In the contest between fate, virtue, and amor, love retains the upper hand and degenerate virtue is defeated.

Otho bitterly confronts the ruins of his shattered love: in thrall to an uncontrollable passion, the Emperor Nero spends every night with Otho's erstwhile lover, Poppea, and in doing so is in danger of neglecting his duties as a ruler. Poppea feels she is sure to become an empress, but her nurse, Arnalta, urges her to caution.The nurse of the Empress Octavia advises her bitter mistress to avenge herself on Nero by also taking a lover, something Octavia firmly rejects. The moral suggestions put forward by the philosopher Seneca to the empress anger the servant Valleto. Nero also meets Seneca's admonitions with resistance. Poppea denounces Seneca to Nero, whereupon he orders Seneca's death. Otho confronts Poppea, and is brusquely rejected by her. He turns his attentions to Drusilla, who has long been hopelessly in love with him. Seneca is philosophising about death when he receives the emperor's order to commit suicide. He bids farewell to his students, then takes his own life.

Valletto and Damigella are enjoying the pleasures of their young love, while Poppea and Nero too indulge their passion lasciviously. But Octavia does not meekly submit to her fate: she forces Poppea's erstwhile lover Otho into the clandestine murder of her rival. Wearing Drusilla's clothes, Otho approaches the sleeping Poppea. But Amor foils the murderous plan; Otho flees, and the unsuspecting Drusilla is arrested in his place, and brutally questioned by Nero. For the sake of her love to Otho, she declares herself guilty, yet Otho himself explains the circumstances surrounding the attempted murder and reveals that Octavia is the source of the plot.Nero sentences Octavia, Otho, and Drusilla to the uncertain fate of banishment.

The way is finally clear for Poppea to be crowned empress. Arnalta already sees herself as the court's first lady in waiting. Now nothing stands in the way of the love between Nero and Poppea.

3 operas – 12 hours – 1 spectacle
 
For the first time, all three of Claudio Monteverdi’s existing completed operas will be performed not just as a trilogy, but also on one single day. To mark the beginning of his tenure as Theatre Manager, Barrie Kosky will be producing twelve hours of musical theatre with nearly 200 participating artists.

Monteverdi’s operas are rightly classed as the first masterpieces in the history of opera. Like a strand of operatic DNA, they contain within them everything that would come to shape the next 400 years of opera history to the present day. Using as a basis Monteverdi’s musical material, which contains barely any indications for an actual orchestration, the Tashkent-born, internationally successful composer Elena Kats-Chernin has given the three operas a new and highly individual instrumentation. As Monteverdi did in his time, Elena Kats-Chernin makes her own exceedingly lively use of various traditions, with whose help she also manages to integrate into her style such popular musical influences as jazz, klezmer, tango, and ragtime. Thus her interpretations of Monteverdi’s operas feature not only the tradi­tional instruments of a modern opera orchestra, but also exotic instruments from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and West Africa.

At the centre of each of the three operas are two lovers whose love for one another could not be any more diffe­rent: the youthful and passionate love between Orpheus and Eurydice is contrasted with the detached longing for one another of Odysseus and Penelope, the married couple separated for many years, whereas in the charged eroticism between Nero and Poppea, ambition and sexual obsession are inseparably linked. The trilogy is opened by none other than Cupid, the god of love himself, to take us on a journey through the heights and depths of love …