Agrippina – Astrid Joos
Poppea – Biqing Zhang
Nerone – Katie Macdonald
Claudio – George Robarts
Ottone – Francesco Giusti
Narciso – Hamish McLaren
Pallante – Gheorghe Palcu
Lesbo – Sonny Fielding
Giunone – Lydia Shariff
Sorcha Corcoran (set design)
Alice Carroll (costumes)
Catja Hamilton (lighting)
HGOAntiqua Orchestra
Thomas Payne (conductor)
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| Claudio (George Robarts), Poppea (Biqing Zhang) Images: Laurent Compagnon |
Cannily marketed as ‘the coronation that goes wrong’, HGO’s Agrippina proved quite the tonic for a May that has still seemed hesitant to acknowledge the coming of spring. Handel’s early opera, written in 1709 for the Venice Carnival, emerged as a considerably stronger work than it did in a starry, somewhat irritating production I saw four years ago in Munich. (Later that year, it came to Covent Garden.) In the small theatre of Jacksons Lane Arts Centre in Highgate, HGO presented a work which, whatever its flaws, cohered and remained open for the audience to bring to it what it would.
I say ‘whatever its flaws’, because they
seemed far more apparent in Munich than in Highgate, so perhaps the flaws lay
more with this listener than with the work. Not all the arias are top-drawer
Handel; some, in light of the composer’s notorious ‘borrowings’, are barely
Handel at all. Few, however, outstay their welcome—or did here, whereas the
leaden conducting I heard in Munich led to more than a little consulting of my
watch. There, redistribution into two acts had seemed a mistake; here, if
perhaps not ideal on paper, it really did not matter in practice and proved an
eminently practical solution to a real problem for a modern company, especially
one with limited reserves. One must take the genre for what it is, of course,
and I doubt I shall ever be convinced that Handel as dramatist is not better deployed
in his oratorios, but here the story was told clearly and with intelligence and
wit. If I find it impossible to banish Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea
from my mind when considering these characters, that is my problem rather
than Handel’s. Ashley Pearson and her team’s resourceful production made a
little go a long way, projections of social media both conceptually framing the
action and marking its progression through time and changing circumstances.
Poppea’s following through the power of the image and Ottone’s public esteem on
account of acknowledged valour were conveyed with uncanny fidelity through (post-)modern
means. Above all, though, the accent in a small theatre lies on Personenregie,
and this was keenly, powerfully accomplished throughout.
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| Agrippina (Astrid Joos), Nerone (Katie Macdonald) |
Every member of the young cast contributed to that sharpness of individual characterisation and its place within a greater whole. In the title role, Astrid Joos’s vocal portrayal reminded us that, beyond the scheming, this is a woman fighting with what she has—and who would doubtless be fighting in quite a different way under a different gender dispensation. Biqing Zhang's Poppea presented a similarly rounded portrayal, making her way as she could and, arguably, must. Katie Macdonald captured well the sulky immaturity of Nerone through tone and gesture, deploying coloratura equally well to highly dramatic effect. George Robarts offered a nicely ambiguous Claudio: one never knew quite what to make of him, which was surely the point. Gheorghe Paicu and Sonny Fielding’s sharply etched Pallante and Lesbo, as well as Hamish McLaren’s countertenor Narciso, rounded out the intrigue and its sharply (not in pitch!) shifting terms. For me, though, the more ‘continental’ countertenor of Francesco Giusti as Ottone made perhaps the greatest impression. Fine stage presence was married to a more earthy, even masculine tone and projection than often you will hear, conveying valour and vulnerability in equal measure. Juno’s was very much a guest appearance, perhaps an ‘also starring’ moment. Lydia Shariff a goddess and she knows it—as do the mortals, however elevated, before her. It was a splendid thing to have and enjoy this moment, rather than regret its excision, but then one could have said the same of so much else.
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| Ottone (Francesco Giusti) |
Thomas Payne’s direction of an excellent small band of period instrumentalists
both drove and reflected the action. My preference may lie with a modern
orchestra, but such were the excellence and commitment of playing here, I could
for once quite appreciate the arguments for this alternative. With every player
essentially a soloist as well as an ensemble member, there was, moreover, an
almost modern sense of music theatre to the enterprise, heightened by proximity
of orchestra and stage. For, whatever my particular favourites, this was above
all a company effort, company extending beyond those performing to all involved
in HGO’s collegial enterprise. As David Conway, HGO’s chairman, said at the beginning,
it is here, not in the Arts Council’s absurd vision of opera in car parks, that
the future of the art lies.
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| Ensemble, headed by Juno (Lydia Shariff) |
