February 27, 2008 — The Coronation of Poppea, Claudio Monteverdi�s final operatic masterpiece about obsessive love, politics, murder, and deception, will be staged by the Oberlin Opera Theater beginning Wednesday, March 12, 2008, at 8 p.m. in Hall Auditorium, located at 67 North Main Street (Route 58), between the and the . The opera is also presented with the support of the Division of Vocal Studies and the Historical Performance Program at the .

Giovanni Francesco Busenello�s libretto is based on historical incidents about the Roman Emperor Nero and his beautiful mistress, Poppea, as described in The Annals by the historian Tacitus. The Coronation of Poppea, which will be performed in two acts with one intermission, will be sung in Italian with English supertitles.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is a pioneer and leader in the field of historical performance. In the production of The Coronation of Poppea, such early baroque instruments as the chitarrone, harpsichord, cornetto, recorder, and viola da gamba will join the string ensemble of the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra, resulting in a musical experience that closely resembles the time in which Monteverdi lived and composed.

Grammy-nominated conductor and director Stephen Stubbs will conduct the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra; he will also perform on the baroque guitar and the chitarrone, a 16th-century string instrument that was developed with an extended bass range for use in opera. Stage direction is by Jonathon Field, Associate Professor of Opera Theater and Director of Opera Theater Productions.

Performances of The Coronation of Poppea are at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, March 12, 14, and 15; with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, March 16. Tickets are $5 for all students; $8 for Oberlin College faculty, staff, alumni, parents, area educators, and seniors; and $12 for the general public. All seats are reserved. Tickets are $3 more when purchased at the door. Call Oberlin�s Central Ticket Service, located in the lobby of Hall Auditorium, at 440-775-8169 or 800-371-0178. Box office hours are from noon to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and select Saturdays. Hall Auditorium is wheelchair accessible, and hearing enhancement is available upon request. Free parking is available throughout the campus.

Synopsis and Director�s Notes

Claudio Monteverdi�s final opera, The Coronation of Poppea, is considered to be his masterpiece. Based on The Annals of the historian Tacitus, as well as the works of other Roman writers, it is a tragicomedy in the vein of Shakespeare. The opera centers on the real-life passion of Emperor Nero in the first century A.D. for his beautiful but scheming mistress, Poppea, who plots to be his Empress (despite Nero�s wife). Written in the libertine atmosphere of Venice in the 1640s, the opera unashamedly embraces sensuality. It also depicts some of the disastrous consequences of ambition and obsession� forced �patriotic� suicide, attempted murder, and banishment. It celebrates the triumph of love over any virtue, including wisdom.

As Poppea presses Nero to make her Empress of Rome, the Emperor orders the philosopher Seneca, his wise tutor, to commit suicide. Enraged at being betrayed, Nero�s wife, Ottavia, orders the nobleman Ottone to kill Poppea. The attempt at murder fails, and Nero, learning that Ottavia was behind the plot, is now justified in sending his wife into exile, along with Ottone and Drusilla, a lady of the court. There are no more obstacles to granting Poppea her wish: she is crowned Empress of Rome. Love triumphs after all, and, in the finale, Poppea and Nero sing one of opera�s most haunting duets.

The Oberlin Opera Theater�s production of The Coronation of Poppea will be Stephen Stubbs� sixth staging of the work, for which he has previously served as both conductor and director. �I still find something new and exciting in Poppea,� he says. �You get involved with the characters, just like those in a Shakespeare play, and you find new elements in each production. Monteverdi�s musical characterizations are some of the strongest in opera, and yet, rather than being scored for a full orchestra, the wide palette of emotions has to be created with solo voices and only a few musicians in the continuo group�baroque guitar and chitarrone [Stubbs� instruments], harpsichords, and bowed bass.�

A Mystery Solved?

�When I first read Poppea,� adds Stubbs, �I was struck by the morality of the main characters who were moving through the story motivated by lust and ambition, leaving corpses in their wake. Instead of a �comeuppance� in the end, Nero and Poppea enjoy a �happy ending.� Monteverdi was certainly not leaving a moral for listeners to learn from. What this play offered him was a wide range of human situations and emotions, and he was uniquely prepared to breathe theatrical life into these with his strong and flexible musical language. I see two levels in this opera: the �noble� characters, such as Nero, Poppea, Ottavia, and Ottone, who speak one musical language; and the commedia dell�arte roles�Arnalta, Nutrice, Valetto, Damigella, who sing another.�

There is a musicological mystery surrounding the ending of Poppea; namely, who wrote it? Stubbs believes that the two farewell soliloquies�Ottavia�s �Addio Roma� and Arnalta�s �Hoggi sara Poppea��are quite possibly the last things that Monteverdi wrote in this opera, �because the finale is not his, I�m fairly certain. Previously, most scholars assumed that some of the music and rewrites of Poppea came from composer Francesco Cavalli. However, my mentor, the baroque opera conductor and harpsichordist Alan Curtis, identified Francesco Sacrati as the likely candidate,� he says.

