Another great composer, Claudio Monteverdi.

This is a picture of him:

Heres a brief history of him:

Name: Claudio Monteverdi.

Claudio Monteverdi is born in
Born in Cremona 1567, he studied music in his teens and went to Mantova to become court musician. He was appointed maestro di capella there aged 34 and stayed until the age of 45. From then (1613) until his death in 1643 he was maestro di capella at the famous basilica di San Marco in Venezia. His job there was, of course, to compose and play spiritual music for the masses, but he never stopped composing operas which he had started to do at the court of Mantova.

If Lasso was the greatest composer of the Renaissance, then Monteverdi was his worthy successor for the early Baroque age. Although his style is clearly influenced by Renaissance polyphony - after all, he did learn his craft in the era -, it is a style of its own. Some musicologists say that his L'Orfeo (1607) was the first opera ever, but this can be battled about.

Whatever the case, he led the genre to a first climax in that he composed the music not according to strict academic rules (which he called prima prattica), but but in order to emphasise the emotion required by the plot (seconda prattica). No wonder he was especially interested in plots that contained a wide variety of strong, down-to-earth emotions. The best example is his final masterwork, L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642), exceptional in that its protagonists are not ancient greek gods and heroes as it had been customary until then, but real people, and in that good does not triumph over evil. IMO no composer has ever after rendered emotions as directly, intuitively understandable as he did. No opera has ever really emotionally touched me except the three (out of some -ty Monteverdi composed) that have been handed down to this day. I wish it were more.

All the other operas have, unfortunately, been lost. Two fragments have survived in compilations: Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, and Lamento della Ninfa. Apart from that, there are some sacred works (most notably the Vespro della Beata Vergine) and the complete set of his eight books of madrigals.

For a Monteverdi beginner I recommend Il combattimento / Lamento della Ninfa on Teldec 4509-92181-2. The fight between Tancredi and Clorinda is rendered breathtakingly plastic by Werner Hollweg as "narrator", the music virtually screaming for a sword dance.