The Met in cinemas: Agrippina
Handel’s Agrippina is the latest production from the New York Met broadcast to cinemas worldwide. Composed in 1709 when Handel was just 24, it has a brilliant libretto describing the cynical intrigues of Claudius’s wife Agrippina as she seeks to promote her dissolute son Nero to become emperor of Rome, and has much wonderful music.
The Met production by David McVicar was first performed in 2000 and fizzes with jokes and often raunchy action in what at times seems to owe not a little to the better traditions of Whitehall farce. It is updated in costume and can easily be seen to be commenting on the kinds of politicians that bestride, if that is the right word, the globe today.
Some find Handel’s recitatives and the sometimes seemingly endlessly repeated phrases in his arias off-putting. In fact the recitatives allow the story to move along a little more quickly and very good productions like this one often fill the arias with expression and action to complement the music.
The wonderful Joyce DiDonato sings the title role as the scheming and at times gin-soaked Agrippina. Kate Lindsey is the dissolute, coke-sniffing, lascivious, tattooed Nero, engaging in incredible acrobatics at one point to deliver an aria. Matthew Rose sings Claudius, although it wasn’t evident to me how his avid viewing of Carry On movies as a kid (vouchsafed in his interval interview) had helped his comic timing. Brenda Rae is a fine Poppea doing an excellent drunk in a bar scene and Iestyn Davies is in very fine counter-tenor voice as Ottone.
After the rather nauseating Rolex advert that precedes all Met cinema productions, the Met never fails to tell you which very rich family has made it all possible and to urge you actually to come to the Met (or to live opera wherever you are). A trip to New York and the prices of the Met are beyond most of us, no doubt, but cinema is an important addition to the live experience in my opinion, if not a replacement for it. You can see the acting much better, at least compared to the seats I can afford, the sound is very good and the subtitles rather than surtitles easier to consume. There are also often fascinating interviews with performers, conductors and directors which you never get, obviously, at live opera but which can be very helpful in understanding what they are all trying to do.
The next Met production at the cinema is Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman from 14th March. The Royal Opera House also broadcasts to cinemas. The next ROH production is Beethoven’s Fidelio with Jonas Kaufmann and the fabulous Lise Davidsen in cinemas from 17th March. Do try and get to either, or preferably both.