Monteverdi's lost operas comprise seven of the ten operas written or part-written by the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi (pictured) between 1607 and 1643, during the early baroque period. Apart from a few fragments, the music for these seven works has been lost, though in some cases the librettos have survived. Opera as a genre emerged during Monteverdi's creative lifetime, and he became a principal exponent of this new form, first at the Mantuan court and later as director of music at St Mark's Basilica in Venice. The loss of these works, written during a critical period of early opera history, has been much regretted by historians and musicologists, but reflects the habit of the times, when stage music was thought to have little relevance beyond its initial performance and often vanished quickly. Contemporary documents, including many letters written by Monteverdi, have provided most of the available information on the lost works, and have established that four of them were completed and performed in the composer's lifetime. Of the little music that has survived, the lamento from L'Arianna (1608) is well known as a concert piece and is frequently performed. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monteverdi%27s_lost_operas> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1509: An estimated 10,000 people died in Constantinople due to an earthquake so strong it was known as "the Lesser Judgement Day". <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1509_Istanbul_earthquake> 1547: Anglo-Scottish Wars: English forces defeated the Scots at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh near Musselburgh, Lothian, Scotland. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pinkie_Cleugh> 1898: In an act of "propaganda of the deed", Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni fatally stabbed Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Geneva, Switzerland. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Elisabeth_of_Austria> 1946: While riding a train to Darjeeling, Sister Teresa Bojaxhiu, later Mother Teresa, experienced what she later described as "the call within the call", directing her "to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them". <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa> 1961: At the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, German driver Wolfgang von Trips's vehicle collided with another, causing it to become airborne and crash into a side barrier, killing him and 15 spectators. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_von_Trips> 2008: CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest- energy particle accelerator, was first powered up beneath the Franco- Swiss border near Geneva. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: variadic: (Computing, mathematics, linguistics) Taking a variable number of arguments; especially, taking arbitrarily many arguments. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/variadic> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion — that standing within this otherness — the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books — can re-dignify the worst-stung heart. --Mary Oliver <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mary_Oliver>