Vespro della beata Vergine – 1610

After performing Monteverdi's complete madrigals, Les Arts Florissants and Paul Agnew now take on the Vespers to the Virgin (Vespro della beata Vergine), the cornerstone of their fifteen-year exploration of this major composer.

A veritable laboratory for experimentation, the madrigals enabled Monteverdi to explore the ability of music to express the profound meaning of a text. The result was two seminal works, one secular - L'Orfeo (1607) - the other sacred: the Vespers, premiered in 1610 and conducted here for the very first time by Paul Agnew.

Without knowing the precise history of their performance, we can only imagine how Monteverdi interpreted this music. But its complexity and virtuosity suggest that it was undoubtedly entrusted to the most accomplished singers, drawn from the vocal ensemble that had accompanied the madrigals' marvellous expressive journey throughout. The intimacy and expressive intensity of the text will therefore form the core of this new interpretation of the Vespers to the Virgin - a text that must have been of great personal importance to Monteverdi, who entered the priesthood in 1632.