English Touring Opera: Triple Bill

A rare concoction of 17th century music and opera, featuring fully-staged works by Purcell, Carissimi and Gesualdo. Best known is Dido and Aeneas, and the aria ‘When I am laid in earth’. “Remember me!” the abandoned Dido calls, and in Purcell’s melody she will be remembered forever. Director Sebastian Harcombe promises to conjure a Jacobean night-world, in which a great woman contemplates her ruin.

The priest-composer Giacomo Carissimi made a series of short musical dramas for his Roman audience, depicting scenes from the Bible in which humans wrestle with God. One of the finest is Jonas, or Jonah, which depicts the story of Jonah and the whale. Dancer/director Bernadette Iglich will make a new piece of drama on this story with Carissimi’s sensuous music.

The third part of the evening showcases music of the prince-murderer-compose Carlo Gesualdo. Tortured by his mortal love affairs and by his intense love for an absent God, Gesualdo was a striking original. Eight singers and eight players will perform some of his most intense madrigals in a landscape of shadows and candle-light. You will not have heard anything like this before.