Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi bridged the Renaissance and the Baroque, and is regarded as the composer of the first operas that still hold the stage. Trained in Cremona, he made his name with books of madrigals at the Gonzaga court in Mantua, where L'Orfeo (1607) is among the earliest operas still regularly performed. From 1613 he led the music at St Mark's in Venice, and in his final years wrote for the city's newly opened public opera houses: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and, at seventy-five, L'incoronazione di Poppea, his last and most psychologically direct work.