# Baroque opera: delicious decadence!



## Guest (Dec 6, 2021)

Just for starters: the incredible Les Arts/Christie. There's a full concert but it's been removed.


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## dave2708 (Sep 28, 2020)

I remember seeing a Monteverdi production of something and I started counting who was asleep in the stalls below.:lol:
I guess I need to see more to appreciate it better.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I've seen both Monteverdi and Handel operas performed well and directed well and I enjoyed them. If listening in the car I usually skip recitatives unless they are very emotional like the ones in Alcina. Handel can blow me away but can also bore me depending.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

For listening only, I like Baroque opera in small doses, and only when brilliantly performed. Purcell's _Dido and Aeneas_ is lovely, and about the right length for me. In the theater I can imagine being absorbed for a longer time, and did once thoroughly enjoy Monteverdi's _L'Orfeo_ in an outdoor performance.


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## Guest (Dec 6, 2021)

dave2708 said:


> I remember seeing a Monteverdi production of something and I started counting who was asleep in the stalls below.:lol:
> I guess I need to see more to appreciate it better.


Monteverdi is somewhat esoteric these days; he was a very sophisticated composer and his music is far less accessible than either Purcell or Handel. Rameau, Lully and Charpentier aren't particularly accessible either, but I love the whole aesthetic and glorious decadence of this French repertoire. It is an art of refinement best enjoyed in the theatre. Some of the recitative can become tedious, but the arias, choruses and ballets are superb: all so evocative of a period in time when for some people there was a want of cake!!


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

There was a production in the 1970s in San Francisco of Monteverdi's *L'incoronazione di Poppea* with Tatiana Troyanos in the title role and Eric Tappy as a tenor Nero. Their interaction was electric and the singing superb. Troyanos looked sumptuously beautiful and Tappy like a treat! Raymond Lepard conducted. I'm not sure it was a true baroque production stylistically, but it was the hottest ticket in town that season.

A bonus in this production was Maureen Forrester as Arnalta, a very funny performance.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MAS said:


> There was a production in the 1970s in San Francisco of Monteverdi's *L'incoronazione di Poppea* with Tatiana Troyanos in the title role and Eric Tappy as a tenor Nero. Their interaction was electric and the singing superb. Troyanos looked sumptuously beautiful and Tappy like a treat! Raymond Lepard conducted. I'm not sure it was a true baroque production stylistically, but it was the hottest ticket in town that season.
> 
> A bonus in this production was Maureen Forrester as Arnalta, a very funny performance.


Leppard did a great service in making this opera better known, and I first heard it in his recording. His approach to the music was Romantic by today's standards, but undeniably beautiful. Nero and Poppea were both originally sopranos, but I'm an impurist who prefers male roles sung by men who retain all their body parts. I'll also take Norman Treigle's Giulio Cesare over any countertenor's.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Leppard did a great service in making this opera better known, and I first heard it in his recording. His approach to the music was Romantic by today's standards, but undeniably beautiful. Nero and Poppea were both originally sopranos, but I'm an impurist who prefers male roles sung by men who retain all their body parts. I'll also take Norman Treigle's Giulio Cesare over any countertenor's.


@Woodduck, 
I'll have to disagree over a bass Cesare. I fell in love with the opera during one season when Terry McEwen, then director of the San Francisco Opera, imported the ENO production of *Julius Caesar* and presented it in English for the 1980 season. The Caesar was Tatiana Tryanos, and I loved her in the role. She had the requisite gravitas and agility for it, and a beautiful voice for the part. So, a mezzo as Cesare is my choice. The only convincing countertenor in the part, in my view, was David Daniels, who sang here in the revival of the ENO production.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MAS said:


> @Woodduck,
> I'll have to disagree over a bass Cesare. I fell in love with the opera during one season when Terry McEwen, then director of the San Francisco Opera, imported the ENO production of *Julius Caesar* and presented it in English for the 1980 season. The Caesar was Tatiana Tryanos, and I loved her in the role. She had the requisite gravitas and agility for it, and a beautiful voice for the part. So, a mezzo as Cesare is my choice. The only convincing countertenor in the part, in my view, was David Daniels, who sang here in the revival of the ENO production.


Daniels I could take. Beautiful voice.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Leppard did a great service in making this opera better known, and I first heard it in his recording. His approach to the music was Romantic by today's standards, but undeniably beautiful. Nero and Poppea were both originally sopranos, but I'm an impurist who prefers male roles sung by men who retain all their body parts. I'll also take Norman Treigle's Giulio Cesare over any countertenor's.


Indeed Raymond Leppard was at the forefront of the Baroque reviva. We may find his arrangements anachronistic now, but at the time they were a great way of introducing people to a genre that had largely been forgotten.

I particularly remember the televised productions of *Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria* and Cavalli's *La Calisto* at Glydebourne with Janet Baker.


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