On the trail of Monteverdi

To mark the 450th anniversary of Monteverdi’s birth, conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner is embarking on a major worldwide tour, performing the Italian’s three operas. He tells Paul Riley all about it 

- Paul Riley

‘Well, he was very sympathetic, approachable, undoubtedly feisty, may be a touch vain about his appearance, aware of certain shortcomings – he felt disadvantaged never having attended university – but above all I think that he was supremely conscious that he’d broken new ground. He was cutting edge in a culture that was restlessly on the move.’ Sir John Eliot Gardiner is describing Claudio Monteverdi, the composer who was a game-changer in Gardiner’s own life, and is set to loom large again as 450th-birthday celebrations beckon. ‘I wondered what it would reveal to perform his three surviving operas side by side,’ he muses, ‘and the idea just grew’.

And grew. By the end of the year, the conductor and his hand-picked company of musicians will have presented the trilogy across Europe and the US including Venice, Monteverdi’s adopted home for some 30 years. There will also be a performance of the 1610 Vespers in Cremona Cathedral, the alma mater where the young Claudio cut his musical teeth.

It’s not the first major tour devoted to one composer that Gardiner has embarked on. Back in 2000, he famously marked the 250th anniversary of JS Bach’s death by heading out across Europe and the US on a Bach Cantata Pilgrimage – over the course of 52 weeks and in churches great and small, he conducted each GE of the German’s sacred cantatas on the specific dates for which they were written.