Monteverde was now in the fullness of his powers. He had reached the age of forty-six. He was at once the most original of all Italian musicians of the time, and the most distinguished. Hence upon the death, in 1614, of Giulo Cæsare Martinengo, the musical director of St. Mark's, in Venice, Monteverde was called to the place, which both by reason of its celebrity as already the appurtenance of great composers for two centuries, and on account of its relation to the official life of Venice, was perhaps the most desirable one in the whole world. The salary paid the deceased conductor had been two hundred ducats yearly; that of Monteverde was made three hundred at the start, and in addition a sum of fifty ducats for expenses of removing from Mantua. In 1616 the salary was raised again to four hundred ducats, and later he was awarded the free use of a house in the canon's close. Valuable gratuities were voted him upon several occasions, as one hundred ducats, Dec. 14, 1642, one hundred and fifty in 1629, etc. Honors came fast upon him. When he was invited to Bologna, in order to direct the music for some festivity, a delegation of distinguished citizens met him a long way out upon the route, and orations and formal recognitions of the honor done the city by his accepting the invitation had full place, according to the imposing forms of the time. In spite of the distinction which Monteverde had gained in the musical dramas already mentioned, it was not for several years after entering upon his duties at St. Mark's that he found opportunity to pursue his ideal. Between 1614 and 1624 he appeared only as church composer, excepting now and then when he produced music for a state _fête_, for as yet there was no public opera house in the world. In the year 1637 the first one was erected at Venice, in the parish of S. Cassiano. But previously, in 1624, the senator Girolamo Moncenigo invited Monteverde to compose a new work in the representative style, which accordingly he did, and it was privately performed in the Moncenigo palace. It was called "Il Combatimento di Tancredi e Clorinda," an intermezzo. The story was taken from Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," and represented Clorinda going in search of her lover, Tancred, in disguise of a young knight. Through some misunderstanding a duel between them was unavoidable, and at the moment when the swords flash and the strokes make grim accents in the pretty love story, Monteverde had the happy thought of introducing the pizzicato effect with the strings; and later when Clorinda falls, mortally wounded, the suspense is indicated by the still usual orchestral means, the tremolo. These striking effects, however, were by no means Monteverde's chief claim to memory for this work, for throughout, if we may believe the hearers (the music having disappeared), the music accurately reproduced and interpreted the feeling of the story, and the hearers were intensely absorbed, and at the critical moment moved to tears.