Monteverdi in Zurich

...His judgment is not infallible...

...In the cases of Ulisse and Poppea, on the other hand, scholars must rely on what they know of contemporary performing to arrange instrumental accompaniments over the very skeletal bass line shown on the manuscripts that have come down to us...

...Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who drew the sets and directed, and Pet Halmen, who designed the costumes, have done their part to make each piece in the cycle as memorable visually as it is aurally...

...Conversely, instrumentalists who join the singers onstage at strategic moments seem palpable solely as the fanfares or the echoing melodies they play...

...Although their specific knowledge was limited to its fusion of poetry and music, in rejecting the poly-phonal vocal style of the high Renaissance and devising a kind of heightened recitation (pitched and ornamented, to be accompanied lightly by the new instrumental formation of the continuo), they began something wholly original...

...While such guesses are correct, they are insufficient...

...in Ponnelle's staging, the goddess has observed the entire foregoing scene of Ulysses' lament from the proscenium box...

...The Zurich performances, though, owe their excellence to more than Harnoncourt's outstanding musical leadership...

...Yet it is Ponnelle's direction, his unfolding of the action with beautiful transparency, that most helps us appreciate the operas...

...The stage pictures throughout allude to the baroque, evoking its spirit through fancy, not slavish imitation...

...Paul Esswood, countertenor, sings the hapless suitor and would-be assassin Otho, offering a compendium of mock-heroic postures and an object lesson in elegant vocal-ism...

...Most impressive of all is Helrun Gardow, the smiling Minerva, whose airy way of shaping lines and proud yet charming presence partakes of the divine...

...the cocksure impudence of the little, almighty god of Love...

...All the same, the Zurich Opera being unable to honor all the invitations it has received, one can hardly regret a project that will bring the magic (no matter how transmuted) to a wider public, particularly before we have seen its outcome...

...If it did not, what point would there be in importing original instruments to the theater...

...what stands in the way of the visit at the moment is the absence of sponsors to underwrite the travel expenses...

...The first is Philippe Huttenlocher, in the role of Orfeo...

...Monteverdi (1567-1673) is generally regarded as the first great master of opera, a form developed in the 1590s by avant-garde Florentine composers attempting to recreate classical Greek tragedy...

...The part of Nero is hard to assign...

...Those who have seen the rough cut of L'Orfeo have responded with enthusiasm...

...The singing of Rachel Yakar as Poppea and Eric Tappy as Nero fit this description exactly...

...Some argue, for instance, that Har-noncourt errs in patterning his orchestra for Ulisse and Poppea on that for Orfeo...

...Zurich's Monteverdi cycle has reaped such fabulous success that the series is now being reproduced for the movies...

...In Poppea, by contrast, the principals could hardly be bettered...

...The dates for Ulisse have yet to be set...

...Still, his way with the music is not above controversy...

...As a practicing scholar-musician, surely Harnoncourt embraces unassailable principles...

...Niko-laus Harhoncourt, the noted exponent of baroque performance, prepared and conducts the productions...

...The basic set for the three operas is a courtyard, through whose arches are glimpsed backdrops that conjure specific locales: bucolic countrysides, princely apartments, the rolling sea, the open street, heaven, and hell...

...So it is well that the planning should lag until the company can bring the cycle over here complete -but not a moment longer...

...To step forward in her own person, she lays the doll aside, and we share with Ulysses the miracle of her epiphany, despite the fact that we have been watching her all the time...

...And when opera evolved into popular spectacle-the famous Teatro San Cassiano in Venice, the first public opera house, opened its doors in 1637-monteverdi, who had captured the upper crust, also captured the masses...

...Only two singers are major disappointments...

...On Music MONTEVERDI IN ZURICH BY M. ANATOLE GUREWITSCH Zurich Over the past three seasons, the Zurich Opera House has mounted the three surviving operas of Claudio Monteverdi-l'Orfeo (1607), Ilritor-no d'Ulisse inpatria (1641) and L'in-coronazione di Poppea (1642...

...and he makes the action of Ulisse cruel by cutting the passage where Minerva, Ulysses' Olympian protectress, reveals how and why she will inspire Penelope to change heart toward her suitors...

...Ideally, then, the orchestra should be supplied with instruments borrowed from museums or built to specifications on antique models, and the instrumentalists should be trained not merely to play them but to improvise freely within the period conventions...

...Moreover, they point out, Monteverdi expressly stated that his supreme concern in opera was verbal nuance, and the accompaniment was intended solely to support the voices, never to become "interesting" in its own right and thus divert attention from the words...

