Virtue, Fortune and Love compete for superiority over mankind in the prologue to the most erotic opera of the 17th century, L’incoronazione di Poppea. Composed by Claudio Monteverdi at the age of 75, it was first performed in 1642 at the Teatro dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, in Venice.

This dialectical confrontation between Virtue and Fortune gives rise to overpowering passions, embodied by characters such as Nerone (unrestrained desire), Poppea (the lust for power) and Ottavia (the drive for vengeance) and opposed by the Stoic morality of the philosopher Seneca and the sincere love of Ottone. 35 years after his experimental Orfeo, Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea presents the innovations of mid-17th century Venetian opera: the absence of dances and choruses, a smaller orchestra, and the exaltation of vocal melody. A vocal continuum, ranging from recitative to ariosi, strophic arias and ensembles, made use of all the then current resources of vocal language; human emotions are expressed in sound with an unknown level of characterisation and psychological refinement up to that time.

This was the first opera about historical figures, real people, rather than portraying characters who embody emotional states. L’incoronazione di Poppea attempts to perceive and hear how these emotions appear and evolve, how they seduce and move us, how they invite us to enter the unstable and decentralised space of the Baroque world: the always subtle shift from recitative to arioso and cantabile, from cool intellect to hot blood, from reason to ecstasy, shapes a musical drama of human relationships, where the map is the geometry of the soul in movement.