Claudio Monteverdi
Late operas and final works

Main articles: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria; L'incoronazione di Poppea; Selva morale e spirituale

The last years of Monteverdi's life were much occupied with opera for the Venetian stage. Richard Taruskin, in his Oxford History of Western Music, gave his chapter on this topic the title "Opera from Monteverdi to Monteverdi." This wording, originally proposed humorously by the Italian music historian Nino Pirrotta, is interpreted seriously by Taruskin as indicating that Monteverdi is significantly responsible for the transformation of the opera genre from a private entertainment of the nobility (as with Orfeo in 1607), to what became a major commercial genre, as exemplified by his opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643). His two surviving operatic works of this period, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione are held by Arnold to be the first "modern" operas; Il ritorno is the first Venetian opera to depart from what Ellen Rosand terms "the mythological pastoral". However, David Johnson in the North American Review warns audiences not to expect immediate affinity with Mozart, Verdi or Puccini: "You have to submit yourself to a much slower pace, to a much more chaste conception of melody, to a vocal style that is at first merely like dry declamation and only on repeated hearings begins to assume an extraordinary eloquence."

Il ritorno, says Carter, is clearly influenced by Monteverdi's earlier works. Penelope's lament in Act I is close in character to the lament from L'Arianna, while the martial episodes recall Il combattimento. Stile concitato is prominent in the fight scenes and in the slaying of Penelope's suitors. In L'incoronazione, Monteverdi represents moods and situations by specific musical devices: triple metre stands for the language of love; arpeggios demonstrate conflict; stile concitato represents rage. There is continuing debate about how much of the extant L'incoronazione music is Monteverdi's original, and how much is the work of others (there are, for instance, traces of music by Francesco Cavalli).

The Selva morale e spirituale of 1641, and the posthumous Messa et salmi published in 1650 (which was edited by Cavalli), are selections of the sacred music that Monteverdi wrote for San Marco during his 30-year tenure – much else was likely written but not published. The Selva morale volume opens with a series of madrigal settings on moral texts, dwelling on themes such as "the transitory nature of love, earthly rank and achievement, even existence itself". They are followed by a Mass in conservative style (stile antico), the high point of which is an extended seven-voice "Gloria". Scholars believe that this might have been written to celebrate the end of the 1631 plague. The rest of the volume is made up of numerous psalm settings, two Magnificats and three Salve Reginas. The Messa et salmi volume includes a stile antico Mass for four voices, a polyphonic setting of the psalm Laetatus Sum, and a version of the Litany of Lareto that Monteverdi had originally published in 1620.

The posthumous ninth book of madrigals was published in 1651, a miscellany dating back to the early 1630s, some items being repeats of previously published pieces, such as the popular duet O sia tranquillo il mare from 1638. The book includes a trio for three sopranos, "Come dolce oggi l'auretta", which is the only surviving music from the 1630 lost opera Proserpina rapita.
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