It was 10 years ago that West Edge Opera offered a staging of Monteverdi’s 1643 masterpiece “The Coronation of Poppea” that recast the work’s drama in terms of the Kennedy administration.The idea didn’t necessarily pay off in the details, but it made a certain kind of neon-lit sense. 

When imperial power and unbridled lust cross paths, why not bring Marilyn Monroe into the mix?

That decade-old production by General Director Mark Streshinsky came unbidden to mind on Saturday, July 22, when the company returned to “Poppea” to open its 2023 season at the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland. The same dramatic impulses were once again in play in director NJ Agwuna’s approach to the work — specifically, the way the public and private spheres overlap in an ancient Rome driven by political ambition and sexual desire.

But to really feel those motivating currents in action, the audience had to turn away from Agwuna’s inert staging and focus entirely on Monteverdi’s music. That’s where the audience felt the push and pull of tricky human interactions, thanks to an excellent cast of familiar singing artists under the deft musical direction of Adam Pearl.

To a certain extent, that’s only natural. It was Monteverdi, above all, who gave the first dynamic demonstration of how music could support and shape staged drama, just as it was imagined to have done in the world of ancient Athens. Heightened melodic oratory, a fluid sense of harmony, the intricate blend of tragedy and comedy in different musical strains — all these are integral to Monteverdi’s achievement, and all came through in Saturday’s dexterous musical performance.

The opera’s central figures are Poppea herself, who uses both her erotic wiles and her gift for gamesmanship to seize the crown, and the emperor Nero, who often seems to be little more than a cat’s paw for Poppea’s schemes. They begin the opera clutched in each other’s embrace, and wind up in almost the same place 2½ hours later, having murdered or exiled everyone who stood in their way.

There’s a dark irony about the opera’s famous concluding love duet, “Pur ti miro,” whose chaste luster seems to wink obliquely at the horrors that have preceded it. For soprano Shawnette Sulker and mezzo-soprano Sarah Coit, it was a crowning glory of an evening full of vocal splendor.

As Poppea, Sulker poured out silvery skeins of melody, her voice conjuring up the character’s allure at every turn. Coit’s Nero was a wonderfully complex figure, by turns assertive and craven, and always presented in vividly precise musical terms.

The remainder of the cast was no less imposing. Sara Couden brought her robust, sumptuously colored contralto to the role of Octavia, Nero’s spurned wife, turning the character into a figure of deep but slightly scary pathos. Bass Philip Skinner was the philosopher Seneca, richly noble in tone and bearing.

The blithe commingling of tragedy and broad comedy in 17th century opera can make for a daunting balancing act, but tenor Samuel Faustine, in drag as the nurse Arnalta, walked that line impeccably — especially in the suddenly tender lullaby she sings to Poppea. Soprano Rayna Mia Campbell as Drusilla and countertenor Michael Skarke as Ottone, both of them caught up in the ongoing machinations, delivered their parts handsomely.

This production has been notably trimmed from Monteverdi’s much longer original, eliminating a variety of domestics and deities. This is a matter of concern only for purists, but it would have been more welcome if the results had been more theatrically streamlined.

Nina Ball’s unit set is a handsome creation of marble colonnades and starlight, but it never noticeably contributes to the action. Pamila Gray’s murky lighting often leaves the action in the dark.

Agwuna’s governing idea is that the opera takes place in a world of tabloid headlines and 24-hour cable TV, but that concept pops its head up only intermittently. In one scene, a character appears as a TV correspondent, microphone in hand; otherwise, stage movement tends to be sluggish and uncharacterized.

Every now and again a video projection at the rear of the stage brings us a splashy front page or a salacious news chyron. Unfortunately, they’re hidden behind the stage set, where they can’t actually be read.

Reach Joshua Kosman: jkosman@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @JoshuaKosman