Monteverdi’s 1610 setting of Vespers is among the greatest works of the Early Baroque. A 400th anniversary performance was given at our Festival in 2010, and it now returns by popular demand. While we tend to associate Monteverdi’s choral writing with Venice, this work was written while he was working in Mantua; but its publication is very likely Monteverdi’s throwing his hat into the ring for the position of maestro di cappella at St Mark’s in Venice, to which he was appointed just three years later.