Christian Boesch at the Metropolitan Opera, as Papageno. He returned for the same opera in 1981 (now with Lucia Popp and Gail Robinson alternating as Pamina, and Zdzisława Donat as the Queen of Night), and the same season sang Monsieur Presto in the Met premiere of "Les mamelles de Tirésias" (directed by John Dexter). In 1983, he appeared again at that theatre for their Centennial Gala and "Don Giovanni" (as Masetto), opposite James Morris, Edda Moser, Carol Neblett, Paul Plishka, Roberta Alexander and John Macurdy. His final appearances at the Met were in the title part of "Wozzeck", in 1985. In 1989,
Agrippina (opera) hypocritical; Claudius is pompous, complacent, and something of a buffoon, while Poppaea, the first of Handel's sex kittens, is also a liar and a flirt. The freedmen Pallas and Narcissus are self-serving and salacious. All, however, have some redeeming features, and all have arias that express genuine emotion. The situations in which they find themselves are sometimes comic, but never farcical—like Mozart in the Da Ponte operas, Handel avoids laughing at his characters. In "Agrippina" the "da capo" aria is the musical form used to illustrate character in the context of the opera. The first four arias of the work