English Baroque Soloists & the Monteverdi Choir

Distinguished conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner leads these two ensembles, both of them early-music specialists, in a two-night Carnegie stand. On Apr 30, Monteverdi's sacred work Vespro della Beata Vergine has a hearing; May 1 brings a concert performance of the same composer's early-career operatic triumph (which also helped define opera), L'Orfeo.