L’Amfiparnaso di Orazio Vecchi
Comedia harmonica for five-voice mixed choir and actors (revisited by Sergio Balestracci)
La Stagione Armonica
conductor Sergio Balestracci
direction Alessandro Bressanello
Alessia Donadio, Alessandro Bressanello actors
Carlo Rossi harpsichord
Silvia De Rosso viol
Sergio Balestracci flute
Orazio Vecchi, the choirmaster in the cathedral of Modena between the 16th and 17th centuries, was one of the few who knew how to bend the expressiveness of the polyphonic madrigal towards the comic, loading it with a popular theatricality that was unprecedented in the Renaissance practice of “singing upon the book”. His literary influences were not the popular poets of the time, such as Tasso, Guarini, and Petrarch, but rather vernacular poets like Giulio Cesare Croce, the author of the adventures of Bertoldo. In his ‘harmonic comedy’ L’Amfiparnaso, characters like the stuttering old miser Pantalone, his servant Predolino, the classic lovers’ couple, and the pedantic Graziano are featured. Vecchi’s theatre is built on endless allusions, while the music supports and encourages the free mixing of sound, song, acting, dance and pantomime. Not surprisingly, all specialties of the Commedia dell’Arte.
