L'incoronazione di Poppea

For his last opera in 1642, Claudio Monteverdi drew on a subject with historical figures for the first time and thus created the first “sex and crime story” in opera history. Like a political thriller, this early Baroque masterpiece tells of power and love as well as their potential for abuse.

Poppea Sabina, the most beautiful woman in Rome, wants nothing less than to be the empress at the side of Emperor Nerone. She thus uses all her seductive power to persuade Nerone to reject his wife Ottavia. When the imperial philosopher Seneca opposes this, he must pay for it with death. Meanwhile, Ottavia incites Ottone, scorned and betrayed by Poppea, to murder the power-hungry rival. However, the attack can be thwarted: Ottavia is rejected and Poppea has achieved her plans, wishes and dreams. At the end of their opera, Monteverdi and his librettist Busenello demonstrate their thoroughly bitter worldview: None of their actors are free from flaws. Ultimately, the authors let those who act most unscrupulously triumph. Monteverdi succeeds in the feat of humorously exposing his partly cartoonish and sonically very differentiated characters, but on the other hand also creating empathy for them again and again. Extremely expressive, with sensual melodies and bold harmonies, his astonishingly avant-garde music seduces people to cheer along with the adulterers — despite their scandalous behavior.