
Among the oldest operas that's still performed on a regular basis, Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione de Poppea is a pointed political and social satire which showed that the operatic form could tell stories about the peccadillos of flesh-and-blood people as well as mythological fantasies. L'Incoronazione de Poppea is a recording of a 1993 staging of the opera from the Schwetzinger Music Festival. The cast includes Richard Croft, Kathleen Kuhlmann, Jeffrey Gall, and Patricia Schumann, with Rene Jacobs conducting the Concerto Koln. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi