16 September, 4 pm
Museum of Applied Arts and Design, Arsenalo g. 3a, Vilnius
Love is Stronger than Force
Music by Monteverdi and his contemporaries
Marcel Beekman – tenor (Netherlands)
Contrasto armonico (Italy)
- Dario Luisi – violin
- Enrique Gómez-Cabrero Fernández – violin
- Gabriele Toscani – viola
- Darius Stabinskas – cello
- Michele Carreca – theorbo
- Marco Vitale – harpsichord and direction
Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori: Love conquers all things, so we too shall yield to love. This sentence by Virgil is the source of inspiration to this program, based on the power of love, which wins even over death.
In the history of western music Love plays a fundamental part, it is the force that moves the soul, and it is very close to the doctrine of the affetti (affections), for which the passions could be represented by their evident visible or audible signs.
The core of this program is Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, which tells us the sad story of the fight between the Christian knight Tancredi and the Muslim woman Clorinda, who disguised herself as a soldier. Tancredi kills her in battle, not knowing that inside the soldier’s armor there lies his beloved Clorinda.
Contrasto Armonico and Marcel Beekman work closely together in projects of Italian music from the 17th and 18th centuries, and dedicate themselves in particular to Claudio Monteverdi. The Combattimento is the highlight of this successful cooperation.
