POPPAEA (2019)

An Opera in One Act
Music by Michael Hersch
Libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann

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Michael Hersch continues the tradition of the great 'lone wolves' in the USA ... he is the explorer of an unconditional, radical expressivity that reveals the human abyss without any palliation. In music. In a new, crystal-clear beauty.
— Georg Friedrich Haas

Thirty-two years after the world premiere of Beat Furrer’s one-act opera Die Blinden at the Odeon, Wien Modern again ventures to present on the same stage the major operatic debut of an extraordinary composer, Michael Hersch.
— Wien Modern

This 21st-century inquiry into the brilliant, dynamic woman who became Nero’s empress takes a hard look at cruelty, desire, humanity, and love in the context of the machinations of power endemic to Nero’s reign. POPPAEA conjures a dark world in which violence—in particular, violence against women—is rampant, and the value of human life has been demeaned beyond measure. And yet Poppaea’s journey might be described as a complex movement towards empathy.

Nominee for the 2023 Austrian Music Theater Prize for Best Contemporary Music Theater

POPPAEA

Recording Release February 2024 (available both digitally and on CD)

New Focus Recordings (FCR-390)
A production of Wien Modern and ZeitRäume Basel
Ah Young Hong / Steve Davislim / Silke Gäng
Ensemble SoloVoices
Ensemble Phoenix Basel
Jürg Henneberger

digital booklet

Pre-order digital album (Streaming + Download)

POPPAEA | Trailer

courtesy of ZeitRäume Basel - Biennale für neue Musik und Architektur

"the first major highlight of the Wien Modern Festival" (Kronen Zeitung)

"an emotional power and effect that by no means every contemporary score can claim for itself" (Opern News)

"it is the music that - with its subtle, ecstatic pressure -
provides the most immediate effect. Hersch combines fragility and expressiveness" (Der Standard)

Duration ca. 110' (one act)
Libretto Stephanie Fleischmann
Characters Poppaea – soprano, Nero – tenor or baritone, Octavia – mezzo-soprano, Handmaidens – 2 sopranos, 1 mezzo-soprano, Additional female chorus – 2 soprano sections, 1 mezzo-soprano section
Instrumentation 1 Fl., 1 Ob., 1 Bb Cl., 1 Bass Cl. (sep. player), 2 Alt. Sax., 1 Bn., 1 Cnt. Bn., 1 Hn., 1 Tpt., 1 Trb., 1 Perc., 1 Pno., 2 Vln., 1 Vla., 1 Vc., 1 Db. Bs.
Premiere Date September 10 and 12, 2021 - ZeitRäume Basel – Biennial for New Music and Architecture
November 5-7, 2021 - Wien Modern Festival, Vienna, Austria

ZeitRäume Basel Programme Booklet (in German/auf Deutsch)

Production Information

View 2021 Production Photos

World Premiere Production
Ah Young Hong, Poppaea
Steve Davislim, Nero
Silke Gäng, Octavia
Ensemble SoloVoices
Ensemble Phoenix Basel

Jürg Henneberger, Conductor
Markus Bothe, Stage Director
Piertzovanis Töws Architekten, Stage Design
Eva Butzkies, Costumes
Marius Kob, Puppets

"Hersch ... with librettist Fleischmann radically turns the gaze onto the title character ...
Hersch clothes this tableau of the deranged in a surprisingly emotionally charged score." (Salzburger Nachrichten)

POPPAEA | Trailer II

courtesy of the Wien Modern Festival

Essays

"... the antique mass graves were no prettier" by Michael Hersch
"Poppaea in History and on the Stage" by Lauren Donovan Ginsberg
"POPPAEA" by Stephanie Fleischmann
Interview with soprano Ah Young Hong
"What Has Changed Since Then?" by Bernhard Günther
"Telling of the End of Poppaea" by Markus Bothe
"ON POPPAEA" by Heinrich Toews and Ioannis Piertzovanis

Press

Szenen einer Todesehe (Der Standard)
Die Geliebte des Kaisers Nero wird hier eine Lady Macbeth (Kurier)
Ein Festival-Höhepunkt (Kronen Zeitung)
"Poppaea" bei Wien Modern als Blut-Rausch (Salzburger Nachrichten)
Lust, Schmerz und Cyberpunk (Die Presse)
Gewaltrausch & Plastik: Wien Modern zeigt "Poppaea" (O.R.F. Radio Feature)
POPPAEA – Opernuraufführung von Michael Hersch (Oper in Österreich)
POPPAEA Kommt Nach Wien Modern (ORF Television Feature)
Geliebte gegen Gattin, oder: Der Fluch der Niedertracht (Opern.News)
Jenseits von Gut und Böse (FALTER Magazine)
Hersch/Fleischmann: Poppaea (Air Mail)
Festival ZeitRäume Basel to Stage World Premiere of Michael Hersch and Stephanie Fleischmann’s ‘Poppaea’ (Operawire)
POPPAEA - Second Opera by Composer Michael Hersch to Receive World Premiere in Basel (Broadway World)
Stadt, Mensch und urbaner Sound im Wandel (ProgrammZeitung)
Freispruch für „Poppaea“ in Basel? – Nicht in Michael Herschs Oper (Neue Musikzeitung)
Massakrierte Puppen und Pet-Flaschen-Vorhänge: So lief die Uraufführung der «Poppaea»-Oper ab (Basellandschaftliche Zeitung)

"Disturbing, contemporary music theater of the kind like 'Poppaea' by Michael Hersch used to be a tradition at the Wiener Festwochen. It's good that Vienna is now adopting this genre in a modern way. Even better if it succeeds like the co-production with the ZeitRäume Basel festival at the Odeon. Hersch shows the mistress of the Roman emperor Nero as a Lady Macbeth ... overwhelming, opulent music that pairs perfectly with the verses of Fleischmann's libretto. The percussion, especially the gongs, are used menacingly, the strings shimmer as if electrified. The chorale-like passages in the female choir seem like startling injections." — Kurier

"In this score, Michael Hersch dared to create an expansive as well as an agonising opulence ...The 18-member Ensemble Phoenix Basel sounded as if they were 80-strong ... Poppaea offers singers and musicians material both great and rewarding. Ever new individual colours peel out of the lush, crashing waves of the metrics of this score. The brass, sometime after Octavia's slow bleeding, the flute, and the caustically questioning bass clarinet, after the embers of the first piano glimmer from the core of Poppaea and Nero's marital hell ... Like Macbeth, Poppaea gets caught up in the whirlpool of inflicting violence until she herself becomes the victim. In a visionary juxtaposition, Octavia and Poppaea, whose destinies are so similar, prey on each other with a bizarre ambivalence of pity and rivalry. Whether 'Rome is burning' is to be taken as code or as plot no longer matters in light of this ... Hersch's opera and this premiere show that the human beast, even when it is up to its neck in plastic waste, still lusts after its own self-destructive priorities."— Neue Musikzeitung

"'... the orchestra emits ghostly sounds that leave no doubt about the horror of the scene. 'How does it feel?' Octavia, wife of the Roman emperor Nero, is executed; Poppaea, the mistress, has prevailed ... Octavia bleeds out silently to a monologue by her murderer. 'Is the pain sharp or dull?' Bernini's 'Ecstasy of St. Teresa' comes to mind, the marble sculpture that shows an angel piercing her with the arrow of divine love. Bernini breathtakingly meets the voluptuous, chaste simultaneity of love and pain. The U.S. composer Michael Hersch succeeds in translating these ambivalences into music."— Die Presse