AMN Reviews: Michael Hersch – Poppaea [New Focus Recordings fcr390]

The early Roman empire, known for its power and affluence, its arrogance and violence, has for centuries been a source of ongoing attraction – often horrified attraction — to Western historians and artists. The doings and indiscretions of the leading figures of the time – the emperors and aristocrats, particularly as they’ve come down to us through Suetonius’ scandalous storytelling – are a natural source of material for opera. Suetonius is one of the sources behind composer Michael Hersch’s Poppaea (2019), a one-act opera with a libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann.

Hersch and Fleischmann present us with a wrenching work about Poppaea Sabina, second wife of the emperor Nero, who in turn was her third husband. Hersch’s isn’t the first opera to have Poppaea as a focal character; Monteverdi’s last opera was The Coronation of Poppaea, and she is given a central role in Handel’s opera Agrippina. The Poppaeas in these two earlier operas are quite different, the first being portrayed as a cynical manipulator – as she had been in Suetonius’s and Tacitus’ histories — and the second as an innocent caught up in vicious court politics. Hersch and Flesichmann’s Poppaea is more ambiguous and takes her place in a tragedy that, being shaped for contemporary sensibilities, puts the psychological lives of its two main female characters at its center.

Hersch’s music is appropriate to the complex and often traumatic events depicted. As he remarks in the accompanying booklet, “violence and cruelty becom[e] characters” in themselves, governing the relationships at the heart of the opera. His writing, accordingly, consists of a kind of neo-expressionism played out in acerbic and aggressive dissonance as well as in an ample use of extended techniques. With them, he is able to create large effects with relatively small resources. The orchestra on this recording, the Ensemble Phoenix Basel, comprises only eighteen pieces but thanks to Hersch’s orchestration and dynamics, for sheer force it often sounds like a full modern orchestra. A full orchestra held in a prolonged state of high tension: the composer effectively parallels the characters’ emotional extremes with his dramatic use of discordant, stentorian brass and harshly fused timbres of strings and winds. Similarly, his writing for the vocal parts keys up the tension by putting them in the outer reaches of their upper registers. Like the orchestra the cast is quite small, consisting of Poppaea, sung by soprano Ah Young Hong for whom the part was written; Nero, sung by tenor Steve Davislim; and Nero’s former wife Octavia, sung by mezzo-soprano Silke Gäng. These three are joined by a small female chorus and three handmaidens.

In the end, with Poppaea Hersch and Fleischmann give us a complicated and ultimately tragic character capable of being, in Ah Young Hong’s words, both monster and victim.

Daniel Barbiero