8. The window of opportunity closes - Monteverdi and his constellation

Monteverdi’s swan-song, L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643),is a high-water mark of the new genre of public opera, Shakespearean in its contrasts of high and low-life characters, political chicanery and outrageous theatricality. It coincides with the death of the last two in this constellation of genius - Galileo in 1642 and Monteverdi a year later - and marks the end of this extraordinary period of innovation that shaped the modern world. Their demise coincides with incipient European economic upheavals and warfare and, meteorologically, the start of a mini ice age. Pressures to re-establish moral order took hold, and the old hierarchy governed by reason was regaining ground in reaction to the cultivation of the individual artistic pursuit of creativity and originality.