Women want power, men want sex. Such is the conundrum at the heart of Handel’s operatic masterpiece, a satirical comedy-thriller set in the Roman Empire – the historical period which, according to TikTok, many men think about several times a day. No wonder Barrie Kosky’s production is proving such a draw. Originally for the Bayerische Staatsoper and then seen at Covent Garden in 2019, this latest iteration at Dutch National Opera is blessed with a uniformly phenomenal cast, Ottavio Dantone’s exhilarating Accademia Bizantina, and – at last – an apron stage wide enough to do justice to Rebecca Ringst’s ingenious and eloquent revolving steel box set.
If satire is to succeed in making us laugh at ourselves it must take human frailty seriously and Kosky, widely recognised for his ability to bring out emotional complexity, has brought to this Baroque (in every sense) political caper a level of character development that feels thoroughly contemporary.
Everyone in this production is a knock-out but, as we’re in the business of awarding laurels, they must go to the fabulous Stéphanie d’Oustrac, who dominates the stage and everyone on it as the ambitious, calculating empress. D’Oustrac’s voice is rich and sensuous, full of authority and guile, and that she can sustain laugh-out-loud comic acting through Handel’s da capo aria structure is testament to her high-voltage stage presence. Meanwhile, everyone’s in love with Ying Fang’s delicious Poppea, more than a match for Agrippina, with her irresistible comic delivery and a voice to bring an empire to its knees. Fleet of foot, too, Fang demonstrates that whatever ladders men climb, women must do it twice as fast and in heels. That staircase has taken a pounding from singers and critics but, note to wardrobe, an inch off Poppea’s hem at the front would solve the problem.
Can we talk about the fashion? As the battle of one-up-womanship escalates, costume designer Klaus Bruns brings it all, with the two women playing each other gown for gown (never underestimate a woman with pockets, and just wait till you see Poppea in yellow) until Agrippina gets what she always wanted and finds herself in a pared-down take on Le Smoking, brooding alone on her Pyrrhic victory.
Perfectly cast as the teenage Nero, John Holiday delivered purity with a punch, a joyous sound that seems blissfully innocent of the machinations of power. Holiday’s Nero displayed none of the latent madness that Franco Fagioli’s did at Covent Garden. Instead, his is a bored and biddable son of privilege, persuadable to power and dangerously clueless as to its significance. Tim Mead’s Ottone is plaintive and deeply affecting, gently pushing down on all the pressure points in the musical texture in “Voi che udite”. Against all these higher-register voices, even the gorgeous Gianluca Buratto is bound to sound like yesterday’s man, and his hapless Claudio does indeed spend quite a lot of time with his trousers down. Nevertheless, he sounded wonderful.
In the bright light of day – sunglasses please for the stalls – the relentless pursuit of sex and power is wont to look ridiculous. In what might be a Kosky comedy spin-off ‘Popping in on Poppea’, all her lovers come at once, by which I mean they arrive one by one and must be concealed in order for the various schemes to be revealed and untangled. Tightly choreographed farce, a dodgy “Hallelujah” doorbell (natch) and Ying Fang as the irresistible mistress of misrule make this scene an absolute delight and prepares the way for the very serious business of love and betrayal that end the opera.
Ottavio Dantone, at the helm of the irrepressible Accademia Bizantina, found every minute turning point in the drama, every opportunity for comedy. The rapid string ascents of the overture were properly bristling, the gentle woodwinds in “Vaghe fonte” a beautiful moment of pastoral calm. In a marathon score that sounds more and more modern as it goes along, Dantone’s fine attention to nuance paid off, though his press-night celerity occasionally outpaced articulation, which didn’t seem fair, and there were some curious incidents with tuning. But as the blinds came down on d’Oustrac’s thwarted empress, the closing oboe aria proved deeply moving.
It's the whole ensemble’s break-neck attack that makes this Agrippina so thrilling. After all, whatever our limitations in the sex and power departments, we ought to be able to risk everything for love.
