There are times when the “bad guy” wins, though it’s usually temporary. But “temporary” is often a description given by those who are not the victims. More frequently, justice remains elusive. And collectively there is often a tendency toward complicity in this ... to hide things, to camouflage, to gloss over. There is an understandably strong desire to focus on the good, the just. But in art, when the aspirational comes into conflict with the realities it attempts to transcend, it can lead to problematic distortions. Reality, life, is rarely one or the other. This is why I was so excited to focus on this particular Poppaea, and this character in all her complexities. The work shines a powerful light into the dark corners. As someone who performed the role of Poppaea in Monteverdi’s opera, I was very curious to see how Hersch would approach it. How would he and Fleischmann approach this life? When I read the score and the libretto I felt, oddly, a huge sense of relief in surveying these utterly destroyed worlds. It felt right to me, especially now. We should share this portion of the story, her story; how these doomed lives came to a close. I felt a responsibility to read, to learn, to participate in sharing this history; not to romanticize or to oversell it, but to simply go squarely into that darkness.

These performances occur during a long-running battle, especially in the Western world, of what art should be; what art should do. People argue that by sharing particular troubling aspects of human experience in this cultural moment, specifically that of women, we are perpetuating these crimes rather than taking a step toward diminishing them. Contrary to providing a space to obscure difficult realities - which much art does and does beautifully and even at times necessarily - art can also clarify them. It can provide a window into all too common chaoses which occur behind closed doors, and too frequently remain there. Situations and events many people understand all too well, unfortunately. Opera is particularly good at this. Much of what happens in this Poppaea may seem distant to some in the audience. But I assure them it is not distant for many more.

As difficult as it is to reveal, I, personally, know all too well the consequences of physical and psychological abuse. I am surprised I find myself at this relatively late date in my life publicly acknowledging this. But if there is an opportunity to share certain sufferings which I can relate to an audience through my work as an artist, elements of which are familiar to me, to say to an audience “Please consider these things that happen. Let me try and show you through this work,” I welcome it. This is not ordinarily the case in my performing. Usually, I am inhabiting worlds I have no first hand knowledge of. This opera allows me to communicate something that I wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing outside, off the stage, but the stage and this opera in particular afford me an opportunity. Unlike other roles, I don’t have to fully become someone else. There are elements I recognize in what happens to these women. It is frighteningly real to me. Above all, I want to tell this story.

This openness is a gut feeling. What I expose onstage certainly may cause discomfort, but discomfort in art certainly is not incompatible, strange as it seems to say, with the ability to be entertained. That is not news to anyone. Discomfort, even the need to turn away would be an acknowledgement of the wrongness of what is happening, what has happened. At its best, discomfort of the bystander, the audience in this case, can lead to empathy. And for me this is one of art’s greatest strengths... the potential to break through the disconnections between people endemic in this world.

The art to which I respond best reflects human experience where all is on the table. That composite is what makes life what it is. It is important to examine all of it. In this moment where there are good and bad faith calls to curtail, minimize, reframe, rethink, reorder, reconfigure violence against women on film, in the theatre, on the opera stage, I think we must be extremely cautious in the face of calls to put up guardrails. It’s one thing to sensationalize difficult issues. This opera doesn’t do that.

When one is experiencing a trauma, the mind and body go in many different directions. When one is enduring violence where escape is not possible, you must psychologically put distance between yourself and your attacker. I can relate to those moments when Poppaea’s power is diminishing, is on the downslide, where she suddenly is very much not in control. Of course she also becomes oppressor and that feels unfamiliar territory to me. Terrifying, actually. The way I handled my own diminishing power, victimization in my past, was to ask what it was that I had done to find myself in those situations. This misplaced blame on the victim and not the aggressor tragically is not so uncommon.

Ultimately, I believe Poppaea was a victim. A monster, too. But, a victim nevertheless. She was so blinded by what she wanted in life. I believe she just wanted to be loved. Loved by her mother, her husband, the people under her rule ... Her desire for love blew up into something unfathomably destructive... to herself, her loved ones, the society around her. At the very end of the opera, when Poppaea seems to me at her most clear-eyed, it’s too late. But that final confrontation with love reaches something approaching a healthy clarity. For me, a feeling of repentance washes over that final scene. Perhaps this is a result of my own upbringing. I’m not sure. How, in hindsight, could it have turned out differently for her? It seems a strange thing to say that love and justice triumphs in the wreckage of Poppaea’s and Nero’s world, but somehow, some way, it is there amongst the ruins.

— 18 June 2021