ns, is considered the first great opera. In addition, Monteverdi had always demonstrated a fascination with the interplay between music and drama, as witnessed by his dramatic madrigals. Thus composing opera was more like a rediscovery than a discovery for Monteverdi: "he had been involved in opera in his Mantuan period--which involved musicians of his capella, his pupils and even his son . . . " But Monteverdi did not immediately embrace the Venetian operatic scene; it appears that he sat back and contemplated the direction of the genre before becoming personally involved. When he finally tested the waters, Monteverdi did so by reviving one of his previously written operas, Arianna. Arianna was first staged in Mantua in 1608 and was revived in Venice in 1639-40: "This served to remind Venetians of his considerable musical presence . . . Arianna had somehow gained an extraordinary reputation in opera's brief history." Monteverdi's Arianna was the first opera staged at the Venetian Teatro S. Moise, a theater which had previously been used for staging spoken plays.
Monteverdi composed three operas between 1640 and 1643. This feat is remarkable considering not only the composer's age, but also his station both as priest and as Director of Music at St. Mark's. Composing for the public theater was decidedly worldly work. Part of Monteverdi's motivation for getting involved in opera in Venice was preservation of his musical reputation. By the time Monteverdi wrote his first new opera the city was in the throes of an explosion of musical theater: "the public musical theatre did not only encourage professional musicians; the need for more and more texts bred an army of specialised writers, who were often noblemen and lawyers turned theatre poets." With such a wide variety of players contributing to the opera scene, Monteverdi must have certainly felt the urge to demonstrate his own expertise.
By the mid-seventeenth cen...