Monteverdi - L'Incoronazione di Poppea
by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Eric Tappy, Matti Salminen, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Rachel Yakar, Trudeliese SchmidtDirector: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: Italian (Original Language); Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Italian (Published)
Format: Classical, DTS Surround Sound, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 162 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-13
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
Movie Reviews of Monteverdi - L'Incoronazione di Poppea
Movie Review: Monteverdi Meets the Marx Brothers...
Summary: 1 Stars
... with Cantinflas singing Nerone. Try this: turn off the sound and watch this overblown, vulgar, corny, hammy production! It looks like nothing so much as a B grade Mexican telenovela set in baroque neverland. Every detail is exaggerated, every scene is laden with sappy distractions. The camera-work is straight out of I Love Lucy. It has NONE of the melancholy purity and gravitas of the music. It turns Busanello's complex, thoughtful libretto into a parody of Love.
Then darken the picture and listen to the music. It's the music, after all, that really matters. Right? Well, the singing is dreadful. All of it. Not even the minor roles -- the three 'famigliari di Seneca' for instance -- are redeemed by singing well. In fact, they're horribly out of tune. The only singer who ISN'T frequently out of tune is the great bass Matti Salminen, but then he's dressed up as Merlin and hard to watch. Eric Tappy as Nerone is not only graceless and out of tune much of the time, but it's a mistake to have a tenor/baritone voice singing the role. It completely befuddles the final duet bewteen Nerone and Poppea, the musical apotheosis of the opera.
I save my fiercest umbrage for Rachel Yakar, in the role of Poppea. Even if everyone else were the acme of vocal and dramatic perfection, Yakar would spoil this production. She sings like a crow on helium, and she looks like Bette Midler trying to play Cinderella.
Wait, I have a little umbrage left for Nikolas Harnoncourt and his pit band, who have the schmaltzy habit of spilling out of the pit. I feel some anguish for the two poor shlemiels who had to play those kazoos fitted out to look like shawms or oboes, in lieu of any proper cornetto players. The pit band managed to make much of the music sound remarkably like Mantovani. Worst of all was Harnoncourt's exaggerated stop-start-stutter distortion of any rhythmic logic in the music. Voices, instruments, and stage direction all flung themselves like ham sandwiches before pearl divers.
Yes yes, I KNOW this is a re-release of a classic production, one of three collaborations between Harnoncourt and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle which essentially threw open the opera stages of the world to further productions of 17th Century operas. Bravi tutti e grazie tanto! I've already reviewed the other two -- L'Orfeo and Il Ritorno d'Ulisse. They are all similar in production concept and costume style, but radically different, to my ears and eyes, in relative success. Ulisse is a joy to see and to hear: coherent dramaturgy and artful, tuneful singing. L'Orfeo falls squarely between, the cup half full or half empty.
If you need a lot of costuming for your Poppea, at least the Glybdebourne production, with Maria Ewing, makes dramatic sense. Okay, Nikolas, repeat after me! Poppea is not a wacky Broadway Musical! Poppea is not slapstick comedy! Poppea is a sadder love story than Romeo and Juliet, in that the lovers do unite but only by dishonoring themselves and everything around.
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