Sir John Eliot Gardiner knows a thing or two about Monteverdi. An undergraduate performance of the Vespers in 1964 launched his Monteverdi Choir and for DG he recorded a fine Orfeo in 1987 and Poppea in 1996. It’s perhaps surprising that it has taken him until now to complete the Venetian master’s operatic trilogy with this recording of Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (Ulysses’ return to his Homeland) taken from live performances in 2017, the culmination of the composer’s 450th anniversary celebrations.

Monteverdi’s second opera (not counting L’Arianna, which is lost bar the famous lament), was premiered in Venice at the 1640 Carnival and is therefore a late work – the composer was 74. Never as...