Claudio Monteverdi: Songs and Madrigals in Parallel Translation

This book contains all the texts of Monteverdi's translations, side-by-side with English translations. The translations tend to the very literal, line by line, to provide performers and listeners the ability to follow the musical line and get the most literal translation. I do have some small complaints: most of the translations of Tasso are not by Stevens, but by the Elizabethan poet Edward Fayrfax, which makes them stand out from the rest of the because they're wordy, poetic, and tend to use archaic language. Also, few of the poems are sourced except by the author (exceptions being the particular cantos of Il Pastor Fido and Jerusalem Liberated), so one has to do additional work to find out which canzon the Petrarch's are, or what particular books other poems came from. And, if you're reading the book straight through, there's no indication of which book of Monteverdi's madrigals a particular poem is rendered in. A table at the start or end would have been very helpful, rather than having all the poems presented in alphabetical order. And the late author's name (Stevens) is displayed wrong on the cover (as Stephens)... how did that escape copy editing??Those are minor caveats. This is a very useful book, and the translations are elegant enough to read on their own, absent the music. I wish there were similar volumes for Marenzio and de Wert.