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Reverse-Angle Double Vision: The Comet/Poppea
Paired overlapping operas, performed for an audience that’s in the wings instead of the seats.
A curved wall splits the circular stage: On the yin side, Claudio Monteverdi’s 17th-century masterpiece L’incoronazione di Poppea plays out in a white-tiled spa fitted out with a two-person bathtub and encrusted with white plaster flowers. Davóne Tines as Jim in Comet stalks the silent restaurant, hauls out the bodies of asphyxiated diners, swigs a bottle of Champagne, and, in his rich, lively baritone, intones the mantra “Yesterday they would not have served me here.” It’s not clear whether he utters the line in mournfulness or triumph. “The goal,” he writes in the note for this production, “is the transformation and expansion of the operatic form, which we force open to investigate its anti-elite potential — pointing out its tendencies towards exclusion while offering up a counterproposal.” That’s where he loses me: I doubt this convoluted and fragmented expression of abstract ideas is the most effective way to challenge the perception of elitism.
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