Izara, Ottavia, Paolina, Melantha, Calixta, Ianthe, Lilia, Persis, Alice Zenobia (Tina Fey), Zola Ivy (Eddie Murphy), Idalah, Lystra, Zelah.

Jem, Ozias, Archibald William Emerson (Amy Poehler), Ono.

Acea informa che «per migliorare la qualità del servizio elettrico, dalle ore 12 di martedì alle 24 di mercoledì 23 settembre, sarà necessario effettuare brevi interruzioni nella fornitura di elettricità nelle zone di Palmarola, Ottavia, Ipogeo degli Ottavi e Lucchina».

«Le sospensioni, di breve durata, che potranno interessare anche zone e strade limitrofe ai quartieri menzionati, si rendono necessarie per migliorare gli impianti di distribuzione di energia dell’area», prosegue la nota.

Acea «scusandosi per gli inevitabili disagi arrecati, raccomanda di fare attenzione all’uso di apparecchiature elettriche, elettrodomestici e di evitare l’utilizzo di ascensori ed elevatori meccanici. La società ricorda che, per ulteriori informazioni, è possibile contattare il numero verde 800130336».

www.corriere.it

Yesterday, I listened to Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea.  However I wanted to do it justice and took an extra day to research.  This is Monteverdi’s last opera; composed just a few years before the middle of the 17th Century, capping off the career of a composer who was arguably opera’s first great champion (and who would die shortly after his work’s premiere).  And, as it turns out, it’s an opera with a pretty complicated history.

In her own recent opus, Monteverdi’s Last Operas, Ellen Rosand writes that “The source situation for Monteverdi’s final opera…[is] far more complicated, in fact, than that of any other Venetian opera of the period.”  There are multiple scores without one that can be universally agreed upon as Monteverdi’s autograph.  While many operas undergo changes and revisions, particularly from one city to another, the differences in the Poppea variations are as striking as finding out that your husband is going to send you into exile so he can make his girlfriend empress.  In fact, the Poppea as Monteverdi knew it may not be the Poppea as we know it today–Rosand continually goes back to the Naples revival in 1651 as a hard point of reference.  In fact, it may not even have been a Poppea that Monteverdi knew at all–due to a lack of an autograph score, some question Monteverdi’s authorship of the piece.

This latter argument I tend to disagree with in the same sense that I disagree with the theory that there was more  than one author to the plays of Shakespeare.  There is huge progression from Il Ritorno d’Ulisse to Poppea, however there are strands that make them inextricably linked to the same composer.  His lamentations go right back to Penelope, both with Ottone in the first act and Seneca in…well, just about everything Seneca sings (but especially his death scene).  As the only main bass in the opera, Seneca serves as a special outsider–the only one truly free from blame or accountability, the voice of reason.  It’s no surprise then that he has to take a bath.

Regardless, there were at least a few hands in the pot.  Cavalli and his wife (a copyist said to have worked between 1650 and 1652) did some work on the score for its Neapolitan premiere.  Many agree that Benedetto Ferrari wrote the final duet between Poppea and Nero (the famous “Pur ti Miro”).  Francesco Sacrati has also been linked to the piece ever since his long-lost score (La finta pazza) was discovered and discovered to have similar musical lines with Poppea.  Since no recording has been made of this, I won’t be able to make any calls on that last hypothesis.  I will agree with Rosand, however, that the metrics in such passages as “Pur ti Miro” are almost jarringly different from other, decidedly Monteverdian, passages.

There are touches of Cavalli’s classical shadows here; Nerone and Seneca get downright Mozartean in their duet/argument (could classical have come out of this fury, this heightening of what is already a heightened realism?).  There are young touches in general, as Rosand suggests is at least thanks to the hands of a young copyist.  It’s interesting to note that the last opera in the timeline, Cavallis’s Didone, was written by a late 30’s Cavalli–Monteverdi was nearly twice his successor’s age when he wrote his final opera.  His late-in-life illness also suggests that he may not have kept up with musical and musicological trends as much as he’d have liked to, which is where other composers could have nimbly come in.

