Straddling the musical fault line between the Renaissance and the emerging Baroque, Claudio Monteverdi has a foot in both camps; a master of the old-fashioned “learned” style, yet also a new kid on the block pushing the melodic and harmonic envelope, enabling opera to attain its fullest potential. Born in Cremona in 1567, Monteverdi spent nearly a quarter of a century serving the Ducal Court in Mantua before landing, in 1613, a plum post as director of music at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. His exuberant, sometimes almost operatic Vespro della Beata Vergine, 1610 (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin) might have helped swing things, but opera was a Venetian passion, and towards the end of his life (Monteverdi died in 1643), building on his landmark L’Orfeo of 1607, he composed for the new public opera house. The resulting works were imbued with an innate sense of drama, wit and deep humanity, while his immensely readable letters disclose the essence of the man himself.