THE COMPOSERS

Nico Muhly (b. 1981) is an American composer whose music spans opera, choral works, chamber music, film scores, and collaborations across genres. A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, Muhly studied with John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse, and worked closely with Philip Glass. His compositions are known for weaving Renaissance choral traditions and minimalist textures with a contemporary sensibility, creating music that is both intricate and luminous. His operas include Dark Sisters (2009) commissioned by Gotham Chamber Opera, Two Boys (2011), commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and English National Opera, and Marnie (2017), based on Winston Graham’s novel and He has written orchestral music for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, among many others and collaborated with artists like Sufjan Stevens, and Björk to name a few.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) was a groundbreaking Italian composer whose operas helped establish the genre as a major Western musical form. Trained in Cremona and later active in Mantua and Venice, Monteverdi fused expressive text setting with bold harmonic innovation to create works of striking dramatic power. His first opera, L’Orfeo (1607), commissioned by the Gonzaga court in Mantua, remains one of the earliest operatic masterpieces, blending myth, music, and staging in unprecedented ways.

He continued to refine the art form with later operas such as L’Arianna (1608, now mostly lost) Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) and his Venetian works, including Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1640) and L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643). His operas brought psychological depth to character portrayal and showcased music’s ability to convey human passion, politics, and vulnerability. By marrying theatrical immediacy with musical invention, he set the foundation for centuries of operatic tradition and almost 400 years after his death, he is still considered one of the genre’s greatest pioneers.