A scene from Poppea and Nero, Photo: Javier del Real / Teatro Real
Spain’s major opera scene hosted the premiere showing of Warlikowski’s Poppea and Nero on the 12th of June, 2012
The legendary Polish director brought this debut production to the Spanish stage last season, with the staging of King Roger, an opera written by Karol Szymanowski and directed by Warlikowski at the Parisian Opera Bastille. With this year’s performance, Teatro Real adapts a contemprary version of Monteverdi’s 1642 opera entitled The Coronation of Poppea. Warlikowski enriched the classic version, set in antiquity, with a prologue that takes place in the contemporary setting of an American university. An old professor questions the meaning of his past decision of temperance in life’s physical pleasures.
In a talk with the Rzeczpospolita journal, Sylvain Camberling, who is in charge of the performance’s musical score, revealed that this introduction isn’t the sole change which Warlikowski imposes on the original 17th century piece.
Philippe Boesmans who has adapted the music for Poppea and Nero, comments:
We have completed a new orchestration which employs contemporary instruments, and those which were in use in Monteverdi’s time, but we haven’t altered the harmony, nor a single note of the score.
Cambreling doesn’t hide his fascination with the work of Krzysztof Warlikowski:
I have seen many of Warlikowski’s performances, I think that the operatic Macbeth that he staged in Brussels made the biggest impression on me, and in terms of theatre, his most recent African Tales.
The acclaimed Polish alto singer, Jadwiga Rappe was cast in one of the roles in the Spanish performance. The set design also came from a Polish artist, Małgorzata Szczęśniak, a recognised stage designer who regularly cooperates with Krzysztof Warlikowski.
Jacek Marczyński, a journalist of the Rzeczpospolita daily, thus reported on experiencing the show in Madrid:
Krzysztof Warlikowski stirred extreme and bipolar emotions at the Teatro Real – awe was contrasted with anger, although the director employed his old tricks. (…) Following his staging of King Roger by Karol Szymanowski, which also divided the audience of Teatre Real last year, (…) the Madrid viewers found themselves in two camps: the louder the one of them booed, the more heated the other’s bravos became.
Anyone who knows Warlikowski’s theatre will easily discern the well-known motifs, obessions and tricks. The baroque opera with an action set in antique Rome of the emperor Nero was transformed by the director into a tale about a world marked by death. (…) In order for the viewer to avoid interpretative dilemmas, Warlikowski transmitted the meaning of his theatre in a prologue, written especially for the piece in the form of a lecture.
The Coronation of Poppea is an opera about ill power and a passionate love, with a clearly erotic subtext, depicted in a rather brave way for 17th century standards. In the Madrid staging, there is neither the splendor of power, nor any of its terror. A colourless Nero drags his feet along the lecture-hall and he is not threatening. (…) The sex has also evaporated someplace, and all that is left is a masquarade of the sexes and homoerotic motives, which are so typical for the director of Krum
Another review in Gazeta Wyborcza, written by Tomasz Cyz, states:
After the first half of the Madrid premiere, when the lights went out (but the curtain was not dropped, as there was no curtain), a part of the audience exploded in a loud "boo". Following the final black-out, those who were previously shouting had either already left the theatre (the show is over 4 hours long), or realised that Krzysztof Warlikowski is not a scandalist, but an artist who places the contemporary man against a wall of weeping. The director was applauded.
Following Poppea and Nero, plans for a new Spanish performance are already underway, as Warlikowski prepares to stage Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Alcesta in Madrid.
The performance premieres on the 12th of June, 2012. Subsequent performances are scheduled to take place on the 14th, 16th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 22nd, 24rd, 26th, 28th and 30th of June, 2012.
Source: www.rp.pl