Monteverdi comes to Spitalfields

Monteverdi and Italian baroque masters materialize in Spitalfields, London, an area which one might charitably call rough. Bars all round, noise, traffic and drunks, The church itself has been under renovation for years. But in this unpromising setting, the Spitalfields music festival thrives.

Tomorrow, Wednesday 5th La Venexiana and their director, Claudio Cavina, specialists in Italian baroque, present a concert of Monteverdi madrigals - this should be good as La Venexiana are very well established in their field. This is their first time at Spitalfields.

Friday 7th is an all -day Monteverdi Exploration. At 10.30 am  there's a special presentation for primary schools on Monteverdi's Seventh Book of Madrigals. Primary schools? Yes, and why not? Properly done the concert plus narration could  inspire kids too young to have been brainwashed into  thinking they can't somehow like classical music, even something as relatively esoteric as Monteverdi. This may well be the event to attend, just to see how the kids react.

Two concerts that evening : Exaudi at 6.30pm, always exciting, singing Madrigals Book 3. Later at 8.30 pm  Retrospect Ensemble perform instrumental music by Monteverdi and his contemporaries. In between, on Thursday, Paul Agnew will give a concert performance of Orfeo Act V with Mahan Esfahani, David Miller and Jonathan Manson (harpsichord, theorbo, gamba). Charpentier, Caccini and Lanier, too.