Combattimento - War, peace and lost love in the music of Claudio Monteverdi

Concert 4: Combattimento, Series XVIII, Season 2025/26 / Four concerts on subscription

Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (The battle between Tancredi and Clorinda) is a milestone in 17th century music history. Monteverdi used musical means such as pizzicato and tremolo for the first time to dramatically depict a battle in the stile concitato. With the help of director Kobie van Rensburg, we will stage two pieces: the tragic battle between Tancredi and Clorinda and the portrayal of the ungrateful women in Monteverdi's Ballo delle ingrate. The concert will be a very special musical, but also a dramaturgical highlight of the series.
We will mainly be presenting works from his Book VIII, Madrigale guerreri et amorosi (Madrigals of War and Love, 1638), which are musical fireworks. His Il combattimento was premiered in 1624 at the Venice Carnival to a libretto by Torquato Tasso. During the First Crusade, the Christian crusader Tancredi mistakes the Saracen warrior Clorinda, his lover from the enemy camp, for a man in her armor and challenges her to battle. Tancredi strikes Clorinda a fatal blow and only recognizes her when he removes her helmet. But before Clorinda dies, she embraces the Christian faith. The only surviving aria from Monteverdi's lost opera L'Arianna can also be heard, his “Lamento d'Arianna”, heartbreakingly and movingly set for mezzo-soprano. Also on the program is “Ogni amante è guerrier” (Every lover is a warrior), on a text from Ovid's “Metamorphoses”, in Italian by Ottavio Rinuccini for two virtuoso tenors and a bass.
Il ballo delle ingrate (The ballet of the ungrateful women) is a semi-dramatic ballet based on a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. Venus and Cupid visit Pluto, the king of the underworld, and complain that the arrows from Cupid's bow no longer hit the women of Mantua, who despise their lovers. Cupid asks Pluto to bring up the spirits of the women who have spurned love from the underworld to show them what fate awaits them in the afterlife. Pluto agrees, and the spirits of the “ungrateful women” enter and dance “two by two ... with heavy steps”, while Pluto sings a warning to the women in the audience. When the aforementioned ingrates return to the underworld, one of them sings a lament in which she regrets having to leave the “pure and serene air”.