...On stage a man is needed...

...Some of his notions do not convince...

...Curiously, while no one disputes that Monteverdi belongs in the top rank of opera composers, his works do not hold a very secure place on the stages of the world...

...Ponnelle makes character and predicament manifest in stance and gesture, which, for those who cannot follow the brilliantly specific inflections the singers give their Italian, project easily across the language barrier...

...L'Orfeo presents the least problem...

...Why take so much trouble «or to hear them...

...The truth, in any Platonic sense, is not known...

...Recent American productions have cheapened Poppea with crude attempts to release its eroticism by flashing skin...

...But Harnon-court's orchestra does play with great color and panache, and its contribution does often have interest in itself...

...Perhaps Ponnelle's loveliest gift is his knack for enlisting the spectator's imagination to show what is not apparent, and to make invisible what we are not meant to register...

...The Metropolitan Opera and the Kennedy Center in Washington have asked the company over to our shores...

...The chief reason for this appears to be that no full scores survive...

...The capes, breastplates and hooped dresses the players wear impose formality on then-movement, without stiffness, and the clean-lined opulence contributes as well to the air of high festivity that governs the proceedings...

...To give a fuller understanding, the program booklet includes a lucid scene-by-scene synopsis, as well as the full libretto in Italian and German...

...In New York, Carol Neblett sang Poppea's delightful arietta "Speranza, tu mi vai" primping nude behind an ostrich-feather fan, to the distraction of the audience's esthetic concentration and to the detriment of her vocal poise...

...The audios for Poppea were completed in June, with the visuals scheduled for taping in Vienna at the end of this year...

...Monteverdi wrote it for a castrato soprano, and as Harnoncourt remarks in his introduction to his recording, the close intertwining of the two soprano lines figures crucially in the writing for the love duets...

...luckily, Tappy's impersonation achieves, in its own terms, no less feral originality and authenticity than Solderstrom's...

...nevertheless his bright, strong and alive renditions speak for themselves...

...the erotic disarray of Nero and his terror of Seneca...

...In Zurich, no one sheds any clothes, but Yakar and Tappy gave their depraved lines an almost shocking sensuality...

...Hollweg, whose usual repertoire includes Mozart and Haydn, cannot stand up to the vigor of Harnon-court's orchestral fantasies over Monteverdi's bass, and his efforts to carry make his tone harsh and tight...

...we understand that for Ulysses she is not there...

...In Ulisse, the ladies take top honors: Ortrun Wenkel, as Penelope, moves securely through the part's low-lying tessitura, bearing a mien of touching dignity...

...When the exiled empress Octavia slips her black-gloved hand out from the imperial robe, and it falls away from her black-clad form like a broken shell, we know that her banishment is her death...

...the exhausted anguish of Penelope, no longer weaving albeit still at her loom...

...The casts, including the principals, have remained virtually unchanged since the cycle began, but their portrayals have not lost the excitement of a perfect first night...

...Possessing a reasonable education, one can quickly guess that L 'Orfeo will tell of Orpheus and his loss of Eurydice...

...Janet Perry, as Penelope's mercurial servant girl Melanto, is as sweet in manner as in phrasing and sound...

...For her "entrance," she picks up a shepherd puppet and gaily works it as she sings the boy's song...

...More significantly, the director can work this same kind of effect with the characters of the dramatic action...

...Tenor Alexander Oliver, en tra-vesti, appears as the scolding nurse Arnalta...

...he turns his sardonic phrases with wicked glee, and when occasion demands, as in the lullaby, he also summons up tones of delicacy and tenderness...

...He is wrong to decide for the audience that Seneca, the Stoic philosopher who is Nero's schoolmaster, is a windbag...

...Ulisse, 6.35024 GK...

...The singers, too, should be familiar with a baroque style that poses vocal and interpretive demands few modern performers are properly equipped to meet...

...conclusions must rest on informed conjecture...

...One would like to see him step into the parts of Orpheus and Ulysses...

...In addition, several instruments of the 17th century (like the regal, the chitarrone and the dolcino) are no longer in use...

...On disc, Elisabeth Soderstrom takes the part, and her nervous, virile intensity carries complete conviction...

...His version of Monteverdi's operas have been available on Telefunken's early-music series, DasAlte Werk, for some years (Orfeo, 6.35020 FK...

...No "realization" can be considered "definitive"-particularly considering that in Monteverdi's own time, and with his full approval and cooperation, orchestral forces would vary from production to production according to what players were available...

