This concert will feature selections from Claudio Monteverdi’s eighth book of “madrigals” (‘Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi’), published in Venice in 1638 when he was seventy-one years old. They represent a significant evolution in musical style, in which Monteverdi sought to express a new emotion in music. Earlier composers had only conveyed two of man’s three major passions, the soft and the moderate; a third passion, agitation (‘stile concitato’), was missing in his view.  For this program, the festival instrumental ensemble will be joined by a select group  of emerging young singers, specialized in this beautifully expressive music.