How anyone could sit all the way through this is a mystery to me. At least I only had to listen to it in fifteen minute increments to and from work. The period-style instruments are particularly annoying in their whiny buzzing. And it's really, really long. I suppose no one was really listening that hard when it was first produced - just making eyes at each other, chatting, eating, and wandering in and out: a very expensive version of live Muzak.
The story is sort of a Roman Book of Job. Love tells the other gods/anthropomorphic personifications to watch him win The Most Powerful God/Anthropomorphic Personification contest. Poppea, no better than she ought to be, has ensnared the emperor Nero - and everyone is going to suffer until she is crowned empress: her former lover, his current lover, Seneca, Nero's wife - everyone.