Il combattimento

In the precious account of the first performance of his Combattimento Monteverdi prints in the VIII book of madrigals we can read a detailed chronicle of that evening. Our programme tries to follow it. He says in fact that Il Combattimento was preceeded by some “Madrigali senza gesto”, meaning without a mise en scene, nor any gestures accompanying the singing. So we put together a bounch of madrigals that exemplify Monteverdi’s wonderful research for a new way of conjugating polyphony and the freedom of the spoken word.