Antonella Ruggiero Sospesa

"Salzedo has done for the harp what Bach did for the organ, Paganini for the violin, Chopin, Liszt and Debussy for the piano, which is to enlarge the technical and expressive potentialities of their chosen instruments". These are the words of the great conductor Leopold Stokowski when writing about the figure of Carlos Salzedo, who was born in Arcachon, France, in 1885 and died in Waterville, U.S.A., in 1961.

Two of the major works that made Claudio Monteverdi the innovator of the musical world of his time were concentrated between 1607 and 1608 in Mantua: Orfeo, Favola in musica in 5 acts (24th February 1607, libretto by Alessandro Striggio Jr.) and Arianna, Tragedia in a single act (28th May 1608, libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini). The disappearance of any of Arianna's scores remains an unsolved mystery. We do not know what the musical style of the opera was, but from Rinuccini's libretto, we can guess that it was a development of the Florentine model of the Musiche di Iacopo Peri […] sopra l'Euridice del signor Ottavio Rinuccini (Florence, 6th October 1600).