Here’s a mashup of the three surviving operas of Claudio Monteverdi, arguably opera’s Shakespeare, from the director Rafael R. Villalobos and the early-music specialist Leonardo Garcia Alarcón. They describe the resulting entertainment, spread over two evenings, as a thriller set during a pandemic. “While Orpheus mourns his Eurydice, Penelope patiently watches over her mortally ill husband Odysseus. The young Nerone sees his chance and, together with Poppea, forges plans to take over the empire. Driven by loss and desire, the isolated family members gradually become entangled in a suffocating power struggle.” Succession, anyone? The aggregate cast of characters from Orfeo, Il Ritorno di Ulises in Patria, and L’Incoronazione di Poppea comes to about 50. I Grotteschi fields a dozen composite “grotesques,” each assigned an allegorical label rather than a name. Based on prior acquaintance with their work, the three we’re most looking forward to are Stéphanie d’Oustrac as Constancy, Jeremy Ovenden as Courage, and Xavier Sabata as Experience. But competition from Privilege (Matthew Nelson), Discernment (Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani), Charity (Arianna Vendittelli), Capriciousness (Federico Fiorio), and the rest is sure to be keen. —Matthew Gurewitsch