Leonardo 2019

2019 will see the 500th commemoration of the death of one of the greatest geniuses humanity has produced: Leonardo da Vinci, scientist, inventor, painter and musician.
Doulce Mémoire, having devoted themselves to Renaissance music for the past 30 years, have decided to pay homage to Leonardo. Their founder-director, Denis Raisin Dadre, an eminent specialist in the music of the period and a great lover of pictorial art, has devised an original programme: Rather than just make music from the time of Leonardo, I've taken my cue from the paintings themselves.I've worked on what could be the hidden music of these pictures, what musical pieces might be suggested by them…

Based on a ponderous libretto by Metastasio (who defined his own work as “stellar”) Leonardo Vinci’s dramma per musica was premiered in Venice in 1726 and was triumphantly acclaimed. Since then, Siroe, Re di Persia was put to music by composers such as Vivaldi, Handel, Hasse, and Galuppi, to mention just a few. The story uses some of the elements of the plot of Partenope, almost as if it were a sequel moved to Persia. Siroe’s plot revolves around a family mystery mingled with passions, traitors en travesti, fatherly affection and filial honesty that echoes Shakespeare’s King Lear. Performed in concert version at Teatro San Carlo of Naples in 2018, this rare opera was chosen to open the theatre’s 281st season. Conductor Antonio Florio , specialist of the Neapolitan Baroque repertoire, revised the score.

Although Lully never held any post in the Chapelle du Roi, his influence on the development of the grand motet, so emblematic of the Grand Siècle, was of decisive importance. He wrote imposing motets celebrating the glory of God and the King for the great ceremonies at court. Of the many royal funerals, that of Queen Marie-Thérèse in 1683 was among the most grandiose. Lully’s Dies iræ and De profundis were sung there. But his most celebrated motet was undoubtedly his Te Deum, which rang out for the first time in 1677 and became the king’s favourite.

Painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, pioneer of flight, anatomist, scientist - yet according to Vasari, Leonardo’s first job outside Florence was as a musician. “Music cannot be regarded other than as the sister of painting', said Leonardo, so for the 500th anniversary of his death in 2019, I Fagiolini and Martin Kemp offer reflections of his images in vocal music: aural Fantasia dei Vinci - art through the prism of music.

Unlike today, neither George Frideric Handel nor Antonio Vivaldi was the most famous and most performed opera composer in the first third of the 18th century, but rather Leonardo Vinci (ca. 1696-1730). Educated in Naples, he was successful there from 1719, initially with several operas buffe before he turned to the more prestigious opera seria in 1722 with immediate success. As one of the most important representatives of the Neapolitan School, he left his mark on the Italian and soon also the European opera scene. Even Handel in faraway London could not avoid his music: in order to satisfy the public's taste, he put several pasticcios with their arias on the repertoire of his failing opera company. In 1730 Vinci died suddenly after colicky pains, and it was soon rumored that he had been the victim of a poison attack.

Ulisse all’isola di Circe was the first opera to be staged in the Southern Netherlands. It was first performed in Brussels on the occasion of Philip IV of Spain’s wedding to Maria-Anna of Austria on 24 February 1650, although we know that the spectacle was revived in 1655 at the express wish of Queen Christina of Sweden. Gioseffo Zamponi was most likely born in Rome between 1610 and 1620. He made his career in the Southern Netherlands, entering the service of Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm, governor of the Netherlands, in 1648, for whose establishment he composed sacred music and also played.