OPERA
Agrippina’s Turn – It Takes a Diva
Could Met have chosen better than with Joyce DiDonato?
BY ELI JACOBSON
The Metropolitan Opera has
dipped its toe once again
into the baroque repertory
with the Met premiere
of George Frideric Handel’s fi rst hit
opera “Agrippina” on February 6.
“Agrippina” triumphed at its Venice
premiere in 1709, establishing
the international reputation of the
24-year-old Saxon-born composer.
The Met programmed “Agrippina”
as a vehicle for one of its smartest,
most charismatic and musically
versatile divas — mezzo-soprano
Joyce DiDonato. The fourth wife of
Emperor Claudius, Agrippina’s ambition
to place her son Nero on the
throne is the driving force of the
opera. Highly seductive, powerful,
and unscrupulous, Agrippina uses
her formidable arsenal of guile and
sex to achieve that goal.
Handel’s opera, set to a brilliantly
satirical libretto by Cardinal
Vincenzo Grimani, is a heady 18th
century mashup of “I, Claudius”
and “Dynasty,” with a bedroom
farce and black comedy mixed in.
It includes some of Handel’s best
arias — including “Pensieri, voi mi
tormentate,” “Bel piacere e godere,”
and “Ogni vento” — revealing to
Italy and the world Handel’s ability
to write hit tunes. Women run the
show in this opera — the scheming
matron Agrippina is pitted against
ambitious sex kitten Poppea and
all the men in the opera are putty
in their hands. Agrippina manipulates
Poppea in Act I, and Poppea
plots her payback in the succeeding
two acts.
David McVicar’s “new” production
updated to modern times is
not all that new: It premiered at
the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie
in Brussels back in 2000 and has
traveled widely in the past two decades.
Nor is “Agrippina” totally
unknown to New York audiences
— the New York City Opera staged
“Agrippina” in 2002 and 2007 as
part of its acclaimed Handel series.
Lillian Groag’s amusing NYCO
production was also updated and
irreverent and not nearly as busy
and overdone as this one. (I particularly
Joyce DiDonato in the title role of Handel’s “Agrippina.”
remember the seductive
Poppea making her entrance in
a bubble bath). McVicar’s set and
costume designer John Macfarlane
updates ancient Rome to a
minimalist present with mobile
set pieces and wall panels shifting
seamlessly around a central gold
staircase leading up to an empty
throne.
Both these “Agrippina” productions
were infl uenced by the eighties
Pepsico Summerfare productions
of Mozart and Handel operas
directed by enfant terriblePeter
Sellars. The settings are updated
to the hip present while a staged
overture, omnipresent non-singing
extras, sunglasses and trench
coats, dry humping, boogieing onstage
to the instrumental introductions,
and characters shooting
up drugs while singing fl orid arias
high on speed are all present and
accounted for. McVicar adds in
MARTY SOHL/ METROPOLITAN OPERA
twerking Navy offi cers, live video
feeds, fi lm projections, and cell
phones to the Sellars playbook —
layering endless sight gags on top
of the genuine invention and wit
in the libretto. A harpsichord solo
played brilliantly onstage by Bradley
Brookshire in a cocktail bar setting
is reduced to accompaniment
for extras swing dancing courtesy
of choreographer Andrew George.
Poppea sings her opening aria
“Vaghe perle” to two swishy male
friends. Her lover Otho performs
the serious aria “Coronato il crin
d’alloro” with two back-up dancer
Navy boys gyrating beside him.
The emperor playing golf onstage
wearing a garish blue silk track
suit perhaps alludes to a current
political fi gure. Characters are seldom
allowed to be alone onstage
and are in constant movement
executing frenetic physical business
involving piles of props. It is
all very busy and suggests that the
director is convinced that the opera
played straight would bore the
audience with its formal structure,
extended musical showpieces, and
overall length.
McVicar is so focused on camp
visual comedy that real moments
of drama pass by unnoticed. One
exception was Agrippina’s one moment
of vulnerability — the unconventional
tripartite aria “Pensieri,
voi mi tormentate.” DiDonato delivered
a simple moment of naked
emotional truth alone onstage and
the audience awarded her with a
thunderous ovation. Part Mafi a
wife and part Mama Rose stage
mother, DiDonato’s Agrippina is
very much a star presence. She
also is in lustrous focused voice
with a virtuoso command of trills,
staccato, and dynamics. She totally
understands Handel’s musical
idiom — how to shape long passages
of ornamentation into the overall
musical structure, how to vary
and contrast musical repeats, and
how to infl ect words and music to
fi nd the emotional core of each aria.
She also executes McVicar’s physical
business adeptly but without
letting it distract her or the audience
from Handel’s music.
Other cast members let the hyperactivity
blunt their singing:
Juilliard-trained soprano Brenda
Rae makes her Met debut as the
empress’ rival Poppea with impressive
coloratura technique but her
unfocused vocalism and tentative
musical phrasing failed to project to
the audience. A committed actress
who threw herself gamely around
the stage, Rae’s Poppea is a hipster
party girl with rotating outfi ts displaying
her shapely legs. But Poppea’s
sexual power must also be in
the voice and Rae’s underpowered
singing lacked impact.
As Agrippina’s doltish son Nero
(or Nerone in Italian), mezzo Kate
Lindsey pranced around the stage
like a coked-up Adam Ant or Billy
Idol clone with (fake) neck tattoos,
distressed T-shirt and jeans, a
highlighted pompadour, and wan-
➤ AGRIPPINA, continued on p.37
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