Excerpts from Agrippina
Music by George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani (1655–1710)
BEMF 2025 Young Artists Training Program Participants
Gilbert Blin, Founder and Director
Jason McStoots, 2025 Associate Director & Stage Director
Je rey Grossman, 2025 Musical Director & harpsichord
2025 Young Artists Training Program Vocal Cast (in order of appearance)
Agrippina – Anna Bjerken, soprano
Nerone – Sam Higgins, countertenor
Pallante – Seth Hobi, baritone Poppea – Andréa Walker, soprano
Claudio – Raphaël Laden-Guindon, baritone
Ottone – Reed Demangone, countertenor
2025 Guest Instrumental Ensemble Adriane Post, violin I
Katherine Winterstein, violin II
Lauren Nelson, viola
Andrew Koutroubas, violoncello
Gaia Saetermoe-Howard, oboe & recorder
This 90-minute performance has no intermission
W Double-manual Flemish harpsichord by D. Jacques Way, Stonington, Connecticut, 1980, X courtesy of First Church Boston.
The Boston Early Music Festival extends heartfelt thanks to An Anonymous Donor
Marie-Pierre and Michael Ellmann and Henk Elderhorst for their leadership support of the Young Artists Training Program and Andrew Sigel for his support of today’s pre-concert talk by Ellen T. Harris
Overture
Act I
Scenes 1 & 2: Agrippina’s private chambers. Agrippina and Nerone.
Aria. Con saggio tuo consiglio – Nerone
Scene 3: Agrippina and Pallante.
Aria. La mia sorte fortunata – Pallante
Scene 14: Poppea’s private chambers. Poppea.
Aria. Vaghe perle, eletti fiori – Poppea
Scene 21: Poppea and Claudio.
Aria. Pur ritorno a rimirarvi – Claudio
Arioso. Vieni, oh cara – Claudio
Scene 23: Poppea and Agrippina.
Aria. Non hò cor che per amarti – Agrippina
Act II
Scene 3: The foyer to the Imperial Throne.
Coro. Di timpani e trombe – Ensemble
Scene 5: The Gardens of the Imperial Palace. Ottone, then Poppea.
Accompagnato. Otton, Otton – Ottone
Aria. Voi che udite il mio lamento – Ottone
Arioso. Vaghe fonti – Ottone
Scenes 10 & 11: Poppea and Nerone.
Aria. Col peso del tuo amor – Poppea
Scene 12: Nerone.
Aria. Quando invita la donna l’amante – Nerone
Scene 13: Agrippina.
Aria. Pensieri, voi mi tormentate – Agrippina
Scene 14: Agrippina and Pallante.
Aria. Col raggio placido della Speranza – Pallante
Scene 20: Agrippina and Claudio.
Aria. Basta, che sol tu chieda – Claudio
Aria. Ogni vento – Agrippina
Act III
Scenes 1 & 2: Poppea’s private chambers. Poppea and Ottone.
Aria. Tacerò – Ottone
Scene 10: Poppea.
Aria. Bel piacere – Poppea
Scene 11: The Imperial Salon. Agrippina and Nerone.
Aria. Come nube che fugge al vento – Nerone
Scene 14: Agrippina, Pallante, and Claudio.
Aria. Se vuoi pace – Agrippina
Scene 15
Coro. Lieto il tebro – Ensemble
Synopsis of Agrippina
Setting
Rome, around 53 AD. The rooms and grounds of the Imperial Palace.
Claudio has been the emperor of the Roman empire for over a decade, during which time he expanded the empire and began the conquest of Britain. In 49 AD, Claudio, to shore up his legitimacy to the Julian dynasty, had married his niece Agrippina. Nerone is her son from a previous marriage, whom Claudio has adopted. Claudio is aging and his own son is too young to rule, leaving an opening for Nerone, who has recently become of ruling age. Claudio has been pursuing the noblewoman Poppea, but she is in love with Ottone, a nobleman and o cer in the Imperial Army. Poppea is also desired by Nerone, who is Ottone’s friend.
Act I
Agrippina has received secret news—that Claudio has died in a shipwreck. As a result, she sets in motion a plot for Nerone to ascend the throne. She informs Nerone of the news and counsels him to curry favor with the public and to await her instructions. She then enlists the help of Pallante, an advisor to Claudio whom she knows is in love with her. Pallante promises to help her. Agrippina’s announcement of Claudio’s death is interrupted, first by a messenger announcing that Claudio has been rescued by Ottone, and then by the arrival of Ottone himself, who recounts the tale and announces that as a reward Claudio has proclaimed him successor. Her plans thwarted, Agrippina devises a new scheme. She knows that both Claudio and Ottone are in love with Poppea. She deceives Poppea, saying that Ottone has given her to Claudio in exchange for the throne and that Poppea should tell Claudio that Ottone, drunk with power, has forbidden her to be with him. She knows that Poppea will seek revenge by feigning love for Claudio and getting him to change his decision.
