Tetbury Music Festival – Talk: Michele Pasotti, Director of La Fonte Musica

Before the Swordfight, the Scholarship

Michele Pasotti has performed Monteverdi's music in venues across Europe, but this Goods Shed talk isn't a performance, it's the research laid bare. The lutenist and director of La Fonte Musica sits down with broadcaster Donald Macleod to unpack the ideas behind the piece his ensemble stages the following evening at St Mary's Church.

Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda had its first outing in 1624 at the Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice, and Monteverdi wrote afterwards that the Venetian nobles in the room were moved to tears by it. He later set out exactly how the piece should be shaped in the preface to his Eighth Book of Madrigals, a rare instance of a composer explaining his own dramatic logic in writing. Pasotti works from that text directly, tracing how Monteverdi's instructions on pacing and contrast translate into a historically grounded staging.

La Fonte Musica's Monteverdi has drawn attention well beyond Italy. El País called their Orfeo the kind of interpretation "any opera house in the world would long to present", and Diapason has praised the ensemble's research into medieval and Renaissance sources as close to unmatched among their peers.

An hour with someone who has spent years inside this score, the day before you get to hear it performed.

Thursday 1 October 2026 · Tetbury Goods Shed, The Old Station Yard, Cirencester Road, Tetbury GL8 8EY · Starts 3:00pm