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The lost operas of Claudio Monteverdi

Few things are as captivating as imagining how the reality in which you live would have developed if certain historical events had taken a different course. The Berlin opera company Novoflot has dedicated itself to exactly this idea and has chosen a very special topic: the operas of Claudio Monteverdi.


More than 400 years have passed since opera was born, and Monteverdi is considered its founder. Without him, the entire genre is hard to imagine. However, over the course of the 20th century, it was discovered that 15 of his operas had disappeared. Only the scores of "Orfeo", "Ulisses" and "Poppea" have been preserved for posterity.

The question therefore arises: what would have happened if these scores had not been lost? How would the genre “opera” have developed? Would it look or sound different today? These are the questions that Novoflot is grappling with.

The Berlin opera company specializes in exploring and deepening complex themes through multi-part formats. The trilogy "The Opera #1 - #3" is the result of this intensive research in the case of Monteverdi. The project celebrates the fictional rediscovery of the 15 lost stage works and creatively reinterprets the history of the opera genre.

After the premieres of all three parts at the Weimar Art Festival and successful performances at the CPH Opera Festival in Copenhagen, at the Greek National Opera in Athens and at the Berliner Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, the project is now returning to Kühlhaus Berlin as a revival. With "The Opera #2 - On the Ropes (From the End)", Novoflot finally presents the first missing opera by Claudio Monteverdi, based on motifs from "L'incoronazione di Poppea" and using previously missing elements.
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