Mad World: Dancing in the thunderstorm

Mad World explores a vibrant and imperfect world, where order teeters under the pressure of destabilizing forces of the elements and human antagonisms. Like nature in overflowing, the music progresses in fits and starts: sudden storms, contrary winds, tides that submerge the shores, landscapes in constant flux. Reflecting our contemporary world, subject to the whims of autocrats and engineers of chaos, the elements unleash their fury and reveal, in their excess, a disturbing beauty.

From Vivaldi to Handel, from Purcell to Rameau, to the contemporary echoes of songs by Tears for Fears and Sinèad O'Connor, Mad World traverses extreme states where the madness of the world merges with that of the elements: fury erupts like a storm (Furie terribili, In furore iustissimae irae), mourning stretches like an endless night (With darkness), aimless wandering becomes drifting at sea, at the mercy of winds and currents (Leave her Johnny). Playford's dances or Graupner's poetic evocations then appear, like brief respites, fragile clearings in the heart of an unstable climate.

The Concert de l'Hostel Dieu presents a world where nature and humanity merge in a single, dizzying climax, amidst emotional upheavals, storms, and the derangement of both heart and elements. In this landscape traversed by opposing forces, madness is no longer a rupture but a state of being, where music resonates more as an invitation to dance in the storm than to await its end.


PROGRAM

Arias, Songs, Sinfonias by Antonio Vivaldi, Georg-Friedrich Handel, Giovanni Legrenzi, John Playford, Henry Purcell, Gabriel Yared (Sinèad O'Connor), Tears for fears...

DISTRIBUTION

The Concert de l'Hostel Dieu:
Franck-Emmanuel Comte, harpsichord and direction;
Heather Newhouse, soprano;
Reynier Guerrero & André Costa, violins;
Aurélie Métivier, viola;
Aude Walker-Viry, cello;
Ulrik Larsen, guitar and theorbo

Event programed for the Chapelle Sauvage festival