Which Vespers would Monteverdi have chosen to perform at the end of his life under Titian’s dazzling Assumption in the “Frari”? In 1643 it was in this was very place, the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, where Monteverdi would be buried some time later. The famous Vespers of 1610 are now considered to be his masterpiece, but it should not be forgotten that this work is merely a photographic snaps- hot of an ephemeral form par excellence, which owes its posterity purely to its publication. Monteverdi’s Vespers are in fact as numerous as the number of occasions on which the Virgin was celebrated...