LUCRETIA BORGIA · BETWEEN HISTORY, MYTH, AND LEGEND

𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗿

𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 𝘥𝘦 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘳𝘴

A musical tribute to Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519), daughter of Pope Alexander VI, married three times, with one husband murdered and one illegitimate son—all within just thirty-nine years and in the heart of the Renaissance.

This concert program is based on music contemporary to Lucrezia’s lifetime and aims to reveal her humanity, as Dario Fo suggests, freeing her from the cliché of the dissolute and incestuous woman, and placing her instead in her historical context and everyday life. In this way, the audience experiences first-hand the fascination of the Italian Renaissance courts.

From her birth in Rome in 1480, to the fall of Granada, her marriages to Giovanni Sforza, Alfonso d’Este, and Alfonso of Aragon, her relationships with Pietro Bembo, Isabella d’Este, the court of Ferrara, and musicians such as Bartolomeo Tromboncino or Joan Ambrosi Dalça—everything culminates in her retreat into devotion and her death in 1519.

Elia Casanova, voice
Carles Magraner, viola da gamba
Robert Cases, guitar and vihuela

Festival Contratemps