Of Two Arias and Nine Ragas: Analysing Monteverdi through a Karnatik Lens

ABSTRACT Commencing from an elaboration of extant theoretical and analytical positions in Monteverdi studies, this article closely analyses two the most well‐known arias Claudio Monteverdi's earliest opera, L'Orfeo (1607), melodic perspective Karnatik music South India. In identifying ragas within structures, approach evidences author's practice‐based explorations while harking back to global influences that have shaped identity formation Western music. This analysis serves primary purposes. First, it offers one way decolonise reimagine emerged essentially multicultural early modern Europe. Second, privileging artist‐researchers’ embodied oral aural knowledges, which emerge practice, makes a case for approaches aid practice offer complementary lenses through view locate knowledges are complex, non‐Western their bases.