Grazie mille, maestro: Monteverdi’s Venice

The 450th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi’s birth is the cue for a year of music in his home townA raunchy Beyoncé video blaring from a tiny bar’s TV might seem an unlikely backdrop for an earnest discussion on the intricacies of reconstructing music from 400 years ago – but this is Venice, where sex and melody have always been close, and the composer we are talking about is Claudio Monteverdi. The first composer to break through convention and display the true nature