LA COMMEDIANTE
SAT 17 JUNE, 7.30 PM
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
Our Season begins with two early seventeenth-century comedies: Banchieri's Barca di Venezia per Padova (The Barge from Venice to Padua) and extracts from Stefano Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo (The Death of Orpheus).
I RITRATTI
SUN 16 JULY, 6.30 PM
St Mary, Letheringham, Suffolk
Musica Antica present a programme of arias and cantatas by two of the most prolific female composers of the 17th Century: Barbara Strozzi and Antonia Bembo, alongside music by their teacher Francesco Cavalli, and violin sonatas by the renowned convent composer Isabella Leonarda.
CAVALLI: REQUIEM
On the anniversary of his death, Musica Antica Rotherhithe perform Francesco Cavalli's (1602 - 1676) Requiem, written in final weeks of his life, alongside music by Luigi Rossi, Barbara Strozzi, and Claudio Monteverdi
Saturday 14th January 2023
CHRISTMAS IN THE NEW WORLD II
Musica Antica return to 16th and 17th Century Mexico, Bolivia and Peru with a programme of songs and dances by indigenous and Iberian composers, centred on Mexican composer Francisco López Capillas' as-yet unrecorded Hexachord Mass.
Saturday 17th December 2022
T R I S T E P L A I S I R
Lutenist Kristiina Watt and Musica Antica present two centuries of French and Italian song spanning the 15th, 16th and early 17th Centuries, with much of it performed as it would have been: self-accompanied.
Saturday 19th November 2022
LA CADUTA DI TROIA
Centred around Cavalli's depiction of the flight of Aeneas and fall of Troy in La Didone, Musica Antica weave the work of some of the most daring composers of the 16th and 17th Centuries into a drama celebrating the powerful and highly experimental musical language of the Renaissance and Early Baroque.
Saturday 17th September 2022
RITRATTI
Musica Antica present a programme of songs and cantatas written by three of the most prolific female composers of the 17th Century: Barbara Strozzi, Antonia Bembo and Isabella Leonarda.
Saturday 16th July 2022
OUR OWN ORPHEUS
Countertenor Tristram Cooke, lutenist Peter Martin and gambist Harry Buckoke present a century of English song and music for the lute and division viol, culminating in the work of Henry Purcell.
Saturday 11th June 2022
FUROR DIVIN'E
MORTALE
Camilla Seale and the band of Musica Antica present Handel’s explosive cantata Lucrezia - a one-woman opera in miniature, and one of Handel’s most technically challenging - alongside arias from Caldara’s beautiful and rarely-heard Maddalena ai Piedi di Cristo and Vivaldi's Cello Sonata in E minor.
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Thursday 3rd February 2022
CHRISTMAS IN THE NEW WORLD
Musica Antica Rotherhithe present a programme of 16th and 17th Century songs, carols, motets and dances written in the Americas, from some of the first indigenous songs transcribed by Europeans, to sacred music and dances written by composers of Mexica and Incan heritage in Nahuahtl and Quechua.
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Saturday 18th December 2021
LIKE AS THE LUTE
Lutenist Peter Martin and Countertenor Tristram Cooke perform music for lute and voice from the golden age of English song, with ayres by Dowland, Campion and Rosseter alongside instrumental works.
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Saturday 16th October 2021
L I V E S T R E A M S
LES VOIX HUMAINES
Airs for the voice and viol from 17th Century France
Musica Antica Rotherhithe present a century of French and Spanish song, interspersed with music for the viola da gamba by three of its masters: Jean de Sainte-Colombe, Marin Marais, and Antoine Forqueray.
As ever, tickets to watch the performance are free, but please consider donating any amount towards the work of the musicians and Sands Films Studios.
