Claudio Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppea

This is an opera without morale. The prologue makes it clear: people are neither virtuous nor interest-driven, they follow their sexual desire. Amore introduces us to an unlikely union: of the tyrant and killer Nero (also a poet, bisexual and unpredictable) and of the noble, beautiful Poppea, who uses her erotic power to occupy Octavia’s throne.

These two were real people: Poppea bathed in milk to soften her skin. Her soul was soft, too: she helped minorities, for example according to Josephus Flavius she helped the Jews suppressed by Rom. Nero married her first but later killed the pregant Poppea by kicking her strongly in the stomach.

It is like today a supremacist politician would fall in love with a call girl.

Possible? Freud would nod.