Scandal at court

The way the director James Conway sees it, Monteverdi’s last opera L’incoronazione di Poppea is about that most delicate of subjects, adult abuse by youngsters. That isn’t what he says in his programme note for his production at the Royal College of Music, where he claims that the opera is about power, ‘love, yes, but love’s power’. That is tendentious: you might as well say that Otello is about the power of jealousy, which is true, but that doesn’t make it ‘really’ about power; or that Wozzeck is about the power of powerlessness, etc. Poppea is about several things, power among them, but also love, jealousy, ambition, ruthlessness, the abuse of power.

In the second cast, which I saw, the central figure is very much Poppea, since she is played by Louise Alder, who will certainly become a major figure in opera if she projects as well in big houses as in the delightfully small Britten Theatre.