L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppaea) is an opera in three acts written by Claudio Monteverdi, with an Italian libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello. It was premiered at the St. John and Paul's Theater in Venice in 1643, and it is usually considered to by one of the first operas to include historial events and people in its plot: it tells the story of Poppae, mistress of Roman emperor Nero. The libretto departs from traditional morality: eventually the adulterous and morally compromised Poppea and Nero triumph, even if their victory is shown to be hollow and transitory. The success of the opera established Monteverdi as the leading composer of his time, although later it was largely forgotten. The rediscovery of the score in 1888 brought a new wave of interest in the opera, and since then it has been regularly performed. There is no original manuscript: there two copies from the 1650s which differ significantly from each other.
Two versions of the musical score of L'incoronazione exist, both from the 1650s. The first was rediscovered in Venice in 1888, the second in Naples in 1930. The Naples score is linked to the revival of the opera in that city in 1651. Both scores contain essentially the same music, though each differs from the printed libretto and has unique additions and omissions. In each score the vocal lines are shown with basso continuo accompaniment; the instrumental sections are written in three parts in the Venice score, four parts in the Naples version, without in either case specifying the instruments. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a leading Monteverdi interpreter, refers to the contemporary practice of leaving much of a score open, to allow for differing local performance conditions. Another convention made it unnecessary to write down detail that performers would take for granted.
Modern scholarship inclines to the view that L'incoronazione was the result of collaboration between Monteverdi and others, with the old composer playing a guiding role. Composers who may have assisted include Sacrati, Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Cavalli. Ringer suggests that Monteverdi's age and health may have prevented him from completing the opera without help from younger colleagues; he speculates about an arrangement resembling "the workshop of Rubens, who might design a painting and handle the important details himself but leave the more mundane aspects ... to younger apprentice artists."] The musicologist Alan Curtis believes that only a single collaborator was involved, and published his 1989 edition of L'incoronazione under the joint authorship of Monteverdi and Sacrati.[22] The musical analyst Eric Chafe's study of Monteverdi's tonal language supports the collaboration theory and postulates that some of the sections in question, including the prologue, the coronation scene and the final duet, reflect Monteverdi's intentions and may have been written under his direct supervision.