Saturday 17th April 2021
Streamed Live from the Stage at Sands Films Studios
Free, with donations welcomed
LA RITURNELLA
Monteverdi, Cavalli, Strozzi & Calabrese Folk Songs
Musica Antica perform works from three generations of composers who made their names in Venice: Claudio Monteverdi, his student, Francesco Cavalli, and his student, Barbara Strozzi. Orpheus' loss of Euridice and the abduction of Helen of Troy in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and Cavalli's L'Elena are paired with very real laments from the south of Italy, written by those whose loved ones were kidnapped and sold into slavery by Moorish pirates in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Sunday 21th February 2021
Streamed Live from the Stage at Sands Films Studios
Free, with donations welcomed
AMOR POSTE IN LUCE
Love songs from the earliest printed books
Musica Antica perform love songs from some of the earliest songbooks, printed by Ottaviano Petrucci from 1501 onwards. Collating a tradition of 15th Century music that was sometimes written down, but often improvised, Petrucci left us with one of the greatest musical legacies of the Italian Renaissance, if now all-too rarely heard.
Thursday 19th November 2020
Streamed Live from the Stage at Sands Films Studios
Free, with donations welcomed
VARIAZIONI STRAVAGANTI
The virtuoso violin in 17th Century Italy and Austria
Violinist Maxim Del Mar presents a free concert of music by two of the greatest Austrian composers of the 17th Century, H.I.F. Biber and J.H Schmelzer, whose adoption and transformation of the new Italian style left us with some of the most extraordinary music ever written for the violin.
Thursday 3rd September 2020, 8:00pm - 8:30pm
Streamed Live from the Stage at Sands Films Studios
LO SPEDALE
Antonio Abati (~1590 - 1667)
Set by an anonymous Italian composer
Four patients wait for a doctor that seems to have forgotten them; the parallels with our own time are surprising, but such is the poet Antonio Abati's satire of healthcare, hypochondria and society's response to poverty which has lost none of its wit and pertinence in the 350 years since it was written.
A revival of our largest project to date, and only the second staging of this anonymous masterpiece in miniature since the 17th Century.
First performed November 2018, revived
November 2019 with an additional performance at the Old Operating Theatre, London Bridge
Il Diluvio Universale
Musica Antica Rotherhithe gave Falvetti's Il Diluvio Universale its UK premiere. With anthropomorphised elements competing over the right to end mankind and a gleeful Grim Reaper eyeing victims, it's comedy of the darkest kind. But its pivotal message is of hope and redemption, presented in gorgeous music, and through a tale - Noah's Ark - that can be understood by all. Thanks to the generosity of Mr WeeKuang Tai MNA, all ticket sales supported UK-based charity Operation Noah in inspiring action on climate change.
Saturday 22nd February 2020
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Michelangelo Falvetti (1642 - 1693)
Orfeo Dolente
Domenico Belli
Musica Antica Rotherhithe presented the first staging of Belli's masterpiece in miniature since its premiere in Florence in 1616, alongside music by his contemporary Claudio Monteverdi, and Monteverdi's student, Francesco Cavalli.
Saturday 18th September 2021
Sounds & Sweet Ayres
The life and times of Shakespeare's
London in music
Created and performed by Sue & Ed Aldred with music performed by Musica Antica, Sounds & Sweet Ayres was the first biographical play of its kind to focus on the life of Robert Armin, successor to the famous Will Kempe, both players in the dramas of William Shakespeare.
This semi-staged production featured music written for Shakespeare's plays from throughout the 17th Century, accompanied by lute and theorbo.
Saturday 2nd November 2019
Italia XVII
Raquel Andueza Soprano
Jesús Fernández Baena Theorbo
We were delighted to welcome internationally-renowned soprano Raquel Andueza and theorbist Jesús Fernández Baena to give a guest performance of songs from the mid-17th Century Century by
Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries.
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Friday 6th September 2019
Le Nuove Musiche
Passion's voice found
A semi-staged performance of some of the most powerful and unjustly-neglected music ever written for the stage by Francesco Cavalli, alongside the intimate songs and madrigals of Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri and Claudio Monteverdi, whose experiments redefined passion's voice at the beginning of the 17th Century.
