Word: nero
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...have taken a vote and come up with the "ten most villainous people in history," a collection of rotters guilty of sins even more grievous than wearing brown shoes with a blue suit. The envelope, please. In chronological order: Caligula, despotic Emperor of Rome from A.D. 37 to 41; Nero, full-time Emperor and sometime violinist who struck sour notes in Rome from 54 to 68; Attila the Hun, who led his barbaric tribe from 433 to 453; Ivan the Terrible, nogoodnik Tsar of Russia from 1547 to 1584; Catherine de Medicis, Machiavelli-mentored Queen of France from...
Ottone, a Roman nobleman, came home one night to discover his mistress, Poppea, in the arms of the notorious Emperor Nero. The Emperor finds time to dally with his male friend Lucano when Poppea or his Empress Ottavia is not around. Seneca, Nero's wise old mentor, advises him against marriage to Poppea and, for his counsel, is forced to commit suicide. Ottavia, whose crime is wanting to keep her husband and her throne, is exiled-set adrift alone at sea. Meanwhile, Ottone, who has tried to murder Poppea in her sleep, is banished. When Poppea finally marries Nero...
...across the long stretches of parlando, or singing speech. His advice paid off, for the performance had an unselfconscious ease about it that helped to eliminate any difficulties the audience might have had with the style, dry by conventional standards but supple and expressive. Especially impressive was the Nero of Susan Larson, taking a part originally written for a male soprano; the Arnalta of Tenor Karl Dan Sorensen, playing a nursemaid in another of the opera's travesty roles; and the Ottone of Countertenor Jeffrey Gall. Kerry McCarthy made a vocally handsome, icily regal Poppea. Pearlman translated Giovanni Francesco...
Stage Director Jack Eddleman's predilection for repeating certain stage pictures-such as lovers lying head to toe -was ultimately predictable. But Eddie-man was right in pointing up some of the decadence of Nero's reign: although the opera ends with the marriage of Nero and Poppea, set to one of the most beautiful love duets in operatic literature, Nero was, historically, not a man to be trusted. He later kicked the pregnant Poppea to death, and once married a boy-but only after he ordered the youth to be castrated...
...because of it. Her complaint: "My husband hardly speaks to me. He even shuts himself up when we have visitors. And when he comes to bed he is too exhausted from playing with his cube to even give me a cuddle." If it had been invented in his day, Nero would undoubtedly have twiddled while Rome burned...