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Monteverdi and his constellationAuthor: Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras
John Eliot Gardiner, Founder and Artistic Director of the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras, presents eight podcasts that explore Monteverdis role at the centre of seismic shifts and tumultuous advances in all the arts and sciences during the early 1600s, spearheaded by his contemporaries - Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Shakespeare, Caravaggio and Rubens. With the help of specially recorded musical illustrations and a handpicked team of experts, Gardiner guides listeners through an in-depth investigation into the development of the early-modern mind. Language: en Genres: Music, Music Commentary, Music History Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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8. The window of opportunity closes - Monteverdi and his constellation
Episode 8
Thursday, 24 September, 2020
Monteverdi’s swan-song, L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643),is a high-water mark of the new genre of public opera, Shakespearean in its contrasts of high and low-life characters, political chicanery and outrageous theatricality. It coincides with the death of the last two in this constellation of genius - Galileo in 1642 and Monteverdi a year later - and marks the end of this extraordinary period of innovation that shaped the modern world. Their demise coincides with incipient European economic upheavals and warfare and, meteorologically, the start of a mini ice age. Pressures to re-establish moral order took hold, and the old hierarchy governed by reason was regaining ground in reaction to the cultivation of the individual artistic pursuit of creativity and originality.
