Yesterday’s Used Bookstore Find

Monteverdi’s 1642 Venetian Opera L’Incoronazione di Poppea or The Coronation of Poppea. Stellar early Modern music, this Opera tells the story of the ascension of Nero’s beloved concubine Poppea Sabina to the role of Augusta at the expense of his first wife the Empress Octavia. The romanticly focused opera apparently doesn’t include Nero’s eventual ‘accidental’ murder of his new empress by a later repented kick to her pregnant womb, nor he posthumous apotheosis to divinity by his decree.