A masterpiece by Monteverdi and an everlasting hymn to Love.
This recording grew out of the performance of Monteverdi’s masterpiece as a special event by Opera Network and a coproduction with the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte Montepulciano and the Teatrodante Carlo Monni, opening the year’s concert season of The Ensemble San Felice in Florence in January 2020.
The opera was curated by Carla Zanin, conducted by Federico Bardazzi and directed by Marcello Lippi.
Videoset design was by Carla Zanin and Ines Cattabriga and costumes were by Giulia Gianni.
The international cast and period instrument ensemble comprise established performers and young talents from Italy, France, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Albania, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, China, Mongolia and Korea. L’incoronazione di Poppea is a milestone in the history of music and the high point of the early baroque.
Its libretto combines love scenes and tragedy interspersed with comic relief after the manner of Shakespeare and the wide range of characters includes allegories, gods and demigods and humans both high and low born. Musically, recitatives alternate with airs and verse numbers and certain instruments are used for particular characters.
There are few choral pieces, although their quality is outstanding: the mixed voices of the family members in Seneca’s death scene, the male voices of the tribunes and consuls glorifying Rome and the female voices of the Amori in the three choral numbers of the final scene celebrating the wedding of Poppea and Nerone.
Federico Bardazzi has analyzed the expressive aspects of the score so that the music would bring out the nature of the characters and has worked on the variety of tone colour available in the basso continuo associated with the “affetti” throughout the opera and hence the association of particular instruments with the main characters.
Thus the organ accompanies Nerone as a lover in scenes III and X of Act 1 while his authority as emperor is underscored by the addition of cello and double-bass in Act 3.
The harpsichord is intended to express Poppea’s sweet, capricious nature. Theorbo and guitar provide support in the many versified sections and scenes featuring the doubts and ambiguities of Ottone.
And the regal Ottavia bears her suffering austerely, backed by organ and double-bass only (16’) with no further intervention by the cello (8’) a tonal combination typical of the music of the Spanish counter-reformation and which greatly influenced Italian culture and music in the late renaissance and early baroque.
The instrumental arrangements are highly diversified, ranging from sopranino and guitar, through passages for strings only to exuberant tutti sections with percussion.
A hallmark of Bardazzi’s approach to performance of 17th century repertoire is the interaction of treble instruments with voices in choral numbers, duets, versified pieces and airs and also foregrounding those instruments in certain sections of the opera identified with a given character, such as the instrumental ritornelli in the refrains “per me guerreggia amor” and “felice Drusilla”. The many tone colours of this broad palette valorize the instrumental writing in the vocal numbers, which is in keeping with the dictates of Monteverdi’s seconda prattica.
This ongoing dialogue between voices and instruments makes the pace of the opera particularly lively and the rhythms compelling, as does the uptempo approach to the vocal parts in the many giga and corrente dance passages throughout the score.
L’incoronazione di Poppea, the last extraordinary masterpiece which Monteverdi composed for the stage, is one of the most interesting and mysterious works in the history of opera, being the first of its kind to abandon the supernatural and mythological for the human passions of real historical characters. The result is as surprising as it is intense.
The present recording is based on the edition curated by Clifford Bartlett (The Early Music Company, 1993) in the Venice version of 1642.
However, it does not use scene 7 of Act 2: this was added later to give the famous singer Anna Renzi a larger part; neither does it use scene 7 of Act 2 which is missing and presumed lost. The libretto is the same as for the performance overseen by Alan Curtis at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2011.
The Cd is edited in 2020 by Bongiovanni Label Bologna, Italy. www.bongiovanni70.it
Carla Zanin

Production by
Opera Network Firenze
Ensemble San Felice

in collaboration with KOF – Konzert Opera Florence
Accademia Musicale di Firenze
Centro Studi Musica & Arte

Opera Network
President Carla Zanin
Aristic Director Paolo Bellocci
Music Director Federico Bardazzi

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