Golden Age | Julia Lezhneva II

The Süddeutsche Zeitung describes Julia Lezhneva as a “magician,” able to make the voice vanish into thin air and, a moment later, unleash a “firework of garlands and vocal acrobatics.” Ideal conditions for a program revolving entirely around the “Golden Age.” At the end of the 16th century, scholars and musicians of the Florentine Camerata were convinced that in ancient Greece, dramas were not acted but sung entirely. They regarded antiquity as the “Golden Age” of human culture. Their goal was not mere invention but a revival of musical perfection long thought lost.

This period also saw the birth of opera. Complex polyphony was abandoned in favor of solo singing with simple accompaniment, the basso continuo. The discipline of the basso continuo, however, offered singers a margin of freedom to express emotions with the passionate force imagined to be characteristic of ancient heroes. Giulio Caccini provided the theoretical basis in the 1601 collection “Le Nuove Musiche”. Claudio Monteverdi’s “Scherzi musicali” show, behind only apparent simplicity, intense passions fueled by the clash of opposing affections. At the height of the Baroque, for example, in Vivaldi, these affections are pushed to the extreme through bold intervals and chromatic lines, to the virtuosic fury of the aria of rage. A point of quiet amid this sonic struggle is offered by Pietro Paolo Melli’s lute music. by Pietro Paolo Melli.