So there's this guy, Ottone, and he's sad because he's fallen in love with this girl, Poppea, who is seeing the Emperor, Nerone, who is married to the Empress, Ottavia.
That's the first scene of L'incoronazione di Poppea in something like a nutshell, but somehow made of pastry. He is in medias res, personally, not just with regard to the action, he is part of the muddle-personified that rules Opera. Well, no. Stop. Hit rewind.
The opera actually starts with a ethicalizing prelude. Ostensibly, about the triumph of Virtue over Vice. Well, that's what a lesser composer-librettist team would have constructed, and then did construct throughout the seventeenth century. Except Monteverdi, or rather Busenello, his librettist, trumps them both with Amore, a giggling boy, who says:
"Oggi, in un sol certame l'un'e l'altra
Di voi da me abbattuta
Dir� che 'l mondo a'cenni miei si muta."
That is, I, Love, call the tune, and the world danceth, and we can get seriously Ficinian on this opera's ass.
Because Ottone, who seems like just another freakin' free radical unidirectionally lusting after somebody else, and she after somebody else, and so ad infinitum (boys who love girls, who love girls who are actually Caesar, who love boys who love poets who love boys: all I really want is an aria to sing.) Except, as I was saying, Ottone starts the whole thing talking about his constancy-- how, like the plumbline, he always comes back to Poppea, like the tonic of a scale, back back back to resolution.
It shows up later that his much-vaunted fidelity is a farce, and, in fact, the sweet but irritating Drusilla, who has always loved him, eventually gets him in the end (he's sorry).
The Empress, the bitter old queen, gets exile: there's no place for leftovers.
Oh, and the philosopher who cautions and thinks and worries is asked politely to kill himself to make things easier for everybody else.
It's a wicked little show, and I wish it were more accessible. If it didn't mean kissing good-bye to the Divine Claudio's music, I would set the whole thing as a rock opera, and it would work and make me rich, famous, and hip enough to talk to the cool kids, or whatever.
(Did I tell you about my dream to do a techno-dance version of Monteverdi's duetto con basso ostinato, "Zefiro torna", the one built on the catchiest little ciaccona? It makes my head bop in time just thinking about it. If I just add some synth drums and a "la la la" chorus...)
Well, I've started claiming my birthright. For a while, I thought my problem in life was that I shouldn't have listened when my parents told me I could do anything I wanted if I set my mind to it. I have so doggedly followed this line of thinking that ... well, the inevitable self-defeat has come quickly and easily to me. Locking one's sights on failure is the cheering inverse of the rock so heavy God can't lift it: if you set out to fail and fail, it is well; if you set out to fail and fail to fail, then Bob's even more your uncle, since you have success and failure mixed in perfect proportions, over shaved ice with a twist.
And for so long, I've been so earnestly �ngstlich about showing off -- the pervading sin of my childhood -- that I have cut off all sorts of interesting flow. Good God! At least slow baking has made good eating. For example, the visual arts are back in my life after a very long hiatus. And my arm finally doesn't hurt too much for me to play music, although it still hangs funny, and I'm convinced my hand changed shape under the cast. Nothing I can't adapt to, but it's not particularly convenient for early fingering to have my third and fourth fingers colliding so often.
Have you noticed I'm writing?
One last note -- my latest smut: the new Bruce Holsinger book about medieval music and The Body: pretty cool, although it's kind of a one-note johnny. I'm particularly fond of his queer reading of early conductus, even though it's utter tripe. Well-prepared tripe: tripes au Ca�n, if nothing I can really digest.
Off to another fascinating BB party tonight. KM is in town, living with BB for the summer and I missed her like crazy. Everybody please concentrate with me: visualize KM with a brand-new baroque oboe, playing with me, maybe a Loeillet sonata, or some Telemann? She's hesitating over getting one. Magic works!
Oh, and this week, pray to Hermes to remind yourself to be tricky and open doors with people, into people. And to Apollo for SB's health and sanity (she was hit by a car last week.)
This week's soundtrack (again?) is the Barcelona cover of "Pop goes the world".
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