A profile of Claudio Monteverdi, 1567-1643 the first modern composer.
In celebration of the 400th anniversary of Monteverdi's birth, the BBC invited the American musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon to revisit Mantua and Venice (where Monteverdi worked) and to record 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 in May:
"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
Written and directed by Christopher Burstall.
(Vespers from Venice: Monday at 9.5)