Sir John Eliot Gardiner conductor and staging
Elsa Rooke director
Hana Blažiková Poppea, Fortuna
Kangmin Justin Kim Nerone
Carlo Vistoli Ottone
Gianluca Buratto Seneca
Lucile Richardot Arnalta, Venere
Michał Czerniawski Nutrice
Silvia Frigato Amore and Valletto
Anna Dennis Drusilla, Virtù, Pallade
John Taylor Ward Mercurio, Littore
and additional soloists
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)
L’incoronazione di Poppea. Opera in a prologue and three acts
“Claudio Monteverdi is for me the musical equivalent of William Shakespeare,” according to Sir John Eliot Gardiner. “He is the first composer in the history of Western music that was able to assimilate and encapsulate the whole range of human feelings and emotions in music: from the noblest and most godlike figures to the most proletarian, the most lowlife.” And the last of the three surviving Monteverdi operas, L’incoronazione di Poppea, which was premiered in 1643 in Venice, in particular explores psychological depths – and at the same time remains a work that is sharply relevant today. “Poppea is based on human and political ambition, sexual desire, envy, and jealousy. Nobody had done anything like this before in musical terms,” says Gardiner. And it is Monteverdi’s passionate, sensual, comic, and dramatic setting that makes this political drama about the Roman Emperor Nero and his beloved Poppea such an incomparable experience.