These DVDs testify that Monteverdi’s three surviving operas possess abundant dramatic richness. L’Orfeo, staged by Jacky Lautem and Jean-Claude Malgoire, honestly captures the atmosphere of a small theatre. Malgoire conducts choruses and ritornelli briskly, but his ensemble can seem a little nonchalant and scrappy. The cast is uneven, although Kobie van Rensburg’s unforced, elegant tenor is ideal for Orfeo and Philippe Jaroussky provides some nicely shaped singing.

There are contradictory ideas about how L’Orfeo would have ended when it was first performed in 1607: Striggio’s libretto follows Ovid with Orfeo bitterly renouncing women, provoking the offended Bacchantes to tear him to pieces, but the only known sources of Monteverdi’s music instead end with Orfeo ascending to heaven with his father Apollo. In a rather dry interview, Malgoire suggests that the altered ending promoted the Counter-Reformation theology of eternal salvation. Thus in this performance Apollo is dressed like an archbishop, with mitre and crook, but after he ascends Orfeo is left behind and brutally killed by the Bacchantes anyway. This self-conscious ambiguity creates an identity crisis at the close of an otherwise no-frills production (although I also failed to appreciate why Malgoire divides La Musica’s role between three sopranos).

Pierre Audi’s painstakingly designed productions are anything but natural: each gesture, movement and glance is meticulously planned. Some might squirm with cynicism when they hear Audi, in the accompanying documentary, calmly insist that Monteverdi is the closest experience in opera to Shakespeare, but Audi’s slow and stylised action constantly reinforces the dramatic power of situations. This total concentration forces the drama slowly to ripen and intensify to bursting-point. Audi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse is a masterpiece of controlled timing and patience, leading towards the explosive moment when Ulisse exacts his vengeance upon the vile men who have pestered Penelope. Graciela Araya’s Penelope sheds real tears while maintaining a dignified stage presence. Few tenors can match Anthony Rolfe Johnson’s ability to deliver vocal beauty with authority (this 1998 performance shows him still at his best).

Glen Wilson’s performance version‘ makes absolutely no pretensions to definitiveness or scholarly solidity’ by making considerable cuts and reordering the score. Most of the secondary scenes not based on Homer are omitted; but the performance might appeal to purists because Wilson refuses to orchestrate Monteverdi’s sparse scoring and prefers to keep to a continuo-based approach instead of adorning the music with false and inauthentic lushness.

Christophe Rousset claims to have made ‘as few cuts as possible’ in L’incoronazione di Poppea but makes a few compromises by adding recorders, cornets, harp, viola da gamba and organ. This splendid performance is probably more sumptuous than what Venetians heard in 1642. Audi is a little more subversive with Poppea. For example, Lucano and Nerone’s duet in praise of Poppea’s charms is staged as a homosexual relationship. It is not in the libretto but the implication that Nerone will be no more loyal to Poppea than he has been to his wife Ottavia certainly fits the most unpleasant character in an opera full of phenomenally dislikeable people.

There are also some illuminating touches: Audi persuades us that Ottone comes to return Drusilla’s devoted love when they are banished for a failed attempt to assassinate Poppea; the noble Seneca clearly comes across as the moral hero of the opera. There are a handful of spectacular visual effects, sparingly reserved for divine intervention. It is difficult to imagine the music being better sung: Michael Chance and Harry van der Kamp are impressive, but there is no weak link here, as one would expect from a cast in which Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Claron McFadden, Sandrine Piau, Wilke te Brummelstroete and Nathan Berg are assigned secondary roles.