Le Concert d'Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm (conductor) & Jean-François Sivadier (stage director)
One Roman emperor is not enough for conductor Emmanuelle Haïm. After Julius Caesar in Handel’s opera –recorded for Virgin Classics DVD at Paris’ Palais Garnier with Lawrence Zazzo as Giulio Cesare and Natalie Dessay as Cleopatra – she now brings a ruler of less illustrious reputation: Nero (Nerone) in Monteverdi’s sensuous and cruel story of love, ambition and politics, L’incoronazione di Poppea.
This production, recorded in 2012 at the exquisite opera house in Lille, is by the French director Jean-François Sivadier; he was also responsible for La traviata in 2011 at Aix-en-Provence, a staging which starred Natalie Dessay.
As the French newspaper Les Échos wrote: “The excitement, the passions, the impulses and the hatred to be found in this Shakespearean story are all the more intense [for the sobriety of Sivadier’s approach]. Sonya Yoncheva has no trouble seducing both Nerone and the audience, thanks to her voluptuous roundness of voice and physique. A feline lover, she knows how to flash her claws when she wishes to depose her rival Ottavia, the unhappy woman who, in Ann Hallenberg, finds an interpreter as superb for the nobility of her singing as for her expressions of sorrow ... Max Emanuel Cencic portrays a Nerone who is in thrall to his senses while remaining the pitiless master of his court. Emmanuel Haïm takes the colours and dramatic nuances proffered by her ensemble, Le Concert d’Astrée, and distributes them to fine effect. She takes an active role in Monteverdi’s triumph.” Classica magazine, meanwhile, wrote that: “Emmanuelle Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée, in fine form, breathe amorously hot and cold over Jean-François Sivadier’s intelligent production, which, typically, favours living beings over decor.”
