Monteverdi, L’Incoronazione di Poppea

Leonardo García-Alarcón brings us a concert version of Monteverdi’s ancient drama In the face of the gradual unfolding of tragedy, the spectator is overwhelmed by emotions, both horrified by the story and awed by the music.

“The depraved man finds in his infamy pleasures no less intense than the honest man in his fine conduct.”

Seneca, On the Happy Life, AD 58

Le miracle de cette Poppée ramenée à l’essentiel ? La grâce musicale portée par Leonardo García-Alarcón, qui tire avec ferveur la cruauté vers l’ambiguïté. […] Dans ce contexte libéré des contraintes scéniques, les lignes mélodiques et la pureté harmonique évoluent librement. Tout coule, tout irradie. Grâce aux chanteurs, tous magnifiques.

Sylvie Bonier

Le grand mérite de García-Alarcón et de son ensemble est, avant tout, de donner à cette œuvre un accès immédiat et d’en souligner plus que jamais l’incroyable modernité. […] Ce baroque méditerranéen engage et convainc, mais surtout il montre toute la force et d’une certaine manière la liberté de cette musique.

Federico Capoani

The Courtesan who wanted to be Empress

The Courtesan Poppea will stop at nothing to ascend the throne. The courtesan Poppea is mistress to Roman emperor Nero. She breaks up with her lover Otto, commissions the suicide of the philosopher Seneca and has the empress Octavia repudiated. Finally, she achieves her goal by marrying Nero. While this could have been an opera about the triumph of amorality, Monteverdi transforms it into a hymn to the power of desire and human nature in all its contradictions. While this was Monteverdi’s final opera, it also revolutionised the genre. Here it is as lively as the first day, in a concert version led by Leonardo García-Alarcón and Cappella Mediterranea.

Programme of the opera

The Coronation of Poppea / L’Incoronazione Di Poppea

Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643)
Il Nerone, ossia l’incoronazione di Poppea

Concert version

Opera in a prologue and three acts
Libretto by Giovani Francesco Busenello
First performed in 1642 at the Teatro Santi Giovanni E Paolo in Venice
Venice version of 1650

Cast

Sophie Junker – Poppea
Nicolò Balducci – Nerone
Mariana Flores – Ottavia
Iestyn Davies – Ottone
Alex Rosen – Seneca
Marcel Beekman – Arnalta / Nutrice / Famigliare I
Lucía Martín-Cartón – Fortuna / Drusilla
Riccardo Romeo – Liberto / Soldato II
Julie Roset – Amore / Valetto
Laurence Kilsby – Lucano / Soldato I / Famigliare II
Yannis François – Littore / Famigliare III / Mercurio

Cappella Mediterranea
Leonardo García-Alarcón, Musical direction

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