"Travellers on the Grand Tour came to Italy to see antiquities as well as paintings, flora, and fortifications. They also encountered the most modern Italian music - for concertos, sonatas, operas, oratorios, and cantatas were all invited in the course of the seventeenth century. Passaggio in Italia traces the musical experiences of visitors to Italy, from a Frenchman present at the birth of monody in Florence, a Spaniard attending the public opera theatre in Venice, a Dutchman attending a Roman oratorio, to a Russian describing an organ in Padua and open-air music on the Bay of Naples. The itinerary includes a look at Barbara Strozzi singing for the men of a Venetian academy, the Dutch composer Constantin Huygens absorbing the new Italian music, and listening to Corelli in terms of late Roman Baroque architecture. Music herself travels between Italy and Spain and north to the Netherlands via performers or by print. Also inspired by the five Baroque operas and a Stradella oratorio that were presented for the Early Music Festival Utrecht in 2006, the book gives views onto the lives of the composers Francesco Lucio and Cavalli in Venice, travelling players in Venetian opera, Marazzoli's La Vita humana, and the changing nature of the oratorio in Rome."--Page 4 de la couverture.