“Coronation of Poppea,” a striking saga of sex, power and cruelty, could have been written yesterday, but dates to the very beginning of opera, in the early 17th century. While his contemporaries wrote about mythologic subjects or romantic pastorals, Monteverdi addressed a historic subject involving real people: the Roman Emperor Nero’s (temporary) passion for his ambitious, scheming mistress, Poppea.
To tell such a story musically, Monteverdi developed musical expressions of various human emotions, such as rage (rapid staccato notes), pain (expressed as musical dissonance) and steamy love duets. In these ways he anticipated the over-dramatic themes of more recent operas.
Highlights from the opera, sung in Italian with English supertitles, will be performed at Good Luck Cellars, Kilmarnock, at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, July 24. Musical accompaniment will be by a Baroque consort with period instruments and harpsichord.