PLEASE NOTE CORRECTED START TIME OF 5:00 PM. The appearance of a new DVD of L’incoronazione di Poppea in 2009, the fifth within a decade, confirms the canonical status of Monteverdi’s last opera. Long a secret treasure of the distant past, known just to musicologists and a few courageous early-music performers, this remarkable work is now being presented regularly in major opera houses around the globe, from Barcelona to Tokyo. Its success can be ascribed in part to more than a century of musicological fascination with the opera, involving efforts to understand its laconic sources as well as its elusive meanings. This paper examines the impact of musicology - old, new, and otherwise - on the realization of Poppea on stage.