The Coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi, pe 29 tammi 2010, Alkaen (2010/2010), Ohjannut Robert Carsen, Musiikinjohto Thomas Hengelbrock, Theater an der Wien, Vienna, Austria

It couldn't be more amoral: What the 74-year-old Claudio Monteverdi and his librettist Francesco Busenello wrote over 350 years ago with their character and intrigue drama L'incoronazione di Poppea undermined any moral order. In one of the first works, which was not created for a royal court but for a bourgeois public theater, Monteverdi deviated from the mythological fabric tradition and instead focused on a real-historical theme: the story of the Roman emperor and tyrant Nero. Nerone is addicted to Poppea's erotic charms. Ottone, Poppea's husband, knows about his wife's intimate relationship with the emperor. Nerone's wife Ottavia also laments her lost marital happiness and asks the philosopher Seneca to help her through the people and the Senate. Seneca shows Nerone the difference between power and abuse of power. But Nerone, who eliminates all who stand in the way of his criminal love, drives the philosopher to suicide. Poppea, for her part, does not shy away from defamation and knows how to use Nerone's weakness for her own rise. After a failed murder attempt on Poppea, Ottone and his accomplice Drusilla are banished. Nerone, obsessed with the love of power-hungry Poppea, casts Ottavia off and defies any reason of state when he makes Poppea the new empress. - The prediction of the prologue, The musical text of Monteverdi's last opera L'incoronazione di Poppea was considered lost for a long time and was only rediscovered in Venice towards the end of the 19th century. In this work, lust for power and feelings of powerlessness stand side by side in a very small space. Monteverdi, one of the inventors of the art form opera, put these human affects, passions and emotions deeply into music. Poppea's and Nero's final love duet in particular seems to be of unearthly beauty, despite the horror that binds the lovers together.