Intoxicated at mass? Then it was the incense and music. Going to church in the past resembles going to a club today. If the comparison seems frivolous, Monteverdi's "Christmas Vespers" should enchant you. After all, St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice was considered THE place to be when the Christmas season approached in the early Baroque period. The composer transformed the cathedral into a soundscape that ear witnesses still tell their great-grandchildren about, sound baths like thousandfold echoes intoxicating old and young, rich and poor. "Baroque overpowering aesthetics" is only a weak description of the effect.