A profile of Claudio Monteverdi, 1567-1643 the first modern composer.

The American musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon visits Mantua and Venice (where Monteverdi worked) and records his own appreciation of the music of one of the world's great composers.
Nadia Boulanger gives an additional view.

(Tonight's film was first shown on BBC-2)
"The programme shone with enthusiasm." (The Times)
"Robbins Landon will suddenly stop and fix the watcher with a glare of dedicated frenzy while he expatiates knowingly on the details that make some Monteverdi compositions so remarkable and so lovely." (Sunday Times)

(The music is taken from: La Favola Di Orfeo, The Vespers of 1610, Il Combattimento Di Tancredi E Clorinda, Madrigals of War and Love, Gloria a 7, L'Incoronazione Di Poppea)