So in 2000, when David McVicar first directed this “Agrippina” in Brussels, it made sense for him to update those reverberations — and to make them explicit, rather than the subtext. His Agrippina stalked the stage in a power suit; Nero was a slouching, sullen teenager; there was carousing at a stylish bar, complete with cocktail harpsichordist. Yet the characters began and ended the performance on plinths inscribed with their names: This was a staging antique and modern at once, with surreal touches of synchronized choreography, bits of slapstick and a central golden staircase rising to a golden throne, the prize everyone is climbing toward.

That first run made certain critics think of ruthless politicians of the then-recent past, like Margaret Thatcher and the Clintons. Twenty years later — with the production’s arrival at the Met, the addition of smartphones for onstage selfies and the relaxation of some aggressive late-’90s shoulder pads — the figures brought to mind by this tale of decadence and self-enrichment have inevitably changed.

Skittish Met board members fearing a reprise of the Public Theater’s incendiary depiction of a President Trump-like Julius Caesar being stabbed in a 2017 Shakespeare staging need not fear. There is nothing overt about the president in this “Agrippina” — save, perhaps, a scene with a golf-playing emperor that actually dates back to Brussels.

Yet the relentless grasping after dominance that’s on display — as well as the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey’s gymnastically raunchy, coke-addled portrayal of Nero (Nerone, in the opera) — does evoke something of the riveted disorientation endemic to our time of, ahem, norm-breaking. Without being too blatant, this “Agrippina” does get at the emotional climate of a disruptive era, the clenched-jaw feeling you may well get as you wait for the New York Times app to load on your phone. You don’t want to look; you can’t look away.