© Angelo Palmieri
Tribute to Claudio Monteverdi in the 450th anniversary of his birth
Vespri dell’Assunta
Reconstruction of the Vespers composed in Venice by Claudio Monteverdi around 1640
Solisti della Cappella Marciana
Julio Fioravante, Andrea Gavagnin, Gabriele Petruzzo, Aurelio Schiavoni altos
Marco Cisco, Raffaele Giordani, Enrico Imbalzano, Riccardo Martin, Alvise Mason, Marco Mustaro tenors
Giovanni Bertoldi, Thomas Mazzucchi, Claudio Pistolato, Alessandro Pitteri, Yiannis Vassilakis, Marcin Wyszkowski bassos
Enrico Parizzi, Nunzia Sorrentino violins
Gianluca Geremia theorbo
Nicola Lamon organ
conductor Marco Gemmani
“It was like the floodgates of celestial harmony were flung open and music poured like a deluge from an angels’ choir”: this was the reaction to Monteverdi’s solemn vespers at St Mark’s, Venice, where the composer was serving as choirmaster in 1640. A solemn liturgy was sung by a double choir to celebrate the Assumption of Mary (August 15): a small group of singers was in the women’s gallery, while the rest of the choir and the director were in the “bigoncio”, or choir’s pulpit. The ensemble amounted to twenty-five singers, two organs, two violins and a theorbo. Even though their impact on the audience was extraordinary, Monteverdi did not bother to publish his score, and it was his publisher who, seven years after the composer’s death, “wondrously [collected] these sacred relics to satisfy popular devotion.”
