Monteverdi and others - Era La notte
"Opéra de Chambre" Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Friday May 4 2007 Pietro Antonio Giramo: La Pazza Claudio Monteverdi: Lamento d’Arianna Barbara Strozzi: Lagrime mie Claudio Monteverdi: Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda Production: Juliette Deschamps. Costumes: Christian Lacroix. Anna Caterina Antonacci. Soloists of the Cercle de l’Harmonie under Julien Chauvin. A single sentence found on the web sums up this rather intense evening: “ Era la notte presents four highly emotional, seventeenth-century Italian works, sung with commanding theatricality by Anna Caterina Antonacci.” Presented as a “chamber opera”, the performance is really a staged recital of works composed between 1620 and 1650, united by period but also by the the theme of destructive, mostly amorous, passion. The production is simple. The stage is nearly bare, with just a strip of water at the apron changing colour, from blue to blood red, depending on variations in the “old master” style lighting tha...