Monteverdi – Combattimenti ! « Le Poème Harmonique

Monteverdi – Combattimenti !

ffff by Télérama
Choc by Classica
5 by Diapason
German Record Critic’s Award

With Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, first performed in 1624 in Venice, Monteverdi gave music an important theatrical dimension. With this ‘dramatic cantata’, conveying perfectly through music the conflict between passion and duty and the fulfilment in death of absolute love, Monteverdi established for centuries to come the model of the ‘representative’ genre, the theatre of the human passions. Contrasting with that noble and tragic work, the other piece in this programme, La Fiera di Farfa by Marazzoli, takes the stile rappresentativo towards a fusion of comedy with credible representations of real life. Written as a burlesque intermedio to an opera, with sets by Lorenzo Bernini, it was performed in Rome for the Barberini family in 1639, a year after the publication of Il Combattimento. La Fiera includes an extraordinarily realistic evocation of an Italian fair, with local merchants and mountebanks hawking their wares, folksongs and dances. There is a skilful intermingling of vendors, operatic characters and, for the first time in opera, recognisable commedia dell’arte personalities, and the work culminates with a musical parody of… Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda!

Cast:
Claire Lefilliâtre soprano
Isabelle Druet mezzo-soprano
Bruno Le Levreur, Jean-François Lombard altos
Serge Goubioud, Jan Van Elsacker, Hugues Primard, Olivier Martin-Savan tenors
Marc Mauillon baritone
Benoît Arnould bass
Lorenzo Colitto, Lisa Ferguson violins
Isabelle Saint-Yves viola da gamba
Hervé Douchy bass violin
Lucas Peres lirone
Françoise Enock violone
Nanja Breedjik harp
Massimo Moscardo archlute and guitar
Frédéric Rivoal harpsichord
Vincent Dumestre theorbo, conductor

Programme :
Hor ch’el Ciel e la Terra, Lamento della Ninfa, Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, Claudio Monteverdi
Consonanze Stravaganti, Giovanni Maria Trabacci
La Fiera di Farfa, Marco Marazzoli
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Buy this record : ALPHA 172