Jordan Mattox

I just finished watching gloriously raucous 2020 version of this famous opera by Handel performed at the Met, recorded just a few short weeks before the world shut down. When I think of Baroque opera, Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo comes to mind, in all its stilted rigidity. The Met reimagined this one with a sense for the tawdry and bawdy—just like we like it!

The NY Times review said it the best:

This “Agrippina” — yanked from ancient Rome into a deliciously bleak vision of our time, played with electric vividness, and starring a guns-blazing Joyce DiDonato — should put to rest, once and for all, the notion that Handel belongs at the Met less than Verdi, Puccini or Wagner. Bold, snicker-out-loud funny, magnetic and unsettling through its power-struggle convolutions, this production musically and dramatically fills the company’s looming proscenium. It’s begging to be enjoyed with a bag of popcorn — or with a martini packing some of the work’s frosty heat.

This is certainly one to check out if you are Opera-curious or skeptical that this art form is for you.