Claudio Monteverdi: Prologue, L'Orfeo
Giulio Caccini: Excerpts from L'Euridice | Amor Io Parto
Jacopo Peri: Excerpts from L'Euridice | Lungi Dal Vostro Lume
Monteverdi: Luci Serene e Chiare | Anima Mea Perdona | Piagn'e Sospira
Francesco Cavalli: Prologue, L'Ormindo | Mia Speranza & Ecco l'Idolo Mio, Elena | Cresce'l Foco, La Statira | Piante Odorose, L'Erismena | D'Amor Non Si Quereli | L'Ormindo | Misero Cosi Va & Pur Ti Stringo, L'Eliogabalo
Saturday 27th July 2019
Cristo Velato
Uniting Pergolesi's timeless Stabat Mater, two forgotten works by Alessandro Scarlatti, one of which clearly served as Pergolesi's model, and Biber's haunting Rosary Sonatas to paint the very human story of love, loss & devotion at the centre of Holy Week.
Alessandro Scarlatti: Totus Amore Languens | Salve Regina
Pergolesi: Stabat Mater
Biber: Rosencranz Sonaten VI & XVI
(Christ on the Mount of Olives & The Guardian Angel)
Saturday 13th April 2019
Or, Christ Veil'd
Douce Douleur
Love songs from the courts of
France & Flanders
Philippe Verdelot: O Dolce Notte
Matteo da Perugia: Dame d'honour
Nicolas Gombert: Je Prens Congie
Guillaume Dufay: Belle, Veullies Moy Retenir
Cipriano de Rore: Mon Petit Coeur
Alexander Agricola: Fortuna Desperata
Gilles Binchois: Triste Plaisir
Josquin Desprez: Nymphes des bois
Clément Janequin: Toutes Les Nuits
Ludovicus Episcopius: Ghequetst Ben Ic Van Binnen
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Saturday 23rd February 2019
Sorrow There
Made Fair
Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens
Countertenor Tristram Cooke and Lutenist Peter Martin explore the Lute songs of one of England's greatest Renaissance composers, John Dowland, and his contemporary Anthony Holborne.
Saturday 10th November 2018
La Defense De La Vertu
Charpentier, Vivaldi & Caldara
Featuring some of the most beautiful and unusual music written for the church at the turn of the 18th century including Charpentier's monumental Chaconne Magnificat H.73, Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus and an abridged version of Caldara's stunning, rarely-heard oratorio Maddelena ai piedi di Cristo.
Saturday 22nd June 2018
Connexion Italiens
Cavalli, Rossi and Lully
Charting the transmission of opera to France in the mid 17th Century with excerpts from Luigi Rossi's L'Orfeo and Francesco Cavalli's Ercole Amante, followed by ballets from the crowning achievement of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Moliere's collaboration: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
Saturday 24th February 2018
Musica Reservata
Song from the beginning and
end of the Renaissance
An intimate programme of music from the Late Middle Ages to the advent of opera at the turn of the 17th century, including works by Gilles Binchois, Guillaume Dufay, Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini and John Dowland.
Saturday 5th November 2017
Lettere Amorose
Arias and duets by Monteverdi & Cavalli
Celebrating our first anniversary, we brought works by Francesco Cavalli and Claudio Monteverdi, two of the greatest composers of Italian opera of the 17th century, prepared first-hand from original manuscripts preserved in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, to the beautiful, intimate stage of Sands Films Studios.
Friday 4th August 2017
Monteverdi 450
Opera, Masque and Madrigal
Celebrating the 450th anniversary of one of the greatest composers of all time, Musica Antica Rotherhithe performed works from across Claudio Monteverdi's lifetime, from some of his earliest madrigals to his later stageworks, culminating in a semi-staged performance of one of his often overlooked courtly entertainments: the Ballo delle Ingrate.
Saturday 20th May 2017