L'Incoronazione di Poppea at Opéra Bastille

Neither Fortune nor Virtue can vie with Love who, with a mere wave of the hand, can transform the world: such is the message conveyed by L'Incoronazione di Poppea, Monteverdi’s last masterpiece. Thirty five years had passed since his Orfeo, which had opened the era of the favola in musica. In the City of the Doges, riven by vice in Rome’s eyes, the composer wrote his opera about desire and seduction in which Poppea’s beauty bewitches Nero and provokes the death of Seneca, the banishment of Othon and the repudiation of Octavia. One by one, the pillars of morality crumble before we can bond with any of the characters, leaving us with the exquisitely delightful music. In the twilight of his life, Monteverdi invites us into a sensorial world where “the voice becomes a kiss before turning into profound utterance” (Starobinski). With “Poppea,” producer Robert Wilson, the poet of movement and space, writes a new chapter in his history with the Paris Opera.