Friday, June 24, 2011

Poppea in Florence

The rehearsal process for getting our production of Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea up on its feet was luxurious in that we were able to do all of our staging rehearsals onstage in the theater instead of being trapped in a rehearsal room trying to imagine what the set was going to look like and be like to navigate.

Since we were in theater, I had a chance to play around at taking rehearsal shots with my camera, a few of which are below. Some are in costume and some are not...

Poppea (Susan Graham) and Nero (Jeremy Ovenden)

Poppea and Nero kissing each other goodbye

Drusilla (Ana Quintans) looking a bit sad that Ottone isn't paying attention to her

Poppea thinking about Nero as Ottone (Anders Dahlin) sneaks up from behind

Ottavia (José Maria Lo Monaco) sings of her frustrations as Nutrice (Nicola Marchesini) looks on

Poppea in the shadows

Ottone upset that Poppea has dumped him for Nero

Poppea and Nero

Poppea and Nero - they are pretty passionate about each other, as you can see...

Seneca (Matthew Brook) looking angrily at Ottavia

I must say, this production of Poppea was one of the most fun operatic experiences I have had in a long time. On top of being incredible musicians and actors with stunningly beautiful voices, my colleagues were some of the funniest people I have worked with in years. We shared countless laughs over some incredible meals and phenomenal bottles of wine, and I will treasure the memories from these past few weeks for a long time to come. My stomach and throat are still a bit sore from laughing so hard...

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