P A S T E V E N T S
2024
​
14 September: La Virtu Fugante
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
Musica Antica chart the dramatic life of composer Antonia Bembo (c. 1640 - 1720) from her youth, escape from Venice to the court of Louis XIV, and final years at a Parisian convent, through her music.
28 July: Twilight Baroque
Chelsea Physic Garden
Madrigals by Verdelot, De Rore, Willaert, Marenzio and Monteverdi, culminating in a performance of Charpentier's pastoreletta Amor Vince Ogni Cosa, all within the walls of London's oldest botanical garden.
6 July: La Caccia
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
Alessandro Striggio's madrigal comedy Il Cicalamento delle Donne al Bucato (the gossip of the women at the laundry) and Adriano Banchieri's La Pazzia Senile (The Old Codger).
15 June: Les Plaisirs
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
Music for viols and voices by Michel Lambert, Marin Marais, and a host of lesser-known composers, cuminating in Charpentier's courtly divertissement Les Plaisirs de Versailles.
12 April: Lo Spedale
Apothecaries Hall, London
A revival of our 2018 production of a satire of healthcare and medicine by Antonio Abati, set to msuic by an anonymous Italian composer c. 1650-70.
23 March: Monteverdi & Lanier at The Queens House
The Queens House, Royal Museums Greenwich
Music by Nicholas Lanier and the Italian composers who inspired his composition of Hero's Complaint, the first piece of recitative written in English, brought to the Queen's House for the first time since Lanier himself performed there as Charles I's Master of Music.
20 January: Italian Fire
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
Arias by Cavalli, Vivaldi and Handel performed by mezzo soprano Camilla Seale and countertenor Tristram Cooke, alongside Caresana's lively retelling of the moment the shephards are brought news of Christ's birth, La Tarantella.
2023
​
28 October: Amor Vince Ogni Cosa
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
Centred around Marc-Antoine Charpentier's (1643-1704) cantata in the Italian style Amor Vince Ogni Cosa, Musica Antica present some of the most beautiful extracts from stage works of the French Baroque, from Lully and Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme to Rameau's Les Indes Galantes.
30 September: Aminta e Fillide
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
A new staging of Handel's cantata Aminta e Fillide - a will-they-won't-they pastoral cantata first performed in 1708 to celebrate the Roman Arcadian Academy - devised and performed by Musica Antica's mezzo soprano Camilla Seale and colleagues from the Royal Northern College of Music.
16 July: I Ritratti
St Mary, Letheringham, Suffolk
​
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. This concert was reprised on 18 October at the University of Sheffield.
17 June: La Commediante
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
We present 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).
14 January: Cavalli: Requiem
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
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
2022
​
17 December: Christmas in the New World II
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
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.
19 November: Triste Plaisir
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
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.
17 September: La Caduta di Troia
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
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.
16 July: I Ritratti
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
​
Portraits of three 17th Century female Italian composers - Isabella Leonarda, Antonia Bembo and Barbara Strozzi - through their music, alongside extracts from the operas of Strozzi and Bembo’s teacher, Francesco Cavalli.
11 June: Our Own Orpheus
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
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.
3 February: Furor Divin' e Mortale
Sands Films Studios
Camilla Seale and the band of Musica Antica Rotherhithe 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.
2021
​
18 December: Christmas in the New World
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
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.
16 October: Like As the Lute
Holy Trinity Church, Rotherhithe
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.