Last night it was time to leave the Liceu having decided whether you belonged to your father or your mother. If you voted for the production of Calixto Bieito and his stark and bloody reading of the human condition, in L’incoronazione di Poppea, or for the musical beauty of Monteverdi that Jordi Savall had served in an incorruptible way – and a little alien to what was happening in stage – with the help of 17 musicians from Le Concert des Nations. It was necessary to see if the reason why you came away with a thirst for humanity from seeing that story of the psychopath Nero and his arrivist Poppea was moved by the lyrical emotion or moved by the ruthless cruelty that recreates the scene.
The halftones didn’t work, nor the yes, but no. Neutrality was for cowards. Each high school student returned home formulating, even if it was for himself, his personal arguments in favor of one of them (more than the other), or at the very least, having taken advantage of the best of each artist. Well, you rarely have the opportunity to see two true Catalan giants of the opera world – Bieito is from Burgos by birth, but Catalan by adoption – defending opposing positions to offer the same production. And so it was from the moment when the teacher expressed his opposition to the theater director’s stage manners. It seemed excessive to him the movement of sex, violence and a plus of murders and physical abuse to recreate the abuse and thirst for power.
It must be said that the scale of applause and whistles could not contribute to make it clear what the audience felt, since in the absence of Bieito – busy with the premiere in Mannheim of Handel’s Resurrezione and with Vespri Siciliani waiting for him in Zurich – no one from his team came out to say hello. Too well known to be replaced, they argued. So the nine minutes of final applause were taken by the fifteen artists, with great recognition for the work of the mezzo Magdalena Kotzenà as the rejected Ottavia – a performance that came to see Simon Rattle, his partner, the day of the dress rehearsal–, and also to the sensual Julie Fuchs (Poppea), to the disturbed and dangerous David Hansen (Neró) and to the piece of actor that is Xavier Sabata (Ottone). But the one who received the most heat was Savall, who ended up putting the public in his pocket.
Would there have been boos if Bieito had come out on stage? We’ll never know. It is already known that four well-projected “buuus” can make it feel like half the room is protesting, as happened with Àlex Ollé’s Norma or Il Tovatore last year. In addition, it is possible that there are still those who hold a grudge against Bieito since two decades ago he shook up the theater with Un ballo is maschera (2000-2001) and Don Giovanni (2002-2003), which was seen again in 2008
It will be a sign of the times, the coming conservatism or simply the unconditional love that awakens Jordi Savall in Barcelona, ??but while there was no doubt that the musical excellence would be bravely greeted by the public, the stage audacity could have awakened some complaints…
“I don’t know, I find it a bit vulgar for a Liceu”, commented a couple of spectators at the play’s intermission.
And the performance had begun with Fortuna (the soprano Rita Morais) taking off a succession of panties – up to ten were counted – that she was wearing overlapping and that she was throwing to the audience mischievously. “Honey, they threw them at me at the Liceu, I swear”, some would say at home. Some even ended up in the central moat built for the orchestra.
But let’s move on. The public of the Liceu yesterday attended a caustic catwalk of the vanities thanks to Calixto Bieito, who if there is one sin in this Monteverdi is to pour the entire libretto of Giovanni Francesco Busenello – member of the libertine Accademia degli Incogniti – in an unbearably true and Oscar-worthy manner to the actors’ performance. The irresistible Poppea working on a submissive Nero caused the nearby audience (those on the stage) to be completely unable to hold their gaze at the voluptuous action while her lover performed oral sex on her.
Bieito applies his committed recipe: to take a contemporary approach to the work, looking for what is valid in the original score. And it always ends up finding that central issue that somehow concerns us all. Violence, sex… are part of his approach to a contemporary lyricism to make people understand – and force you to think – from a forceful point of view. Because you can’t avoid Bieito. It forces us to take everything we’ve seen… and it’s perhaps the last chance opera has to make sense.
“I expected it to be much bloodier”, said a fan at the start. Yes, but… who has ever heard a final love duet, that beautiful Pur ti miro (which is not even Monteverdi’s), so loaded with cynicism, given the brutality and lack of mercy with which Nero and poppea The catwalk, that televised catwalk, with cameras to greet and take pictures of the characters, was the stage to touch on the burning dilemma of today’s society: vanity, this looking in the mirror that needs to be rethought. But it also serves to enjoy in the foreground the great direction of the actors.
