“I designed a metaphysical scene rooted in Sebastiano Serlio’s classic scene of Renaissance theatre, an emblematic square onto which two worlds face each other,” explains director Pier Luigi Pizzi, describing what “Il Sole 24 Ore” described as the best opera production of 2023. A production that arrives in Ravenna after its summer debut for the Monteverdi Festival in the Ponchielli Theatre in Cremona, the leader of the co-production that alongside the Alighieri includes OperaLombardia and the Verdi Theatre in Pisa. “In the centre there is a tree,” Pizzi continues, “a tree with golden branches that look towards Poppea’s dwelling because they have received a lucky wind, on the other side the dry branches that tell us of Ottavia’s loneliness. Then there is a golden globe, which is the place over which Love exercises its power. (…) Busenello’s is one of the most beautiful opera librettos there is: it speaks to us in a direct way, with a language of such a level that it reaches everyone and gives us the possibility of easily recognising ourselves in the characters of this opera’.

First performed in Venice in 1643 and the first opera with a historical subject (the librettist Giovanni Francesco Busenello was inspired by Tacitus’ Annals), L’incoronazione di Poppea has come down to us in two manuscripts whose differences reveal manipulations and rewritings – presumably, the old maestro availed himself of the contribution of his pupils to stage his last great masterpiece. “The genesis of this opera is therefore a Homeric question, where many are the doubts and few the certainties – underlines Antonio Greco, maestro concertatore and conductor – We have chosen to stage the more agile Venetian manuscript found in 1888, but inserting the ‘Neapolitan’ instrumental refrains from the manuscript rediscovered in 1929. Dramaturgically, nothing changes: the moments in which the instrumental refrains appear are almost totally superimposable and the basso continuo lines are almost always identical. But while the Venetian instrumental is three-part, the Neapolitan is four-part. I took the liberty of adding a fifth part, to adapt the score to our orchestra and our theatre’.