Claudio Monteverdi

Opera audiences tend to be more concerned with vocal quality than appearance. A Lyric Opera production of Tristan und Isolde a number of years back featured an enormous soprano and an equally rotund tenor incapable of actually embracing in the “Liebestod.” If ever there was a work requiring the female lead to embody a lustiness in equal measure to the seduction of her voice, it’s Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea. As Poppea, 29-year-old Sri Lankan–Dutch rising star Danielle de Niese will likely cause neophytes everywhere to discover an interest in the genre.

Filmed before the cooler-toting dinner-jacket crowd of the Glyndebourne Festival last year, director Robert Carsen’s somewhat spare staging, relying on a rotating set of three red-velvet curtains, pulls one’s focus into the finer nuances of Alice Coote’s flawlessly sadistic Nero (originally written for castrato soprano) and his scheming, sultry titular sex kitten. With the exceptional early-music specialists of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, harpsichordist-conductor Emmanuelle Haïm complements the trimmed-down sets with an equally unembellished, though compelling, reading of Monteverdi’s 1642 score, his final opera. The resulting production—filled with murder and adultery but ending with a romantic duet—leaves the operatic spectacle to the voices and the baser human desires they emote.

For those who missed de Niese in this barely clothed role at Chicago Opera Theater in 2004, Decca’s DVD offers an excellent opportunity to get acquainted with a talent that demands to be both heard and seen.

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