The Italian madrigal at the turn of the XVII century
In collaboration with Il Palazzo che Suona

Music by Luca Marenzio, Maddalena Casulana, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Claudio Monteverdi

Ensemble Arco Amoroso
Valentina Fin, soprano
Marta Fraccaroli, mezzosoprano
Alberto Rassu, Marco Baratto, tenors
Luca Pasqualetto, baritone

Free admission, booking recommended

This program explores the vibrant world of the Italian madrigal at the turn of the 17th century—a moment of artistic transition when expressive poetry and musical innovation converged to give voice to the deepest human emotions. Through the works of composers such as Luca Marenzio, Claudio Monteverdi, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Jacques Arcadelt, and Maddalena Casulana, the performance traces the madrigal’s evolution from polyphonic elegance to expressive drama and the first gestures of theatricality. In particular, the inclusion of compositions by Maddalena Casulana—the first woman in history to publish music under her own name—offers a privileged glimpse into the female contribution to madrigal culture and connects to a broader reflection on the role of female voices and subjectivities in Renaissance music. The program also includes pieces from Musica Transalpina, the celebrated collection published in London in 1588, which contributed to the spread of the Italian madrigal in England and throughout Europe. These pieces demonstrate how the genre was admired, imitated, and performed beyond Italy’s borders, becoming a model of international poetic-musical expression. The madrigal was a space in which music and poetry intertwined, mutually exalting each other in the service of emotional truth. Love, pain, desire, ecstasy, and despair are rendered in vivid detail through harmonic boldness, rhythmic freedom, and the refined art of poetic declamation set to music. Monteverdi’s Lamento di Arianna finally marks a turning point: the madrigal began to approach monody, anticipating the expressive priorities of opera and prefiguring a new conception of the relationship between word and sound.