The sweepstake to determine the world’s first opera is often won by Monteverdi for L’Orfeo (1607), or by those more in the know by Peri’s Euridice of 1602.

A lesser-known claimant is Emilio De’ Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione Di Anima Et Di Corpo (A Representation of the Soul and the Body), an opera oratorio hybrid hailing from 1600.

“Musicologists can argue about it until the cows come home,” says director Robert Carsen, who clearly doesn’t care. He is far more interested in the contemporary resonances of an allegorical dialogue between the soul and the body and they way it articulates the fundamental questions uppermost in the minds of the Italian humanists.

Conceived to be costumed, while at the same time being performed in a Roman church, it’s a curious amalgam, but with his probing intellect and innate theatricality Carsen is ideally equipped to bring it to life in this 2021 staging for Theater an der Wien, one of Europe’s most innovative opera producers.

A sizeable cast of Everymen and Everywomen play out this...