Opera Starved: The Berlusconi Effect

I've just read Alex Ross's downbeat report on the "lean season" of opera performances this summer in Berlusconi's Italy (The New Yorker, July 25, 2011). Ross laments the Italian government's "indifference, if not outright contempt, toward opera and other traditional genres." Apparently the sharp slash in government funding is having a visibly depressing effect on productions throughout the country and creating a widespread sense of insecurity in the Italian opera world. Sad, sad news, ameliorated only by Ross's nice account of Ricardo Muti's protest at La Scala, a modest success story that should be widely read.

Of all the performances Ross attended, only Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea at Florence's Maggio Musicale seemed to impress him. The production had a "well-fed look" and "a degree of international glamour missing from other events." This he attributes to the participation of Susan Graham and "a lustrous cast," but also to the members of Alan Curtis's ensemble Il Complesso Barocco. What especially delighted me was the parenthetical aside in which Ross gives a tip of the hat to Donna Leon, the best-selling writer of Guido Brunetti mysteries. For years, she has been the generous patron of what Ross calls "Curtis's high-class Baroque ventures." Thus, in a season of starvation, a crime writer's royalties came to the rescue. Brava for Leon!

Ross's comments on the Monteverdi opera reminded me of the memorable Jonathan Miller production of Poppea that I saw at Glimmerglass in the summer of 1994. Though Glimmerglass provides none of the "historical resonances" Ross experienced while seeing the opera in Florence, the Cooperstown setting and country opera house had their own unique, if ahistorical, pleasures for me. As for the production itself, the counter-tenors David Daniels (as Nero) and Brian Asawa (as Ottone) both gave stunning performances, as did the brilliant original instrument orchestra, led by the energetic Jane Glover.