...The other disappointment is Werner Hollweg, the victim of what I think is one of Har-noncourt's few serious errors of judgment...

...and that Poppea will tell of the Roman emperor Nero, who repudiated his empress to raise his mistress to the seat of power...

...in Washington, Alan Titus as Nero stripped down to a golden G-string...

...Frankly, their reports leave me skeptical...

...I have my doubts about the mesh of sound and image surviving this translation, and I suspect that the visual embellishment may simply submerge the music behind pictures that the camera will have made to look hokey and stagey...

...Monteverdi published it with precise indications about the makeup of the orchestra and with instrumental details fully spelled out, leaving only minor questions open...

...When Nero appears in the light of dawn in Poppea's doorway, gorgeous in his scarlet, jewel-clasped coat, and her white wing of a sleeve shoots out to block him, we know, before their dialogue has begun, that he cannot leave her...

...Alan Fuller, harpsichordist and scholar deeply versed in 17th-century technique, remarked in a recent Washington Post interview: "It's clear now that what Monteverdi expected of singers resembles what we call cabaret singing today-an expressive feeling with virtuosic vocal approaches that are to be made up by the singer, with ornaments and things against the beat and with the beat and across the beat...

...L 'Orfeo, like the work of the Florentines composed for a learned, aristocratic audience (it had its premiere at the Mantuan court of the Gonzaga), brought this mode to its expressive peak, at once recapitulating, expanding and transcending the conventions Monteverdi's predecessors had established...

...One of a very small number to appear in all three operas of the cycle, he more than proves his usefulness, versatility and musicianship in supporting roles in Ulisse and Poppea...

...Poppea 6.35247 HD), and all have won prizes...

...The other outstanding Pop-pea performances might be termed specialty acts...

...The cycle, having aroused great international interest, is now making ready to tour the musical capitals of Europe...

...Key players from the Concentus join specially selected members of the Zurich Tonhalles Orchestra for the series...

...anything beyond the lightest continuo would completely bury the late operas' intended subtleties of effect...

...L'Orfeo is already in the can...

...others (most of the strings, winds and brass) have been superseded by modern descendants that introduce timbres foreign to Monteverdi...

...that Ulisse will tell of Ulysses' homecoming after the Trojan War, his routing of Penelope's suitors, and his reunion with her after 20 years...

...A good part of the credit for this must go to Harnoncourt, who founded the renowned Concentus Musicus of Vienna to perform the works of baroque composers, notably Monteverdi and Bach, on original instruments and in a historically responsible style...

...In any case, I hope that it will not be necessary for American audiences to make their acquaintance with the Swiss Monteverdi cycle via celluloid...

...The new genre of opera, they reason, deliberately set out to avoid the instrumental panoply of the high Renaissance...

...The management of the Zurich Opera House has gone to some pains to insure the audience's ability to follow the unfamiliar operas in detail...

...To make the films stand, as works of art in their own right rather than as mere documentaries, Ponnelle is "opening up" the action to add material not seen on the stage...

...it opens in Zurich this fall...

...as Orfeo, he rises to the fierce challenges of the hair-raisingly embellished address to Charon ("Possente spirito") with genuine distinction, yet elsewhere his delivery is heavy and his muffled diction clouds the sense...

...Here in Zurich, however, the work has been done as it should be...

...Since all this is beyond the means of most opera houses, on the rare occasion when Monteverdi is performed, what we are given is generally unidiomatic and severely abbreviated...

...Without sacrificing any of his sophistication, vitality or passion, he painted on a far broader canvas than before, surpassing himself and giving the Venetians in Ulisse and Poppea masterpieces that exemplify what, at its pinnacle, musical drama can be...

...There is a fortunate aspect to the situation: Next June, Harnoncourt and Ponnelle will close the cycle with a program of short Monteverdi pieces that lend themselves to dramatic presentation-the operatic fragment il lamento d'Arian-na, and, from the composer's great Eighth Book of Madrigals, Ilcombat-timento di Tancredi e Clorinda and // ballo delle ingrate...

...But the slips are few, and the successes are many: The menace of Charon and his surrender to Orpheus' magical strains...

...a large formation of the kind Gonzaga could marshal for L'Orfeo was a unique exception, not the rule...

...In L'Orfeo, for example, Charon has no boat, yet the spirits of the dead, led by a nobleman's boy in trunk hose and top hat, their faces shrouded in mouldering cloth, "step aboard" and follow Charon as he plies his oar, thus "being ferried across the river...

...When Minerva first appears before Ulysses, she assumes the guise of a shepherd youth...