On Friday, the Chamber Opera kicked off the 24/25 season with Combattimenti, a music theater project with works by Claudio Monteverdi.

People go into battle against each other and fight until one of them lies dead on the ground. Claudio Monteverdi uses music to bring the tragic story of Clorinda, who takes up arms in male armor against the crusader Tancredi, whom she actually loves, to life for his audience. Monteverdi had already tested how music can express human emotions in his madrigals, as if in a musical theater laboratory. His Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, composed in 1624, forms the dramatic climax of the eighth book of madrigals, whose songs revolve around war and love.

The Combattimenti music theater project, which director Olivier Fredj developed together with lutenist and conductor David Bergmüller for the chamber opera, understands Monteverdi's groundbreaking works of the time against the backdrop of perpetual wars. Jerusalem, the scene of the battle between Tancredi and Clorinda, still stands for religious and global political conflicts today, instead of being a place of peaceful coexistence. What can Monteverdi's music tell us today, in a time of seemingly hopeless crises? Together with the Proxima D ensemble and six singers (Ferran Albrich Solà, Johanna Rosa Falkinger, Luciana Mancini, Ambra Biaggi, Ilyà Dovnar and Lazar Parezanin), the participants set out onto the battlefield of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.

The audience thanked all participants with long-lasting applause.

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