Monteverdi : L’Incoronazione Di Poppea

   in Opera Now (Dec, 2013)
The sound may be a bit rough, and by today’s standards the camerawork is far from fancy, but this is a meaty, dramatic and passionate performance from the 1993 Schwetzingen Festival, with Rene Jacobs conducting from his own edition and an arrangement full of vivid strings and woodwind swirling about the sky like witches. Michael Hampe’s exemplary direction is stark and the setting plain, but the usual nasty stage business of Baroque opera is replaced by a proper moral commentary and observation of the personnel – none of whom, as we know, are angels. One of the most telling pieces is the very serious ritornello following Seneca’s death: everything here conduces …