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Soprano Pia Davila and the ensemble Musica getutscht under the direction of Bernhard Reichel show how Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries transferred the modern dramatic style from secular opera to sacred music during the Counter-Reformation. For example, they told the Passion of Christ in a completely new way - namely from the personal perspective of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. Both lament the painful parting from Jesus, not only as their savior, but above all as their son and lover.

Cornelis Schuyt is the greatest musician ever to come from Leiden and for much of his life was organist at St. Peter’s church there. He made an extensive trip to Italy and wrote text in Italian in his First Book of Madrigals, published in 1600. The second collection was published in 1611.

Ferruccio Busoni (Empoli 1866 – Berlin 1924) died the same year as Puccini and was born when Puccini was a child, yet he was way more than an opera composer. While he lived several years in Trieste and some time in Bologna, he mainly lived abroad and spent the second half of his life in Berlin. Way more than a composer, he was a wide-ranging artist and musician, an acclaimed concert pianist and sought-after piano teacher, a learned reviser of piano music, and the author of many and varied pieces. Busoni was also an aesthete, an intellectual, a music reformer, and author of texts on musical topics. A child prodigy, he wrote the Symphonische Suite for orchestra at the age of 17.