L'Incoronazione di Poppea
Glyndebourne
***

The double allure of a new Glyndebourne season and a young cast headed by soprano Danielle de Niese ensured feverish excitement — never mind the Arctic weather — at the first night of The Coronation of Poppea, directed by Robert Carsen and conducted with customary zest by Emmanuelle Haim.

Monteverdi’s astonishing last score, so inventive as to still seem revolutionary, explores the destructive power of lust. The ambitious courtesan Poppea wants the Emperor Nero, body and crown, and she’ll have him. While the sordidness of the story becomes ever more grotesque, so the sensuality of the music enmeshes you with the adhesive cunning of a Venus flytrap.

To the mercantile classes of Venice in 1643, still grappling with the new art form of opera, it must have been pure intoxication. There’s little in the way of morality to dull proceedings, except in the smug philosopher Seneca, set apart by being the only low voice, excellently sung by bass Paolo Battaglia.

Glyndebourne had gathered a strong ensemble cast, their talents balanced rather than hierarchical. Anna Coote convincingly sang Nero as a coarse, rapacious, shallow aristocrat. As the serpentine Poppea, De Niese was ever beguiling if without the opportunity to glitter in quite the way her Cleopatra two years ago had allowed.

Carsen’s leaden production, designed by Michael Levine, is problematic. Visually a hotch-potch of old and new, now Giulio Romano, now Jack Vettriano, it is dominated by acres of blood-red curtain — unhelpful for the singers acoustically — and a bath full of water. Are we back in the womb? It’s a dreary place to be for three hours.

The Prologue, played out in the front row stalls as a faux ticket mix-up involving, Lord help us, a nun, gets things off to an embarrassing start. Throughout, the coy fiddling with trousers, up, down, on, off, grows tedious. In a work so shocking, no gilding is required.

Thank goodness for Haim and the glorious Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment who pluck, flutter, whisper and sigh as the score demands. Poppea is one of the sexiest of all operas. The hottest action is in the pit, from those who understand that Monteverdi knew his job and who, all evening long, mercifully counter obfuscation with bewitching musical revelation.

Returns only (01273 813813 or Returns@Glyndebourne.com)