From Monteverdi to Monteverdi

This conceit, famously coined by Nino Pirrotta, summarises a central problemraised By Monteverdi's operas: the stylistic gulf between the first, Orfeo, and the last, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea. Scholars have generally rationalised this gulf by invoking the different systems of patronage of ducal Mantua and republican Venice, where the respective works were performed, as well as the composer's own development over the course of the three and a half decades that separate them. Aside from the different circumstances surrounding the performance of the works – Orfeo was staged in a room of the ducal palace before a small group of aristocrats, while Ulisse and Poppea were produced in a public theatre before a socially mixed audience of several hundred – the composer himself had naturally matured. The sometime faithful servant of the Gonzaga household had become maestro di cappella at S. Marco, the dominant musical personality in Venetian society, a figure of enormous prestige. The change was not only psychological, of course: the late operas come after the composition of many madrigals (the Sixth to Eighth Books, published from 1614 onwards, after he had left Mantua for Venice, comprise some seventy madrigals) and a lengthy, sustained commitment to sacred music, as well as a number of smaller-scale dramatic or para-dramatic works written for private patrons.