The Making of a Genius: Claudio Monteverdi from Cremona to Mantua

The Musicology and Cultural Heritage Department of Pavia University in Cremona, the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana, and the Conservatory “L. Campiani” in Mantua host an international conference on Claudio Monteverdi. The program, divided into thematic sessions, shall focus on the first years of the young musician, when he was studying with the great composer Marc’Antonio Ingegneri in Cremona. Not only this city but also the sacred music in Lombardy had a great influence in determining the compositional choices of the musician, fully expressed in his mature production, such as the Vespro della Beata Vergine and the Selva Morale e Spirituale. Another theme of the conference is the emergence of Monteverdi as an opera composer with Orfeo and Arianna, during the Mantuan period, where the recitar cantando revolution gets to its peak. The expressivity of the scene invades also the madrigal, when Monteverdi invent the genre of the madrigale rappresentativo. The last topic of the conference is culture history: all the elements of social and cultural life that influence the development of an artist, connected with his experience as a man living in a precise historic and geographical place. These themes will be naturally developed between the two cities of Monteverdi, Cremona and Mantua, where the genius was made.
The conference features lectures, panel discussions, and concerts with scholars from all over the world. musicologia.unipv.it/monteverdi450