RADIO: EVIL TRIUMPHS IN OPERA BY PIONEER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30588, 3 November 1964, Page 7

RADIO: EVIL TRIUMPHS IN OPERA BY PIONEER

A 300-year-old opera which ends with the triumph of the villain and the villainess will be broadcast from 3YC at 9 this evening.

It is Monteverdi’s “L’lncoronazione di Poppea” (The Coronation of Poppea), which is closer to modern concepts of music-drama than any other opera written before Mozart and closer than most romantic grand operas. “Poppea” deals with the love affair of the Emperor Nero and Poppea, a strumpet who succeeds in her ambition to replace Ottavio as Empress of Rome. Monteverdi and his librettist, Busenello, intended to demonstrate that “omnia vincit Amor,” or that sex is the mainspring of history, says Andrew Porter. This historically important opera is far from being a museum piece. It was the first great opera designed to appeal to the populace rather than just to the aristocracy so its plot is swift moving, its characters have a strong human appeal, and its music is flavoured with dance rhythms, shapely refrains and stirring choruses. “The drinking song,” said the “Guardian” after a recent performance, “is a brilliant piece that has certainly not been surpassed in its genre to this day.” Since the revival of the opera in Raymond Leppard’s new version two years ago at the Glyndebourne Festival it has continued to win new converts.

“Poppea” is the crowning achievement of one of music’s most significant pioneers. It was written when Monteverdi was 75, shortly before his death. It is not simply free declamation in the manner of the earliest operas; it is a synthesis of all the expressive devices and forms explored by the mid-seventeenth century in madrigal and music-drama. A parallel is often drawn between “Poppea” and Verdi’s “Falstaff” because each is a fresh masterpiece, breaking new ground in its creator’s old age; each uses forms drawn from a lifetime of experiment and uses them with unprecedented flexiblity. In the shortened version to be broadcast tonight, the part of Nero is sung by Richard Lewis (tenor) and Poppea by Magda Laszlo (soprano). The array of instruments used includes harpsicord, organ, lute, chitarrone, guitar, harp, cellos and double basses. Schoenberg Songs This year’s Vienna Festival had the motto “The Dawn of Our Century” and 45 concerts were given. One work

heard at the festival, Arnold Schoenberg’s song-cycle, “Das Buch der Haengenden Gaerten,” (The Book of the Hanging Garden), will be broadcast from 3YC on Thursday evening. Written in 1908, this was Schoenberg’s first atonal composition. Stefan George's poems deal with tragic events —an intimate occasion of a subtle esoteric kind. The park landscape in which they are set reveals a bewitching, sultry, exotic magic. A man and a woman are there. He is respectful, shy and loving. She is a woman of priestesslike exaltation, who finally leaves the bewitched unfortunate. Moods of nature and spirit change and sinister, unspoken things lurk behind the poems. The singer is Ernst Haefliger (tenor). Overture To Satire “Candide,” a musical with music by Leonard Bernstein and a story borrowed from Voltaire was a flop as a show

but a great success as a record. As an overture to a satire should be satirical too, Bernstein takes off Rossini and Verdi in his overture to “Candide.” A new recording of this overture will be heard in the Sunday “Introducing New Records” programme from the YA link. The programme also includes part of Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole,” the Brahms motet, “Heiland Reiss die Himmel auf,” and the scherzo of Hummel’s clarinet quintet. Don Juan Again Recently we dealt with the frequent appearances of the Spaniard, Don Juan, in opera. He also appeared in a comedy called “The Chances” by the Elizabethan team of Beaumont and Fletcher. The play based on a Cervantes story, is about the troubles two Spanish blades, Don John and Don Frederick, get into on a romantic journey to Italy and will be broadcast from 3YC on Friday.