This Poppaea begins its narration where Monteverdi’s opera leaves off. It displays a world which still upholds a veil of intactness, but that in fact is actually destroying itself.

At this moment, we are again living in a time in which we can feel violent forces living just beneath the surface; the assumed protective shell of civilization and humanism by no means providing the stability we think. All it takes the withdrawing of soldiers from Afghanistan over a few days for a supposedly stable system there to implode. A virus emerges, and all over the world expected consensus disintegrates. This opera tells us a bit about processes like these.

How does one show the violence of this work on the stage, especially since Michael Hersch's music is extremely vivid in and of itself, and can tell us such a large part of it? We chose a medium that enables us to still hopefully display further facets: Marius Kob, a puppet-maker from Basel, has built "soul puppets" for each of the three protagonists, with which Nero, Poppaea, and Octavia can communicate with each other, and through which they also can enter into myriad physical contacts with one another.

Hersch's attempt to directly communicate a fundamental emotion with his music is remarkable. This sometimes stands in contrast with what is simultaneously said in the libretto. He brings the overarching feeling to the fore, and the actual micro-actions often recede into the background.

This makes for many interesting decisions that the director and actors must determine. For example, when Nero enters Poppaea's chambers in the penultimate scene, is he coming from a celebration or straight from a catastrophe? The libretto says one thing, the music says another. The performance should make both tangible, so that the story told is communicated just as well as the violence that often remains held just below the surface, with which this music makes palpable.

The text was based on a conversation between Markus Bothe and Adrian Kelterborn / Prismago GmbH in September 2021.

Markus Bothe studied music theater directing in Hamburg. He has staged music and spoken theater productions for, among others, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Semperoper Dresden, Washington National Opera, Opéra national du Rhin, Oper Köln; for the Schauspiel Frankfurt, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Schauspiel Leipzig, and the Schauspielhaus Graz. His directorial work also includes premieres including Franz Schreker's Flammen, Salvatore Sciarrino's Infinito nero and Helmut Oehring's Gunten. From 2004 to 2008 he was festival director and member of the artistic direction of the theater biennial New Plays from Europe at the Wiesbaden State Theater. In 2010 he was awarded the German Theater Prize "Der Faust" for his Frankfurt production of Roter Ritter Parzival.