Poppea / Poppea 3D Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Poppea / Poppea 3D Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 2, 2014

Emperor Nero may be most famous for fiddling while Rome burned, a scene turned to Academy Award nominated effect by Peter Ustinov in Quo Vadis. Claudio Monteverdi wasn’t interested in the literal combustibility of the Roman emperor in his nascent opera The Coronation of Poppea, focusing instead on a series of star-crossed love affairs, including that between Nero and the titular noblewoman. Monteverdi’s piece was one of the first operas to utilize actual historical personages, though the historical record is a bit less clear as to whether the music which has come down to us was written entirely by Monteverdi himself. Monteverdi’s music is just one of several different offerings in Poppea, an interesting if often obfuscatory modern dance piece choreographed by Christian Spuck for Gauthier Dance and Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart.

Classical ballet aficionados may be put off by the rampant modernism on display here, which includes everything from multimedia displays to narration to a number of decidedly nontraditional dance moves. The narrative here is perhaps only loosely bound to Monteverdi’s original conception, and includes such patently bizarre props as a water tank, as if the impending deaths of several characters can be ameliorated by Houdini-esque escape tactics. A minimalist production design is further hampered by extremely dark stage lighting and dancers clad almost entirely in black.

Poppea / Poppea 3D Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Poppea/Poppea 3D is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Euroarts with both MVC (3D) and AVC (2D) encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1. This is one of the more perplexing high definition releases of modern dance material in my personal experience, since the production design here is fairly minimal, and there's virtually no color (aside from occasional pops like a cool effect of red in the water tank late in the proceedings). A dimly lit stage is shrouded in black cloth, and the dancers are clad almost uniformly in black. This means that there's really inadequate shadow detail and less than optimal depth in the 3D iteration. Milky blacks don't help things, and an overall murky contrast situation only further exacerbates the situation. Sharpness and clarity are also less than optimal, and overall this is a curiously lackluster looking high definition experience in either 2D or 3D.

Poppea / Poppea 3D Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While there is some brief narration here (in German and French), the bulk of this piece is an assortment of various composers' works, presented in either DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or LPCM 2.0. The dry secco sounds of Monteverdi's string orchestra come through nicely without any brittleness and some of the more modern electronic pieces have great low end. Fidelity is fine and there are no problems of any kind.

Poppea / Poppea 3D Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Threesome (1080p; 5:27) is available in both 2D and 3D versions. This piece is well lit and features dancers in white against a white background, making it significantly easier to see than the bulk of the main piece.

Poppea / Poppea 3D Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Poppea is an interesting intellectual exercise in reimagining Monteverdi's opera in a different medium (actually media) and with different music, to boot. The audience in attendance seemed to be totally enthralled by the presentation, at least as revealed by the rapturous applause at the end of the performance, but as a high definition experience (in either 2D or 3D) it comes up short.