Performers and Production Team

This production of The Coronation of Poppea features Oberlin Conservatory students. Most of the principal roles are double cast; in alternate performances, one cast appears Wednesday and Saturday, and the other, Friday and Sunday. Nero is played by Elias Traverse �08 and Joseph Turro �09; Alexandra Becerra �08 and Lillie Chilen �08 share the role of Poppea. Others in the cast are Nathan Medley �09 (Ottone); Meghan Brooks �08 and Patricia Stubel �08 (Ottavia); Shelly Irvin �08 and Elizabeth Zharoff �10 (Drusilla); Joseph Barron �08 and John Harper �08 (Seneca); Kate Rosen �11 (Arnalta); Evan Bennett �08 (Valetto); Jayson Greenberg �09 (Lucano); Benjamin von Reiche �10 (Liberto and Soldier 1); Mark Tempesta �09 (Soldier 2); Michael D�Emilio �11 (Littore); Adam Beaudoin �10, Jennifer Noel �08, and Mark Tempesta �09 (Famigiari); Jayson Greenberg �09 and George Somerville �11 (Due Tribuni); G. Michael D�Emilio �11 and Justin Manalad �09 (Due Consoli); and Corey Arnold �11, Carianne Bennett �11, Roy Hage �11, and Maggie Sczekan �10 (Servants). The gods include Angela Kloc �08 and Amy O�Callaghan �08 (Amore); Julia Dawson �11 and Melanie Emig �09 (Virtue); Meris Gadaleto �10 and Lauren Hayes �08 (Fortuna); and Ren�e Solomon �08 (Pallade).

The Oberlin Opera Theater�s team of professional staff includes Alan Montgomery, assistant music director; Michael Louis Grube, managing director and set designer; Copeland Woodruff, assistant director and stage manager; Jeremy K. Benjamin, lighting designer; Chris Flaharty, costume designer; JoEllen Cuthbertson, costumer; Joseph P. Natt, technical director; Andrew Kaletta, master electrician; David Bugher, assistant technical director; Robert Katkowsky, properties master; and Tyler Stoll, manager. In this production, Webb Wiggins, Associate Professor of Harpsichord, serves as assistant music director and is in charge of baroque preparation; Marilyn McDonald, Professor of Violin, is serving as baroque coach; and William Thurmond is responsible for underwater videography for the scenery backdrop. Alexis Grenier (Mmus�08) and Katherine Drossos �10 are student assistant stage managers.

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi was the pivotal force in the birth of opera in the late 1500s and early 1600s. He is considered to be one of the most powerful influences on Western music. Born in Cremona in 1567, Monteverdi died in Venice in 1643, one year after Poppea was first performed at Venice�s Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paulo.

Monteverdi produced motets and sacred madrigals�his first music for publication�while he was still in his teens, in 1582 and 1583. In 1590, he began to work at the court of Vincenzo I of Gonzaga in Mantua, and in 1602 he became the court conductor, composing spiritual music for Masses. He held the position until 1613, when he was 45. From that point until his death, he was court conductor of the renowned Basilica di San Marco in Venice. He had become Italy�s most celebrated composer.

Monteverdi was prolific, producing eight books of principally madrigals (a ninth was published posthumously). He straddled the transition between Renaissance music, with its emphasis on madrigals and their polyphony, a melodic interest shared between several voices, to early baroque monody, a soloistic style with a clear melodic line. In 1600, Florentine humanists began to introduce an early form of opera, which was a revival of ancient Greek drama. A deeply passionate man, Monteverdi embraced the newly forming genre, bringing emotion and words to the foreground, where, previously, the polyphonic equality of voices, dissonance, and strict counterpoint had been the ideals. In 1607, Monteverdi premiered his first opera, L�Orfeo. A year later, he finished his second opera, L�Arianna, after the tragic death of his wife.

While continuing as court conductor in Venice, Monteverdi still accepted commissions to compose music, including Tirsi e Clori, a ballet, and another opera, La finta pazza Licori. Monteverdi was especially in demand when public opera houses opened in Venice in 1637. He composed Poppea and Il Ritorno d�Ulisse in Patria (�The Return of Ulysses�) in his final years, when he was often ill. After visiting Cremona in 1643, he died shortly upon his return to Venice.

Stephen Stubbs

Stephen Stubbs and Conductor Paul O�Dette earned a �best opera recording� nomination in December 2007 for the CPO (Classic Produktion Osnabr�ck) recording of Jean-Baptiste Lully�s Th�s�e with the Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF).

Born in Seattle in 1951, Stubbs has been engaged in music making since early childhood. Parallel interests in new pre-romantic music led him to take a degree in composition at the University of Washington and to study the lute and harpsichord. Additional years of study in Holland and England preceded his professional debut as a lutenist at Wigmore Hall, London, in 1976. From 1980 to 2006 he lived in northern Germany and was professor of lute and performance practices at the Hochschule f�r K�nste, Bremen.

