Vincenzo Monfrecola

Donizetti's great tragedy is his undisputed masterpiece of melancholic romanticism, with the doomed love between Lucia and Edgardo retold from Sir Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor. The 1992 production heightens the story’s powerful libretto with its dramatic visual design and first class musical performances.

The father of the controversial scientist Galileo, Vincenzo Galilei was not only a lutenist, singer and composer but also a prolific music theorist. He wrote several important treatises and was an active member of the Florence Camerata of his patron Giovanni de Bardi, with its aim of reviving the ancient Greek ideals of the union of music and poetry. Galilei studied music theory with Zarlino in Venice, where he published his first major theoretical work Fronimo, with its practical illustrations of expressive lute tablature, in 1568. His published music included collections of madrigals and of lute tablature, while his other writings reveal a modern approach to theoretical questions of his time.