BEMF Opera | 2009 Centerpiece Opera

Monteverdi’s L’incoronzione di Poppea

June 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, and 14, 2009
Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA

June 19, 20, and 21, 2009
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA

Claudio Monteverdi’s final and most profound opera, L’incoronazione di Poppea, was first composed in the early 1640s, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paulo in Venice in 1643, just fifty years after the “birth” of opera as an art form. Its themes remain as richly current and intriguing today as they were more than three and a half centuries ago: the abuse of power, the drive of lust, and the triumph of love.

The story of the Roman Emperor Nero’s obsessive love for Poppea, widely regarded as the most beautiful woman in the ancient world, is at the smoldering center of Monteverdi’s masterpiece. Like a Shakespeare tragicomedy, there is a two-tiered society an “upstairs-downstairs” in which comic servants puncture to illusions of the “betters,” while the “noble” characters surrender themselves to their passions. Above both of these, in the tradition of Greco-Roman mythology, is the domain of the gods, ruled by the smallest, yet most omnipotent: Amore.