With his direction of Stefano Landi�s La Morte d�Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges Festival Musica Antiqua, Stubbs began his career as opera director and simultaneously founded the ensemble Tragicomedia. Stubbs has been invited to direct opera productions in Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Scandinavia, including Monteverdi�s Orfeo at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam in 2007. Since 1997 he has codirected the biannual BEMF opera, for which he was named permanent artistic codirector in 2003. The BEMF recording of Johann George Conradi�s Ariadne was nominated for a Grammy in 2005 as �best opera recording.�

Stubbs created the ensemble Teatro Lirico in 1996. The group�s live recording of Antonio Sartorio�s Orfeo was awarded the Cini Prize for �best opera recording� of 1999. Teatro Lirico�s debut on the ECM label was a New York Times �Pick of the Year� in 2006.

Stubbs� solo lute recordings include the music of J.S. Bach, S.L. Weiss, David Kellner, and the Belgian lutenist Jacques St. Luc. With baroque harpist Maxine Eilander, he has recorded Sonate al Pizzico, released on ATMA in 2004. He is a member of ECM�s Dowland Project, a group dedicated to improvising pre-baroque and later music, and he has played on all of the project�s recordings.

Stubbs will serve as a guest conductor in 2008 and will lead projects with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, the Solamente Naturali of Bratislava, and the Holland Baroque Society, as well as productions of Poppea and Orfeo, and, in Seattle, Anima et Corpo.

To cultivate singers and musicians of the next generation, Stubbs founded a course on early opera, the Accademia d�Amore, in Bremen in 1998. He brought the course to Seattle in 2005 under the auspices of the Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera (www.seattleacademyofbaroqueopera.org), a continuing, in-depth educational program for singers and continuo players. He serves the academy as its Artistic Director.

In 2009, Stubbs will debut his new Seattle-based opera company, Pacific Operaworks.

Jonathon Field

Jonathon Field is one of America�s more versatile and popular stage directors, having directed more than 100 productions in all four corners of the United States. He served as Artistic Director of Lyric Opera Cleveland for six seasons, where he presented the operas of Mozart, Rossini, and Donizetti as well as the Ohio premieres of works by John Adams, Mark Adamo, and Philip Glass. Field�s productions for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, among them Trouble in Tahiti, Gianni Schicchi, The Old Maid and the Thief, and The Spanish Hour, were so successful that they were repeated at the Illinois Humanities Festival.

Field�s production of La Cenerentola and Die Fledermaus for San Francisco Opera�s Western Opera Theatre played more than 20 states, as has an updated version of La Boh�me for Seattle Opera. In addition to the standard Italian and German repertoire, he also has worked in the Russian, directing Eugene Onegin and Boris Godunov in the original Russian in San Francisco. He also had great critical success there with Prokofiev�s The Love for Three Oranges. Over the past eight years, Field has directed 10 productions with the Arizona Opera and was deemed by the press to be �their most perceptive stage director.� He worked there with such esteemed artists as Teresa Zylis-Gara, Jerome Hines, Pablo Elvira, Giorgio Tozzi, and Angelina Reux.

Field�s versatility extends from the avant garde to musical comedies. He successfully introduced computer-generated scenery to the world of opera in a recent San Francisco production of Candide that the press called �virtual Voltaire�the backgrounds are as varied as the story.� His pioneering use of video-projected scenery in productions of The Turn of the Screw, Tales of Hoffman, and Der Freisch�tz has elicited praise from audiences and critics alike. In the realm of operetta and musicals, he has staged H.M.S. Pinafore for Opera Omaha, Trial by Jury for Lake George Opera, Bernstein�s Wonderful Town in Chicago, and Merry Widow and Countess Maritza in San Francisco. For the Oakland Symphony he translated and choreographed Stravinsky�s Pulcinella using members of the Oakland Ballet. He has worked on several world premieres, most notably assisting Robert Altman with Bolcom�s McTeague at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and David Alden with Susa�s The Love of Don Perlimplin with the San Francisco Opera. He has also worked as Assistant Director for several of Seattle Opera�s Wagner Ring Cycles, and has served in an administrative capacity with many opera companies and festivals.

In February 2006, Field directed�-at Oberlin and at Miller Theatre in New York City�-the U.S. premier of Lost Highway, the dramatic music theater work by noted Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth, which is based on the David Lynch film. The opera received critical acclaim from the New York Times and musicalamerica.com, which made special reference to Field�s direction.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated amid the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. The Conservatory is renowned internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber and has been pronounced a �national treasure� by the Washington Post. Oberlin�s alumni have gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music world. Many of them have attained stature as solo performers, composers, and conductors, among them Jennifer Koh, Steven Isserlis, Denyce Graves, Franco Farina, Christopher Robertson, Lisa Saffer, George Walker, Christopher Rouse, David Zinman, and Robert Spano. All of the members of the contemporary sextet eighth blackbird, most of the members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, and many of the members of Apollo�s Fire are Oberlin alumni. In chamber music, the Mir�, Pacifica, Juilliard, and Fry Street quartets, among other small ensembles, include Oberlin-trained musicians, who also can be found in major orchestras and opera companies throughout the world.