In 1590, Monteverde became viol player and singer to Vincenzo di Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, a patron of arts and letters. At one time he took the poet Tasso from an insane asylum; he was patron of Galileo, the astronomer, who was considered to be a heretic because he said that the earth revolved around the sun, contrary to the teachings of the Bible; he also invited the great Flemish painter Rubens, to visit his court; and probably influenced Monteverde to write operas. The Duke engaged many musicians at his court, who formed a little orchestra to play dance music, solos, or parts in the madrigals. These were no longer sung alone, but were accompanied by instruments, or sometimes played by the instruments without voices, (see how music grows up!) because in Italy, the composers had not yet begun to write special music for instruments as they had in France. The composer went with the Duke on many travels, even into battle, and in the evenings between military encounters, they sang madrigals and played on instruments! The next trip with the Duke was pleasanter, for it gave Monteverde the chance to visit Flanders, where he heard the beautiful “new music” of Claude Le Jeune, Mauduit, and others. It impressed him so deeply that he began to write heart-music instead of head-music. He was one of the most successful in breaking down old rules and traditions and was enough of a genius to replace them with new things that were to point the way for all the opera writers and most of the composers that came after him. Monteverde must have heard the music composed by the members of the “Camerata,” but he was too much of a musician to brush aside all polyphonic writing and to value words above music. However, their work opened the way for his. Up to 1607, he had written everything in the form of vocal madrigals, but his last book seems to have been composed for string instruments instead of being madrigals for voices. These sounded as though composed for viols and lutes and not for voices, and were dramatic and full of deep feeling as if written for an opera! No wonder they sounded strange to the audience—even as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Milhaud do to most people today. Until Monteverde was forty years old he had never written an opera, the greatest work of his life! He probably would not have done so then had it not been at the command of his patron, Vincenzo di Gonzaga. His first and second operas, _Orfeo_ and _Arianna_, followed each other quickly and were epoch making. Without the work of the “Camerata,” they might never have been written, but they were much better than the best work of the “Camerata” (Peri, Caccini, and Cavalieri). Monteverde was wise enough to adopt their melodramatic form which he improved by his use of the devices of the Italian madrigalists and organ composers, and the _airs de cour_ (songs of the court) and the ballets of the French composers.