Tag Archives: Monteverdi
Posted on 16 June 2024
Poppea was the mistress, later wife, of the Roman emperor Nero, and this final opera by Monteverdi deals with an entirely human drama. First performed in 1643 it helped move opera away from purely Classical subjects about gods and heroes — see my review in The Article.
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Posted on 11 January 2018
This new production, some might say semi-staging, by John Fulljames gives space to the singers but the theatricality that Monteverdi brought to his stage works has gone missing. The dull costumes fail to express the essence of the characters, and make little distinction between gods and mortals, but Paule Constable’s lighting is magical. The action …
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Posted on 16 October 2016
The text for this 1640 opera was written specially to attract the 73-year old Monteverdi to Venice, where opera had gone public for the first time just three years earlier. It is a remarkable work based on the second half of Homer’s Odyssey, starting with the Phaecians taking the hero back to Ithaca after 20 …
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Posted on 5 August 2015
Monteverdi’s Orfeo is a triumph of harmony, both musically and in the Classical lines of its dramatic construction. This Proms performance too was a triumph, sidelining the artless production put on by the Royal Opera at the Roundhouse in January. First composed in 1607 for the Gonzaga court at Mantua where Monteverdi was director of …
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Posted on 25 March 2011
The return of Odysseus to Ithaca and his faithful wife, Penelope forms the end of the Odyssey, that magnificent epic by Homer. The Latinised version of Odysseus is Ulysses, and this opera by Monteverdi tells of Penelope’s anguish, the shenanigans of her suitors, and the unruly behaviour of some servants. Ulysses returns after twenty years away, …
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