Discovering Music - Monteverdi's L'Orfeo

Robert Hollingworth joins a specially gathered group of performers for an exploration of some of the pioneering musical ideas behind music's first operatic masterpiece - L'Orfeo. Robert considers the way in which Monteverdi's ideas about creating opera developed from his experience of writing madrigals. He looks at Monteverdi's expressive use of music to colour and highlight the meaning of the text and features performances of several contrasting episodes from the opera.