Projects

L'échappée du couvent, Bologne 1665  Concert - drama featuring the actor Pierandré Boo

Bologna 1665.

 

Nina, a young woman being educated in a convent, delights in singing the sacred music by composers of her city, Maurizio Cazzati and Carlo Donato Cossoni, practising with benevolent supervision of her godmother Gréta Gratos (played by Pierandré Boo).

 

Once escaped from the convent, she discovers a new side of Bologna: various encounters, parties, love but also disillusionment. 

 

 

 

Gréta Gratos and four musicians accompany Nina in her musical discoveries and chagrins of love.

 

Direction: Gaëtan Aubry

 

Nina: Alice Borciani

 

Gréta Gratos: Pierandré Boo

 

Co-production with Les Dominicains de Haute Alsace

 

Unpublished music from the Biblioteca della musica Bologna


Van Eyck’s Cabinet of Wonder / A Merry Company                                  A musical Flemish painting          Concert in collaboration with Trio Musica Humana

This „Flemish picture“ is a show both musical and visual and is inspired by 17th century painting. The staging evokes the atmosphere of a Flemish inn where travellers, locals and itinerant musicians met. The musicians will be seated around a table, feasting and revelling, and the mood will reflect all the frames of mind such a setting can project... 

The concert’s principal character is the blind musician Van Eyck, carillon player and famed improviser on the recorder in Utrecht. Comparable to a Cabinet of Wonder with its collectibles from all over the world, so fascinating for Flemish painters, Van Eyck’s repertoire is a collection of dances, songs and airs originating from all over Europe. It’s that kind of music he memorized, varied and improvised upon.

The variety of airs gives a good idea how musicians used to travel and how this itinerant, well-connected lifestyle was reflected in the spreading of their music. Flanders clearly must have been a cultural hub in Europe, especially for music.


Divina Stella                               Sacred music for the Nativity   Concert in collaboration with Trio Musica Humana

This program provides an insight into a 17th century Italian Christmas, mixing the warmth of a vocal quartet with the lustre of violin and cornett sounds, further adding the pastoral hue of the recorder.

Sacred music, some brilliant and some more obscure, alternates with intimate lullabies and festive virtuoso dances, combining works by  Monteverdi, Castello, Leonarda and Merula.

Divina Stella is a Christmas celebration, but also an ode to the returning light after the winter solstice.

 

Cast: Vocal quartet, violin, cornett, recorder, harpsichord, organ, theorbo, bass viol and harp.


Plaisirs et vanités du Rossignol  Descriptive virtuoso music in Italy in the 17th century

« in the nightingale, nature presents a perfect idea of all musical art » Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis, 1650                                         

In the centre of the aviary of symbols, the nightingale occupies a special place: embodying both the perfect singer and mastery in the art of love, this bird has inspired many musicians. Furthermore, its nocturnal behaviour has always suggested an air of mysteriousness, forbidden love and the vanity of pleasure.

This program features descriptive bird-music belonging to the seconda pratica, but also pieces written in the second half of the 17th century by Monteverdi, Froberger, Poglietti and Pandolfi that correspond particularly well to Kircher’s statement about the nightingale’s song. 

A zest for life and pleasure can be clearly heard in the strikingly festive dance music. An intimate relationship between love and death, however, is expressed predominantly by the vocal pieces.

 

Cast: harpsichord, theorbo and baroque guitar, bass viol, soprano, recorder, cornett.

This program has been recorded in the Chapelle de Notre-Dame-de-Mésage in July 2012, with the support of the Mairie de Domène and of the association Nota Bene.