In preparing to add a new title to the already long list of studies on Monteverdi, I have first and foremost wanted my text to be both useful and usable, attempting to bring together all the facts and documents that can help achieve a historical understanding of the composer's output. I hope that my frequent recourse to long extracts from Monteverdi's letters, and also to other accounts of various kinds by his contemporaries, will be regarded by the reader not as tedious - or worse, a nuisance - but as an unparalleled source of information, offering direct access to material previously scattered here and there and now made available even independent of my own interpretations. I say this with a deep-seated belief in the vitality and power of historical documents of this kind.

I wish to thank Paola Chiarini Ricci, Oscar Mischiati, Livio Stanghellini, Elvidio Surian and Antonio Vassalli, who made suggestions, offered information and gave me help in various ways. Furthermore, I am indeed grateful to Tim Carter for his devotion to improving my work. Finally, I have long owed a particular debt to Lorenzo Bianconi, who has been generous to an extreme with advice and information, even to the extent of reading and commenting on my manuscript. If there is anything of value here, it is clearly thanks to him.