Festival du Comminges, 22/07/2017
Monteverdi : L'incoronazione di Poppea
Académie Guillemette Laurens
Yvon Repérant, harpsichord/organ
Marianne Salmon, theorbo
This was, to all intents and purposes, a student - more accurately a postgraduate student - performance. An académie is the term used in France for a sort of summer school, a short period of intensive study, whether seminars or masterclasses, for a limited number of applicants, on a specific topic. They're particularly current alongside the summer festivals, and those associated with this particular festival tend to centre around early music performance practice, and always conclude with a concert performance of some sort.
Given the venue - a compact, Romanesque church - and the probable small number of available singers, I was fairly sure in advance that we were not going to hear a complete performance of Monteverdi's last opera. One hardly ever does in the first place, and it's quite a long piece, even with the usual cuts. However, the ten singers that had assembled still managed to cover around two-thirds of the opera, although, with next to no explanation given, either in the programme or in person, it was best if you had a more than passing acquaintance with the piece to begin with.
There were two serious regrets. The first is that the singers were not listed in the programme. Although they were introduced at the end, unfamiliarity and resonant acoustics made it very difficult to pick up names, with the result that I am sure of only two of the singers, and there were two others whom I would really have liked to have named here. The other was that with only three men in the group, and one of those singing Seneca, the death of Seneca had to be omitted, along with its wonderful madrigal, "Non morir, Seneca". There's very little of anything that resembles chorus-work in Poppea, but that's one point where you need a certain number, and most, if not all, men.
Apart from this, there were the rough edges you would expect from a disparate group of young singers, of varying quality, putting together a very complex opera in the space of a few days of very concentrated study and workshops. There was some unevenness of vocal output, of ornamentation technique, and occasionally of pitch. Some of the singers never really made a very strong impression at all, which was particularly unfortunate for the interpreter of Ottavia, very much lacking in imperial, and imperious pride.
The moment Poppea (Tosca Rousseau) began her pleas to keep Nerone in bed, however, the performance began to gel. Rousseau demonstrated a warm, seductive soprano timbre, with honeyed phrasing, and good projection of her text, with crisply articulated consonants and a properly rolled 'r'. The articulation tended to be a problem for most of the singers, their approach being too soft, one might say almost limp. Only Rousseau, the excellent bass singing Seneca (I only caught that his first name is Maxim), and a Ms. Gonzalez singing Drusilla really had the kind of clear pronunciation that is desirable here. Paulina Ceremuzynska sings with slightly occluded sibilants, which somewhat muffled her otherwise good Nerone. Nevertheless, she was dramatically persuasive - although I admit to preferring a tenor Nerone to a soprano one - and the duets between Nerone and Poppea were suitably smouldering.
[Next : 29th July]
Académie Guillemette Laurens
Yvon Repérant, harpsichord/organ
Marianne Salmon, theorbo
This was, to all intents and purposes, a student - more accurately a postgraduate student - performance. An académie is the term used in France for a sort of summer school, a short period of intensive study, whether seminars or masterclasses, for a limited number of applicants, on a specific topic. They're particularly current alongside the summer festivals, and those associated with this particular festival tend to centre around early music performance practice, and always conclude with a concert performance of some sort.
Given the venue - a compact, Romanesque church - and the probable small number of available singers, I was fairly sure in advance that we were not going to hear a complete performance of Monteverdi's last opera. One hardly ever does in the first place, and it's quite a long piece, even with the usual cuts. However, the ten singers that had assembled still managed to cover around two-thirds of the opera, although, with next to no explanation given, either in the programme or in person, it was best if you had a more than passing acquaintance with the piece to begin with.
There were two serious regrets. The first is that the singers were not listed in the programme. Although they were introduced at the end, unfamiliarity and resonant acoustics made it very difficult to pick up names, with the result that I am sure of only two of the singers, and there were two others whom I would really have liked to have named here. The other was that with only three men in the group, and one of those singing Seneca, the death of Seneca had to be omitted, along with its wonderful madrigal, "Non morir, Seneca". There's very little of anything that resembles chorus-work in Poppea, but that's one point where you need a certain number, and most, if not all, men.
Apart from this, there were the rough edges you would expect from a disparate group of young singers, of varying quality, putting together a very complex opera in the space of a few days of very concentrated study and workshops. There was some unevenness of vocal output, of ornamentation technique, and occasionally of pitch. Some of the singers never really made a very strong impression at all, which was particularly unfortunate for the interpreter of Ottavia, very much lacking in imperial, and imperious pride.
The moment Poppea (Tosca Rousseau) began her pleas to keep Nerone in bed, however, the performance began to gel. Rousseau demonstrated a warm, seductive soprano timbre, with honeyed phrasing, and good projection of her text, with crisply articulated consonants and a properly rolled 'r'. The articulation tended to be a problem for most of the singers, their approach being too soft, one might say almost limp. Only Rousseau, the excellent bass singing Seneca (I only caught that his first name is Maxim), and a Ms. Gonzalez singing Drusilla really had the kind of clear pronunciation that is desirable here. Paulina Ceremuzynska sings with slightly occluded sibilants, which somewhat muffled her otherwise good Nerone. Nevertheless, she was dramatically persuasive - although I admit to preferring a tenor Nerone to a soprano one - and the duets between Nerone and Poppea were suitably smouldering.
[Next : 29th July]