Le couronnement de Poppée by Monteverdi, Du (2022/2022), Dirigé par Alain Françon, Chef d'orchestre Vincent Dumestre, Grand Théâtre, Dijon, France

The Incoronazione di Poppea , or how to settle an old debate and demonstrate by facts what power, of Fortune or Virtue, presides over human destinies. Answer in music: neither, because Love (hear: Desire) surpasses them both, to the great happiness of Emperor Nero… When he composed his final opera in 1642, Monteverdi had more than three decades of experience in the genre which he helped found. From his Orfeo, he never ceased to deepen the relationship between text and music, working to perfect the qualities of dramatic and psychological expressiveness of the score. The libretto that Giovanni Francesco Busenello drew from the Latin historian Tacitus opens up new fields of exploration for him. With a composition that is both firm and supple, the work is of a shimmering diversity: alternating the sublime and the comic, the nights of Eros and those of Thanatos, its distribution extends from the poorly awakened sentinel to the old cynical nurse up to deities such as Minerva, Mercury or Love in person, through the flower of high Roman society: Nero, his wife Octavia whom he intends to repudiate in favor of the beautiful Poppea, Otho , her titular lover, and Drusilla, who intends to take advantage of the situation to win him back.The Incoronazione di Poppea is a work of dizzying amoralism, where the power of passions and power is displayed without a mask. Desire and violence go free, as if nothing could resist music and love, as long as they last…