Monteverdi's madrigals at the Gran Teatre del Liceu

This splendid compilation of madrigals in nine books, published between 1587 and 1651, represents one of the pinnacles of Western music literature. In this session, we continue this splendid journey through this corpus, understood as an exercise in proto-opera and a theater of emotions.

This fifth book, published in Venice in 1605 and dedicated to his patron, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, the court where he worked as a violist, represents a turning point in his work, as the composer radically developed his style by incorporating a series of innovations that created a famous controversy. Giovanni Maria Artusi, canon of Bologna, accused Monteverdi of exaggerated use of chromaticism, an excess of dissonances far from the classical style of Palestrina. Monteverdi responded with a text (Seconda prattica overo delle perfezione della moderna musica) in which he justified that the seconda prattica was more appropriate for madrigals (and not for sacred music), since "words are the proprietors of harmony, not slaves".

Rinaldo Alessandrini, director, harpsichordist and a true authority on the composer, will be the guide on the paths of this fascinating and lush universe full of precious miniatures. The word, the music, the declamation, and the stile concitato will lead us to the first attempts to represent human passions through text and harmony.