A musically robust production in modern dress from La Venexiana, an Italian early music ensemble, with Emanuela Galli as Poppea, was also there on YouTube with French subtitles. It dates from 2010 and is vigorously sung, and even more vigorously acted. I was grateful for this style because Monteverdi can sometimes sound thinly-textured to modern ears, and there’s nothing whimsical about this opera’s plot. The forces of good are routinely routed and the forces of lust and violence prevail. Poppea is a call-girl, and shortly after having her crowned, Nero reputedly kicked her to death. This sort of thing needs strong treatment.
Strong treatment comes in full measure in a version from Norwegian National Opera in 2010, which I found in the Naxos Video Library. Visually, its distinctive feature is that it’s filmed in black and white — and red. Modern dress, this time with kitsch additions, is again used.
The historical Seneca died by cutting his wrists in a bath. Here he sits on stage and his blood runs into an enamel basin. The death is followed by a homoerotic scene in which the singers try to desecrate his dead body and wallow in his blood. Yet strangely this seems in the spirit of this bizarre opera, not to mention in the spirit of the Roman attraction to cruelty and spectacular, blood-soaked deaths.
There’s a sense, too, in which this is a very Senecan production. His tragedies were characterized by revenge, ghosts and blood. Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s most Senecan creation, with a character having her hands cut off and so on. Despite passages of interpolated South American-style dance music in this opera production, all in all it out-Senecas Seneca in no uncertain fashion. Yet though none of the soloists is an international star, the singing is uniformly excellent. Italian, English, German, French, Japanese and Norwegian subtitles are available on the DVD.
LANG LANG
Mozart, Chopin, etc.
Live at the Royal Albert Hall
Sony Classical 88843082549 [DVD]
Lang Lang continues to be the world’s most charismatic performer on the piano. His face records every moment of rapture, and even his eyebrows are expressive. Sony has come up with a DVD of one of his 2013 concerts in London’s Royal Albert Hall. But all in all it’s a mixed blessing.
It’s always wonderful to watch Lang Lang, but four Mozart piano sonatas in a row are a bit much to take. Enthusiasts may call them deceptively simple, but even so they’re not great masterpieces. Also problematic is the camerawork, happy to include some shots from high in the auditorium when Lang Lang is just a tiny figure in a blue light.
The result is that this DVD can’t compare with Lang Lang Live in Vienna [reviewed in Taipei Times February 13, 2011]. There he plays far more substantial music, including two Beethoven sonatas, and the camera rarely strays from his face and hands. Beethoven’s piano sonatas are all monuments in the history of the genre, whereas Mozart wrote many of his sonatas simply as exercises for his students. For all these reasons, that earlier product, unlike this more recent one, is one of the finest DVDs I know.
Again, Mozart’s piano music has been called “flirtatious”, and if anyone is suited to bringing out this element in it it’s Lang Lang. But instead he treats it as soulful, and I’m not convinced that this approach works. The four Chopin ballades that follow are far more successful. His encores are all rapturously received by the London audience, though some are insubstantial at best.
SCHUMANN
performerImogen Cooper (piano)
CHAN 10841 [CD]
Lastly, a CD from Chandos by the English pianist Imogen Cooper of piano music by both Robert Schumann and his wife Clara Schumann looks promising — crisp and full of feeling at one and the same time. Hers is a self-effacing musicianship, balanced and craftsman-like, in strong contrast to Lang Lang’s bravura showmanship, endearing though that most undoubtedly is.
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
RSS