The Coronation of Poppea, Quarantined

Need to know

Rated PG-13: Opera has adult themes and violence

Claudio Monteverdi is regarded as not only as the first great opera composer, but as one of the greatest of all time. Of his ten operas, only his first opera Orfeo and a fragment of his second opera Arianna, both written for the Mantua court during his early years of the genre, along with Il ritorno d’Ulisse in partria and L’incornazione di Poppea, composed during his final years in Venice have survived. These four works book end the beginning and ending of this genius’ Operatic career.

Monteverdi is the only 17th century composer to still have a permanent position in today’s operatic repertoire. Orfeo, while not the first opera is still regarded as the first great opera and L’incoranzione di Poppea is considered a masterwork.

L’incoranzione di Poppea has gone down in history as perhaps the first example of a plot in which evil triumphs over good. Monteverdi puts on full display the triumph of power and vaulting ambition, harshness and corruption of politics, and the venalities of court life. The opera has elements of “art imitating life” as the composer had first hand experience in the courts of Cremona, Mantua, and Venice.

The protagonist of the opera, emperor Nero, is based on one of history’s cruelest and most corrupt leaders of all time. This is same Nero the “fiddled while Rome burned.”

Read more about Monteverdi from cmuse.org

Casting Nero:

Nerone is one of the first hero roles written for castrati, a male soprano. By the mid 16th century, castrati had become a normal voice type in all of Italy gaining more popularity in the 17th and 18th century. A castrato is a male singer who was castrated before puberty. The immediate effect on their voice was that they retained the high notes and range of their immature voice, but the operation also had a variety of other effects. One such effect was height, castrati where unusually tall and grew massive rib cages, making them tower over other singers on stage.

There are no castrati in modern day which leave casting directors with a decision whether to cast a countertenor, a female (pants role), or a tenor in the role of Nerone. All are three voice types are cast regularly in new productions.

Ready more about castrai from ClassicFM.

Synopsis

Overview:

Evil triumphs over good in this opera about one of the most corrupt leaders of all time. Greed, lust, pretty much all seven of the deadly sins are on full display in Monteverdi’s masterpiece.