Still, this was only a single exposure from a company of limited resources, which is no way to evaluate an unfamiliar opera. So I set about some of the preparation I think we all should do, if we are not among the Handelian elite. From the Lincoln Center Performing Arts library I was able to bring home a CD recording from the 2015 Gōttingen Festival, conducted by Laurence Cummings; a DVD from the 1985 Schwetzingen Festival, conducted by Arnold Östman and directed by Michael Hampe; and a full score in the Kalmus Miniature series, whose date-and-place provenance (1874, Leipzig) pegs it as an offprint from the mighty but outdated Chrysander edition. I supplemented these by buying the only other video available at local retail sources, a 2016 production from the Theater an der Wien, Thomas Hengelbrock, cond., Robert Carsen, dir. For a moment, I felt slightly negligent . Surely there must be a modern critical edition of the score in the Bärenreiter series, and there are recordings led by such period experts as Jean-Claude Malgoire and René Jacobs—I should have them all! But I quickly came to my senses: I was only trying to get closer to the work, and had spent enough time and money. As one of our leaders—one who, if we are in sufficiently high spirits to see him from an antic p.o.v., could well fit into Agrippina’s cast of characters—observed, we go to war with the army we have. Then stuff happens.

I began with the audio-only Göttingen performance, since I find that I nearly always acquaint myself with an opera better without the inventions of a director plus a video director standing in my way. But I was irritable by the end of the first scene. A few of my notes: “Agrippina 1st aria: swoopy attacks, no color span except to alternate vibrated with straight tone. Piece plods, all in midvoice. Would never guess what it’s about, or even general attitude, mood. Modest ornamentation in da capo adds nothing. Pallante aria: a first-rate voice  with a superior sense of play might make it work. Narciso recit. & aria: extremely covered falsetto. Ornamentation only smudges line.” And more in this vein of discouragement, also noting embarrassing “comic” inflections and desperate efforts to introduce variety into the predictable forms. Only the brief, witty quartet “Il tuo figlio merta sol,” celebrating Nerone’s supposedly imminent ascension to the throne, gave any lift to the proceedings. Things did look up three numbers later with Poppea’s first aria, well sung by a soprano (Ida Falk Winland) who seemed to have correctly guessed her gender identity and thus had a good start on conveying a sense of character. But by this time I felt I had chosen the wrong path to initiation, and was being unfair to the work. So I turned to the videos, to see what sense was being made of these scenes by two sets of modern directors, designers, and performers.

As my readers know, I’ve made it something of a mission to argue for the restoration of the rights of creators to set the boundaries of interpretation, and to oppose the installation of the director as auteur. Those are points of principle I have decided to iterate and re-iterate because of what I see as widespread and destructive misuse. It can’t be denied, though, that in any Handel opera, a great deal must be invented with respect to character and action, not only because so little is specified in the text, but because the demands of musical structure and scenic progression accommodate modern notions of continuously developing action very poorly. In this opera, it is only in the recitatives, and occasionally in short interchanges like the above-mentioned quartet, that a course of behavior is clear, and even these passages are obedient to conventions (the aside, for instance, which is frequently resorted to) that the modern acting sensibility is tempted to disobey. And the level of reality is often in question. Clearly, we are meant to “believe” in the characters’ expressions of emotion, and perhaps in the immediate circumstances that elicit them; but how these circumstances come about is often sheer contrivance. Agrippina is, in fact, a stop-and-start situation comedy. In the writers’ room was a very worldly cardinal and civil official, Vincenzo Grimani.