Monteverdi portrait (detail) by Bernardo Strozzi

THERE’S a guilty pleasure to be had from TV drama where traditional morality gets cast aside, the wicked triumph, and the virtuous are punished. And it’s nothing new. In 1643 the final opera of the great composer Claudio Monteverdi was a riotous celebration of the dastardly and vile in human nature. And it plays in all its disconcerting glory on Sep 30 when English Touring Opera bring their new production of The Coronation of Poppea to Hackney Empire.

Poppea is the scheming mistress of the Roman emperor Nero (not much of a role model himself) and spends the opera plotting the removal of his wife. By the end she succeeds. And the curtain falls on the loathsome love-birds as they sing one of the most ravishing duets in operatic history – easily the best number in the piece, which makes it slightly awkward that it was probably written by someone other than Monteverdi whose authorship of the entire piece is these days questionable. Poppea runs for just the one night: hackneyempire.co.uk

But if you want more Monteverdi, his earlier Vespers of 1610 – a grand hotchpotch of liturgical works for choir and orchestra written in honour of the Virgin May – plays twice, Sep 29 & 30, at Kings Place. Done by the group I Fagiolini under their clever and questioning director Robert Hollingworth, it promises to be an intimate performance of a big piece whose details (thinks Hollingworth) never get a fair hearing in the kind of cathedral acoustic where the Vespers are more usually heard. So if you know the piece, this will sound different. kingsplace.co.uk

• Also coming up at Kings Place is the London Piano Festival, an annual event at which pianists Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva invite other pianists to join them in solo recitals, four-handers and whatever else keyboard players do en masse to have fun. With special guests like Danny Driver and Vadim Kholodenko, plus a focus on Ligeti and Rachmaninov who have both been enjoying high-profile anniversaries this year, it runs Oct 5-8. kingsplace.co.uk

• A composer only just beginning to enjoy high profile is Mieczyslaw Weinberg whose music has so far lived in the shadow of his friend and mentor Shostakovich. Weinberg was a Polish Jew who fled to Soviet Russia in 1939, had a bad time under Stalin, converted to Catholicism, and left a huge output of work when he died in 1996. Alongside 22 symphonies and seven operas there’s a large body of chamber music. And a perfect introduction to it comes on Sept 30 when Wigmore Hall has an entire day of Weinberg. If you’ve the stamina, it will be a baptism of fire but worth the attention. wigmore-hall.org.uk

Ilona Domnich [Ilonadomnich.com]

• The magnificent church of St Mary le Strand, just south of Aldwych, recently dived into concert presentation with a series of piano recitals. Now it’s launched a new series devoted to song, which opens with the eminent Israeli-Russian soprano Ilona Domnich on Oct 5, singing Fauré, Tchaikovsky and Rach­maninov. Fabulous voice, fabu­lous setting. stmarylestrand.com

• Finally, Gilbert & Sullivan fans will be pleased to know that Cal McCrystal’s production of Iolanthe is back at ENO, October 5-25: a rare example in my experience of G&S being genuinely funny. eno.org