Based loosely on actual events in 1st-century Rome, Monteverdi’s last opera The Coronation of Poppea charts the consuming erotic obsession of the Emperor Nero for the beautiful Poppea Sabina. Ruthlessly sweeping aside anyone who stands in the way of their union – including Nero’s wife Octavia and the poet and philosopher Seneca – Nero and Poppea triumph over all their opponents and rejoice in one of the most sexually-charged opera love duets of the early baroque period. The moral ambivalence of one of opera’s earliest masterpieces ensures that it remains to this day one of the most shocking and compelling.