Abstract: The part of Nero, in L’Incoronazione di Poppea, is written for a castrato. This choice may seem paradoxical for a character who is at the same time a man of power and a lover. Based on seventeenth century sources and contemporary stage productions, this paper studies Nero’s paradoxical masculinity, showing how it allows questioning the definition of the masculine and its association with the traditional attributes of authority and power in Western society.
