The Manoel Theatre is today presenting a concert of works by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi and some of his contemporaries at the Malta Maritime Museum in Vittoriosa.
Titled Musical Adventures in Seconda Prattica, the concert will be performed by locally-based, professionally-trained singers who are taking part in the Monteverdi Project.
The project, devised by Kenneth Zammit Tabona, artistic director of the Manoel Theatre and the Valletta International Baroque Festival, is led by maestro Marco Mencoboni, who is one of the leading specialists of Baroque and Renaissance music.
It involves a number of masterclasses, focusing on Monteverdi and his contemporaries and culminating in a series of concerts.
The project is supported by the Valletta 2018 Foundation and Anabalat Ltd, with the ultimate aim of staging the three Monteverdi operas at the Manoel Theatre.
Today’s concert will feature music from L’Orfeo (libretto by Alessandro Striggio), which was first performed at the 1607 Carnival in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua and was written by Monteverdi. The programme also includes works by Dowland, Scarlatti and Strozzi.
Mro Mencoboni, who will be directing the concert, said: “Monteverdi is the perfect meeting point of Renaissance and baroque. In his personality, two different artistic conceptions find the perfect match.
“While his work might be perceived as the culmination of certain aspects of Renaissance musical thought, he was also a visionary of the baroque period, whose perspective was much broader than that of his contemporaries. He was an architect and an engineer, a poet and a writer, a painter and a sculptor, just using musical notes.”
Mencoboni will perform on the harpsichord while Jacob Portelli will play the cello.
Accompanying them will be sopranos Andriana Yordanova, Gillian Zammit, Hannah Bonnici, Francesca Aquilina, mezzo sopranos Claire Ghigo and Francesca Buhagiar, tenors Stanley Joe Portelli, Mark Edward Mifsud and Sipan Olah and basses Albert Buttigieg, Joseph Lia and Mark Bartolo.
The concert is being held today at 8pm. Tickets can be purchased online from www.teatrumanoel.com.mt, by calling 2124 6389 or by sending an e-mail to bookings@teatrumanoel.com.mt.