In celebration of the Poppea Variations, I listened to one version and watched another.  Both were different from the production I saw in Paris about 5 years ago–a production which I saw because it was the only opera playing at the ONdP the first time I was there, and a production I wish I could see again after I developed a true appreciation for baroque opera.  The first thing I noticed was that the prologue was quick to be dropped from the DVD production I watched–perhaps a good thing as the prologue on the CD went back about 40 years to the time of Peri.  However, the vocals in the prologue did something interesting–in the duet between Fortuna and Virtu, Fortuna’s music was sly and cunning, a symbolic contrast to Virtu’s sweet glissandi.  Was it neccesary for this alone?  Debatable.  Though knowing that part of this opera is based around the idea of amor vincit omina–love conquering both luck and virtue–makes some of the libretti’s points shine–at one point, Poppea even sings “fortune and love are fighting for me” (Poppea’s vocal lines resemble that of Fortuna’s, Drusilla’s that of Virtu’s…see what he did there?).

A word about the libretto.  Busenello (who also wrote for Cavalli) loved his irony.  Though Poppea ends happily for the title character and her lover, what Busenello, Monteverdi, and the opera-going public all knew was that, historically, Poppea would kill Nerone.  Nerone would then be suceeded by Ottavio, whom Poppea initially jilted.  Happy endings (literal and euphemistically) are often deceiving.  And this irony shows at times in the music.  Even in the first act, when Ottone returns home, he is repreented by warm cello tones with no musical foreshadowing that he is about to get the shaft from his lover.  Certo, we all see it coming.

The emotions range for the singers and the music here, and the music ranges from character to character.  The servants are allowed more musically funny pieces that we would later see in Mozart and Rossini.  Though they are not neutral or on the side of good, as Seneca, they are outside of the primary entanglements, which provides them with an outsider’s point of view.   Nerone’s guards, Ottavia’s nurse, Poppea’s nurse, Valetto–all are servants and soldiers, non-deities or royals; as such they offer commentary and comic relief.  Likewise, there is a
celestial quality of the music “Seneca, io miro in cielo infausti” (prophesy of Seneca’s death, provided by the gods).

Amor certainly does conquer all here as well with the eroticism and sensuality in the duets between Nerone and Poppea, heightening from one duet to the next.  Repetition allows for musical progression and vocal flourishes (Nerone’s “Non posso”s, Poppea’s “Tournerai?”s) in the first duet.  Escalated sexuality and sensuality in the next Nerone / Poppea duet, in which Poppea is promised that she will be made queen and convinces Nerone that Seneca is a threat.  Sex, death, and rock and roll.  And all hell breaks loose by the end.

And with sexuality and sensuality comes femininity in vocal lines–Poppea’s soprano vs. Ottavia’s mezzo.  Is it any surprise Nerone sends the latter off into exile, attempted murder aside?

USCITA 02 TRIONFALE

Fermata OTTAVIA del treno FM3

(Treno da Ostiense ore 9.37, da Trastevere ore  9.40, da Valle Aurelia ore 9.51)

Vi invitiamo alla seconda Uscita di questa PrimaveraRomana.
Iniziamo dalla stazione Ottavia per perderci nelle sugherete della Riserva Naturale dell’Insugherata gestite dalla cooperativa Climax per poi riemergere tra i campi della azienda agricola Co.br.ag.or, fondata dal mitico Paolo degli Uccelli di Valle Giulia. Incontreremo poi Fernando tra gli orti urbani del Parco Agricolo di Casal del Marmo.

A pranzo saremo ospiti della ex-lavanderia, nel padiglione 31 al Santa Maria della Pietà, che chiede il rispetto della memoria dell’ex manicomio e rivendica i principi della legge Basaglia. Qui incontreremo alcuni protagonisti della chiusura dell’ospedale psichiatrico come la ciclofficina, la voce della luna, la cooperativa integrataPasspartout con la falegnameria e la tipografia, il museo della mente. Il sogno di tutti è lo stesso di Franco Basaglia: “il luogo che ha rappresentato la chiusura e la negazione della dignità umana può diventare un luogo di socialità, arte e cultura, dove i cittadini possano incontrarsi, riconoscersi, riscoprire il senso della propria comunità.”

Con la Basaglia si sono chiusi i manicomi, quale legge permetterà finalmente di chiudere i campi rom?

Per concludere ci aspetteranno per un caffè i Rom Kohrakanè che vivono al campo rom di via Cesare Lombroso.

Vi proponiamo un kit per le uscite della PrimaveraRomana:
oltre a scarpe comode e giacca per la pioggia, macchine fotografiche, video e registratori di suoni, taccuini, pennarelli, acquerelli bicchiere per l’acqua delle sorgenti della campagna romana e per un assaggio di vino, contenitori per erbe commestibili, ma non troppi pesi che si cammina. Venite anche con nonni e nipoti.

L’incoronazione di Poppea, Monteverdi 1643.