Monteverdi: Lacrime d'amante - madrigals

La Compagnia del Madrigale

GCD 922810

With Lagrime d’amante, La Compagnia del Madrigale, so accomplished with 16th- and 17thcentury Italian music and words, turns its attention afresh to the music of Claudio Monteverdi. This new Glossa release faithfully conveys the beauty of the ensemble’s vocal blend in a selection of five-part compositions drawn from the Monteverdi of Cremona, Mantua and Venice, but centring on that cornerstone of his art, the Sixth Book. The act of singing whilst weeping – as Marco Bizzarini points out in his booklet essay – is somewhat unfeasible, but time after time Monteverdi strove to overcome that improbability by his music, often calling upon the best Italian poetry of the time: here, the fabulously vivid imagery of Torquato Tasso, Battista Guarini and Petrarch are well served by Monteverdi’s musical response.

The programme takes us through various troubled emotional states involving love: a lover dying of love, the partenza amorosa (or lovers’ separation), even a shepherd accidentally wounding his loved one, but also the outpouring of grief in the Lagrime d’amante al sepolcro dell’amata, a commissioned madrigal cycle to newly written words lamenting the death in 1608 of the promising singer Caterina Martinelli, a pupil of the composer, but also that of Monteverdi’s wife. This work and others on this recording involved the lamented bass Daniele Carnovich to whom the group pay tribute; the sessions were completed by Matteo Bellotto.

CD x 1

Glossa

5.05.2021

8424562228108