by Fiona Hook
Not every modernisation of a historical opera works, but Jetske Mijnssen’s successful transposition of Handel’s chunk of Roman history to modern-day New York is a reminder that human nature and the lust for power are eternal – it just takes different forms.
Claudio, the head of a financial empire, has a heart-attack while dining with his family. Ottone waits outside the ward. Nurse Poppæa will move into the upscale three-room apartment set (designed by Ben Baur) where Claudio’s wife Agrippina is positioning her son, Nerone, to take over the reins of power.
Anna Bonitatibus’s Agrippina was equally at ease in effortlessly curly coloratura passages and recitatives that were shaped as real dialogue. She found a more vulnerable side to the ruthless empress, her frustration at having to manage rather than command evident. As she sang ‘Pensieri’, it wasn’t entirely clear whether the knife she held was for someone else or herself. Poppæa is usually a soprano, but Lea Desandre’s luminous mezzo was perfect in the part. She, too, is sick of being controlled by men, even her beloved Ottone, who pushes her back into her seat so she can listen to the end of ‘Lusinghiera mia speranza’. At the end of the kitchen scene, where she’s hidden Nerone and Ottone in cupboards, she finally cracks and throws him out of the room.
As Ottone, Jakub Józef Orliński’s singing was as elegantly stylish as his suits. His unbuttoned silk pyjama jacket provided the now obligatory cameo role for his naked torso. Nahuel de Piero’s powerful, lyrical bass lent the deceitful Claudio more charm than he deserved. Christophe Dumaux’s Nerone was a spoiled brat, slumping in a chair, his earphones on his head, finally attempting to strangle his mother during a slightly deranged ‘Come nube’. She’d tried to straighten his jacket once too often. He took time to settle, but the quality of his acting more than compensated for an over-intense vibrato. Harry Bicket, conducting La Scintilla, whose continuo section breathed with the singers, chose exactly the right tempi.
There were touches of wit throughout. Agrippina deals briskly in turn with Pallante, a richly-voiced José Coca Loza, and Alois Mühlbacher’s Narciso, handing them the clothes they’ve removed as they sang. Claudio doesn’t find Ottone when he opens his cupboard: Orliński, with monkey-like swiftness, has climbed above his head.
In a twist to the conventional ending, Poppæa serves poisoned champagne. The men fall dead, as she and Agrippina exchange a long look of complicity, finally free of the need to caress and cajole. Will they collaborate? Be rivals? Lovers? All three? Who knows?