Act II
As Claudio returns in triumph, Agrippina’s plans against Ottone continue, resulting in Claudio, Nerone, and even Poppea forsaking him publicly. Stunned by this reversal of fortune Ottone laments his situation privately, but soon Poppea meets with him and they realize that both of them are victims of Agrippina’s machinations. Poppea vows revenge on Agrippina. When Claudio tries to arrange an assignation
with Poppea, she decides to play Claudio and Nerone against each other. She encounters Nerone and asks to meet him later, privately. Agrippina reviews her plan and realizes that she must silence her conspirators. She comes upon Pallante and asks him to kill Ottone. Pallante has begun to see Agrippina for who she is, but still loves her and agrees. Agrippina turns her attentions to Claudio, playing on his guilt over his obsession with Poppea and the awkward situation with Ottone. Again, she lies and says that Ottone is seeking to incite rebellion against him and asks that Nerone be proclaimed his successor immediately. After half-heartedly agreeing to this, Claudio hurries o to meet Poppea. Agrippina has hope that her plans may come to fruition.
Act III
Poppea’s plans for revenge unfold. She has hidden Ottone in her room to serve as witness. She summons both Nerone and Claudio to her chambers. Nerone arrives first, hot with desire; she puts him o by claiming that Agrippina is about to enter and hides him in a di erent place from Ottone in her room. Claudio arrives, assuming he will finally enjoy Poppea’s a ection now that Ottone is disgraced, but finds her cold. When he brags about punishing Ottone for her, she acts confused, saying that in fact it was Nerone who desired her and sought the throne. As proof, she reveals Nerone from his hiding place. Claudio berates him and expels him from the palace. Poppea must still manage Claudio, claiming that she cannot be his until he can ensure her safety from Agrippina. Once he leaves, she commiserates with Ottone and reminds him that the pleasures of love will soon be theirs. Nerone hurries to Agrippina to reveal Poppea’s betrayal. Shaken but determined, Agrippina counsels Nerone to see Poppea as an enemy. Motivated by fear and guilt, Pallante tells Claudio of Agrippina’s plan to put Nerone on the throne. Skeptical at first, Claudio summons Agrippina to question her. Though her plot is unravelling, the silver-tongued Agrippina manages to turn Claudio to her favor, saying she was only ensuring stability for the empire in an uncertain moment. To bring an end to the whole matter, Claudio summons everyone. At first, he proclaims that Ottone will be emperor and Poppea will marry Nerone, but no one is pleased by this. So, he reverses his decision, proclaiming Nerone his successor and that Poppea and Ottone will marry.
—Jason McStoots
Agrippina in a “post-Truth” World
As a professional musician, I am often engaged in sacred music and the liturgy that accompanies it. One of these regular engagements is Holy Week or Passiontide—lengthy services or beautiful Passion concerts well-known to many. They annually force me to confront a haunting question. At every Good Friday service or Bach Passion, I am always left with Pontius Pilate’s seemingly impertinent question to the su ering Christ ringing in my ears. What is truth? We all want to believe that it is easy to connect the dots of such a question in its context. Pilate asks Jesus if he is a king. Jesus replies “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” To which, Pilate o ers his jaded, quasi-rhetorical question. However, even in the wellworn story, the ambiguity is unsettling. As humans, we crave certainty and we desire knowledge. Knowledge is power, so the adage goes. To follow the logical chain of maxim after maxim, power corrupts and absolute power… Perhaps that tree in Eden was forbidden for a good reason?
In this miasma, I turned to my work on Handel’s Agrippina As with Pilate, it is easy to oversimplify. Agrippina is a power-hungry, morally bankrupt shrew who will do and say anything to get what she wants—not a very sympathetic character, but is this really her? A bit of history will show you that Agrippina spent her life enduring the conniving of all those around her. She is, at her heart, a survivor. She was married to her first husband, a much older man and Nero’s father, at thirteen. Suetonius described him as a violent man “loathsome in every respect.” She was exiled to a tiny island o the Italian coast by her brother, Caligula. She was married a second time to Claudius, her uncle, who had just executed his former wife. She even survived multiple assassination attempts by Nero, who finally could only succeed by sending his men to stab her to death. There is much here to evoke empathy, but in the opera, she lies so calculatedly, so shamelessly, so frequently that it strains the limits of empathy. She wields her lies not like a sword but like a scalpel, knowing just the weak spot in which to pierce her foes.
Then I viewed, through all this, the day-to-day onslaught of news and events in the world. In an e ort to seem sage, I looked up famous quotes about honesty. Many of them made me chuckle, some because they seemed so shockingly out of step with reality and others because they were so incredibly “on the nose” for our lives today, despite often being hundreds of years old. We regularly hear commentators and media personalities talk about being in a “post-Truth” world, but really it has always been thus. It usually makes my heart sink, makes me want to switch o the news. We all want certainty, want to know that the ground is firm, that our friends aren’t talking about us behind our backs, that those who say they love us truly do. We want to know that our leaders are working towards the common good, that the fabric of our society is strong and healthy, that our plans for the future have hope.
While hope can be hard to hold on to, I am buoyed by my work over the years with the many young artists in our program here at the festival. Their optimism and energy are the perfect antidote when things seem to be coming undone. During our relatively short time together, we try to create a world where we grapple honestly with flawed, human characters who ironically turn out to be more like us than we want them to be. These young people have a remarkable hope for the future, and I think that is what we all want. Agrippina and her ilk probably wanted that too. But at what cost? A drama filled with unseemly, irredeemable characters is not new nor is it forgotten. The success of television shows like White Lotus or Succession are evidence enough. Often, we cannot look away from it. Often, we are part of it. What is truth? Jesus didn’t answer and I will not posit a response, but I hope that the art of drama can help us wrestle with the question. To end, here is the quote on honesty which spoke most deeply to me:
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.” —Oscar Wilde
—Jason McStoots