ABSTRACT
Monteverdi's double role as leader and follower is reconciled by the most important element shared by these two genres: the centrality of the music-text relationship. Monteverdi characteristically stretched or abandoned musical rules – of counterpoint, voice-leading, dissonance – in response to poetic considerations. L'incoronazione di Poppea, attest to the composer's faith in music's ability to function on the level of psychology. Monteverdi's setting of Striggio's Orfeo has been widely acknowledged as the first great opera. In Monteverdi's late operas, especially in the Uincoronazione di Poppea, text and music interact in new ways: text is painted, symbolised, represented and even replaced by music. Monteverdi's music expresses the feelings of the character voicing the word, the anger that explodes in and through the word. The recognition of singing as a physiological act affected by the emotions underlies the conception of musical imitation in Poppea.
