Word: poppea
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MONTEVERDI: L'INCORONAZIONE Dl POPPEA (Cambridge; 4 LPs). Monteverdi, the true father of opera, composed Popped in 1642, when the art was still in its infancy. This is the first complete recording of his lusty, utterly amoral libretto and gentle music. Yet the results probably fall short of Monteverdi's intentions. In his day, singers, not composers or conductors, were kings; and no modern revival can ever recapture their singular contributions to a performance. For instance, two major roles in Poppea, scored for castrato voices, are sung in this recording by a countertenor and tenor, who provide earnest...
MONTEVERDI: THE CORONATION OF POPPEA (Angel; 2 LPs). Monteverdi's last opera was the first with psychologically true characters who tell their story in almost continuous melody rather than long declamations. Conducted by John Pritchard for the Glyndebourne Festival, this is a cut-down version, but it includes all the scenes leading up to the triumph of immorality. The able cast includes Tenor Richard Lewis as the love-struck Nero, Soprano Magda Laszlo as Poppea and Soprano Frances Bible as Ottavia...
...Dallas this week, Monteverdi's rarely performed Coronation of Poppea proved its viability by inaugurating the 1963 Dallas Civic Opera season. And it was not the salacious story that kept Poppea popping. In Monteverdi's musical and theatrical masterpiece burgeon the seeds of the great operas of succeeding centuries-hints oi Verdi, Wagner and Richard Strauss...
...Poppea was the first opera to deal primarily with human rather than mythological character and psychology, set the stage for the bel canto style. But beside Monteverdi's hopped-up humans, his gods look like so many bank clerks. Poppea's action centers on the infatuation of the Roman Emperor Nero with his mistress, Poppea, an affair held in dubious check by Nero's Stoic mentor Seneca. Poppea, slinkily played in Dallas by Patrice Munsel in a white gown slit to the hip, finally turns Nero's golden-curled head, and he orders Seneca to commit...
Concert revivals of Poppea have been used to striking effect, but Dallas tried to preserve the late-Renaissance splendor of the original production. If most of the opening-night Texans agreed with Dallas Times Herald Music Critic Eugene Lewis, who wrote "Puccini it isn't," some of them also realized that without Monteverdi, Puccini might never have been...