Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, which premiered in Venice in 1643, is truly revolutionary. Opera was new. It had only just evolved from being a court entertainment for the North Italian elite to being something that anyone with enough cash to buy a ticket could see in the new public theatres of Venice.
And, of course, those theatres competed for “bums on seats.” This would lead to Monteverdi abandoning the convention that opera was about gods and heroes where wickedness was punished and virtue rewarded. Instead, he created a work in which a totally amoral, but dead sexy, couple triumph over conventional morality and virtue. It’s not a tack that opera would pick up too often, but it leads in a straight line to movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Pulp Fiction.
Cappella Mediterranea’s The Coronation of Poppea. Photo: Lucky Tang
Bold in its way back in the day, it was also a bold choice to open this year’s Toronto Summer Music at Koerner Hall on July 10. How many of the audience expected a performance that lasted three hours and twenty minutes (with interval) I don’t know, but the number who seemed to think things were over when the lights went down on the first part after about two hours was not trivial! And it divided opinion. Monteverdi, especially when done in as authentic a style as Cappella Mediterranea’s production, is not for everyone!
The ten member band, directed by founder Leonardo García-Alarcón, performed on authentic, early 17th-century type instruments, with many playing more than one. It’s a distinctive, even abrasive, sound—especially the winds. It’s rather different from how one usually experiences this work in houses that use either a reduced band of modern instruments, or a “baroque” orchestra that would be more familiar to Handel than Monteverdi. This production also uses countertenors in the principal castrato roles (Nerone, Ottone) rather than mezzos. So, the overall sound is likely much closer to what Monteverdi envisaged but less familiar to those who have seen a typical, modern production of Poppea.
Nicolò Balducci (Nerone), Lucía Martín Cartón (Fortuna/Drusilla), and Yannis François (Littore/Famigliare 3/ Console) in Cappella Mediterranea’s The Coronation of Poppea. Photo: Lucky Tang
It was billed as a “concert performance” but that really doesn’t do it justice. I would say it was distinctly at the “staged” end of that nebulous spectrum, “semi-staged.” There were no music stands and only a couple of minor characters sang off tablets. There was no scenery but there was blocking and costumes and whoever was responsible for the stage direction made very good use of the possibilities of Koerner Hall.
The singing and acting were very high class. The principal ladies—Sophie Junker as Poppea, Lucia Martin Cartón as Drusilla/Fortuna, Juliette Mey as Amore/Valetto and especially the super dramatic Mariana Flores as Ottavia/Virtu—were uniformly excellent. Countertenor Nicolò Balducci was perfect as Nerone. He combined strong singing with a real ability to convey the utter immorality and irritable unpredictability of the unhinged emperor. He was well backed up by another countertenor, Christopher Lowrey, as a very sympathetic Ottone and a really splendid display of proper bass singing by Edward Grint as Seneca. All the minor roles were handled well. Fittingly, the evening closed out with a ravishing version of the gorgeous duet “Pur ti miro.”
It was a bold decision to open TSM 2025 with over three hours of authentically 17th-century Monteverdi, but it turned out a treat for those of us who like that sort of thing!
For more on Toronto Summer Music 2025, visit www.torontosummermusic.com
