“The voice of the Narrator (Testo) shall be clear, steady and with good pronunciation, (…) in keeping with the passions of the oration”. Thus the recommendation by Claudio Monteverdi in the preface to his Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, published in Venice in 1638. Monteverdi's remarks on performance together with his actual music underline the tension between passions – here between love and death, (Amore e morte, as the present collection is entitled), a combination which most people associate with a romantic aesthetic or sensibility. Yet an awareness of this association is better served through Monteverdi's fusion of words and music, heightening the perception of each by the combination of the two. Thus Monteverdi laid the foundations of opera, a genre destined to be as popular as it would be widespread in centuries to come. And his influence would be felt throughout all its stylistic variations each time words were “clothed” in music.