Intermedi della Pellegrina, Firenze 1589

Modo Antiquo, Sardelli, Federico Maria

37856

Soprano I - Rossana Bertini, Soprano II - Elena Bertuzzi, Alto - Candida Guida, Tenor - Paolo Fanciullacci, Baritone - Marco Scavazza, Bass Mauro Borgioni • Music by Cristofano Malvezzi (1547–1597), Luca Marenzio (1554–1599), Giulio Caccini (1550 ca.–1618), Giovanni de’ Bardi (1534–1612), Jacopo Peri (1561–1633), Emilio de’ Cavalieri (1550–1602) • An itinerant show staged in the Boboli gardens of Palazzo Pitti. 6 choreographical and musical Intermedi composed in Florence for the wedding of Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christina of Lorraine, Grand Dukes of Tuscany (1589) • Florence, 2 May 1589, marked the occasion of the wedding of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christina of Lorraine, when an impressive celebration was staged to display the magnificence of the Medici household. Behind this official event lay an ambitious project that involved an incredible team of the most important poets and musicians of the time, such as Cristofano Malvezzi, Luca Marenzio, Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri, Emilio De’ Cavalieri and Count Giovanni De’ Bardi, who was engaged to compose the Intermedi for Girolamo Bargagli’s play La Pellegrina. • Renaissance intermediums were sumptuous musical interludes inserted between the acts of a theatrical show on allegorical and moral themes with eclectic references to classical mythology. They are considered to be the forerunners of opera. • The spectacular show, which was performed using a complex stage machinery set up in Palazzo Pitti’s Boboli gardens, was such an immediate success that the intermediums were performed in the following days during another two plays. • The Six intermediums in La Pellegrina provide for choral madrigals, double and triple choirs, solo accompanied numbers and instrumental pieces, all of which were inserted into the impressive, sumptuous staging by Bernando Buontalenti. • 430 years later, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in collaboration with Galleria Degli Uffizi, produced the first staging in modern times of the Intermedi della Pellegrina with an itinerant show in Palazzo Pitti’s Boboli Gardens. • Stage director Valentino Villa’s approach was to ‘attempt at an ironic historical reconstruction, [where] images blur, grafting classical mythology onto contemporary iconography’. • Conductor Federico Maria Sardelli leads Modo Antiquo and Chorus Master Alberto Allegrezza heads the Coro Ricercare Ensemble and Compagnia Dramatodìa.

DVD x 1

Dynamic

08.01.20

8007144378561