About
John Eliot Gardiner, Founder and Artistic Director of the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras, presents eight podcasts that explore Monteverdi's 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.
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Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras
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Episodes(3)
8. The window of opportunity closes - Monteverdi and his constellation
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 gen
7. Celebrating the self - Monteverdi and his constellation
The focus here is on the growing awareness of the physical, mental and psychological attributes of the individual, and the development of a new philosophy which leads ultimately to Descartes' formulation: cogito ergo sum . A growing awareness of the physical, mental and psychological attributes of t
6. "More beautiful than the truth" - Monteverdi and his constellation
Visual art – and especially the work of Caravaggio and Rubens (in different but complementary ways) now aimed to intensify sensory experience and drama. What Monteverdi called the "natural path to imitation" was a radical bid to represent, magnify and even 'improve' upon nature through song and musi