Free tickets to the opera

I’ve posted before about some of the surprising gigs you get offered as a classicist. Visits to HM Prisons are at one end of the spectrum. Free tickets to the opera are at the other.

Well not exactly free. I’ve just finished writing some programme notes for Handel’s Agrippina which is about to open at the English National Opera (and I shall be doing a pre-performance talk in February). And the fee comes along with a couple of tickets thrown in.

There are in other words some collateral benefits for people like me in the perceived decline of classical learning amongst even the opera-going public. Agrippina? Who? Not even ENO thinks that you can put on a theme like this without explaining in the programme something about the ancient Roman character who lies behind the show. The same is true for Semele, Titus and Berenice, even Orpheus.

Enter the jobbing classicist.

I’d better make it clear that I’m no expert in opera – in the musical sense. I’m afraid for me operas are a bit like cocktails: I either like them and am very pleased to listen/drink; or I don’t, in which case I switch off/pour them away. Nothing more sophisticated than that, I confess.

On the other hand, for me the opera plots – and what they do with the ancient stories --  are always fascinating. They never fail to get me to rethink the classical themes themselves. Handel’s Agrippina was a tremendous surprise.

The Agrippina in question was the sister of the bonkers emperor Caligula, the fourth wife of Cl- Cl- Claudius, and the mother of the infamous Nero. About as well (or badly) connected as you could get by Roman standards. She has been the subject of quite a lot of academic work recently. This is largely because of her extraordinary public, semi-official prominence at the start of Nero’s reign (her head even appears together with her son on some of the coins).

But there are also some fascinating, lurid stories of Roman imperial corruption attached to her name. There were rumours of incest with Nero, and in the end a hopeless but ingenious attempt by the son to murder his mother, with the help of a collapsible boat. The latest book on Agrippina (by American classicist Judith Ginsburg, who sadly died before it came out) is going to be reviewed in the TLS soon.

Against this background, the Handel came as a bit of a shock. It turned out not to be set in the reign of Nero at all, but under his predecessor Claudius after the invasion of Britain in 43. And it was packed full of events that certainly never happened, and of characters who could barely have been alive at the time. Nero was actually about six at this point, but in the Handel he is already trying out the throne.

This was a bit puzzling at first. But then I realised that the opera had taken the classic incidents of the reign of Nero, twisted them about and re-set them in the reign of Claudius. So, for example, Claudius was reported dead in a shipwreck and then found to be alive – which must be a riff on the shipwreck in the collapsible boat which didn’t actually kill Agrippina. And that’s only one of the parallels. The whole thing I decided was a marvellously clever prequel to the stories I knew well.

I can’t now wait to see it in February. It’s a David McVicar production, in modern dress. Though I admit to some trepidation at the length (four hours, it’s said) – not because of the music, but because of the strain on the middle-aged knees.

Comments

[Jackie]

So is there nothing new? Handel was doing what the makers of the modern film 'Troy' did - mixing up his 'facts'. Perhaps it is worth 4 hours just to see what he did with it!

[Anna]

I'm hoping to see this production, being a Handel opera fan. David McVicar's productions are usually intelligent and tell the story well. He certainly handles crowd and chorus scenes imaginatively. I like a bit of creative modernisation in my operas, otherwise it can just feel like four hours of an early 'musikfest': worthy but dull. Never mind the middle-aged knees: my backside has never forgiven me for sitting through Wagner's 'Parsifal'.

[jade (not goody)]

I'm glad you mentioned the Ginsburg book, which I've just seen. I think it's much better than Barrett...because Barrett really seems to think that you can write a biography of Agrippina (as if we actually KNEW anything about her). Ginsburg sees that representation is the thing

[felicity cormack]

Might come to the Opera as 4 hours of Handel would be most acceptable! The middle-aged legs have just stood for 3 hours at Stratford for Pericles and The Winter's Tale both of which plays have a heroine who is left for dead and comes back to life - notably Thaisa, Pericles's wife who is said to have died in childbirth and is chucked overboard by superstitious sailors. She miraculously revives on shore 5 hours later. Of course Hermione in The Winter's Tale too survives death. Someone must have written a thesis on the returning to life of dead heroes in plays. Started off with Mummer's Plays no doubt?

[Dorothy King]

For anyone who reads French, Pierre Grimal's Memoires d'Agrippine is well worth reading. It's a slightly more high-brow version of I, Claudius type novels, but Grimal's a leading Roman historian so it's well researched and written.

[Simone]

I'm not sure that the plot of "Agrippina" is any more convoluted and in need of explanation, or takes liberties with history any more than that of, say, "Khovanschina", or, come to think of it, Verdi's "Attila". However, free tickets to the opera cannot ever be a bad thing in my opinion :-) - even if it's a modern dress production. Still, one hopes that the "modernisation" won't go too far. This is where I get into my "ranting mood", because I hate the tendency of modern directors to go overboard in their attempts to render opera "relevant" to contemporary life, by the use of most peculiar staging. This happens most often with Baroque opera (or oratorio staged as opera). The French and the Germans seem to be the worst offenders here. For example, I find myself wondering what in the world is the point of the choir in Händel's "Athalia" standing around and waving their hands as if signalling in semaphore.
Nevertheless, as I said, free tickets are always good, the price of tickets to the opera being what they are...

[Irene Hahn]

Mary, there is another book on Agrippina: Anthony Barrett's "Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire", Yale University Press 1996 (paperback 1999).

[Arindam Bandyopadhaya]

Mary an opera on the life of the previous wife of Claudius Messalina the most lecherous woman of Rome in those days would have been more interesting

[Candadai Tirumalai]

What a decline from Sophocles and Oedipus (that was high tragedy of course) to Nero and Agrippina. (Sophocles would have understood the strain on middle-aged knees.)