400 Years Old and Still Kickin’
Sunday night, 3/28, I drove down to Rockefeller Chapel on the
U of C campus (one of my favorite places on Earth) to hear
Bella Voce and the Callipygian Players perform Monteverdi’s
“Vespro della Beata Virgine – 1610″
It’s the 400th aqnniversary of this wonderful piece, and Rockefeller
Chapel, only 80 or so years old was a magnificent place to hear it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Chapel.
The highlights for me were the amazing duets for either sopranos
or tenors. Monteverdi sure had a mastery of that form, not to
mention the polyphonal full chorus.
I had a talk with the theorbo player during intermission and she
showed me how the approximately 5-ft strings were played.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorbo.
I gave music director Andrew Lewis a big handshake for
attempting such an auspicious work,
–
Bruce
