DIVINO DIALOGO: Sacred music from seicento

“Be it known that all musical instruments, in comparison to the human voice, are inferior to it. For this reason, we (instrument players) should endeavour to learn from it and to imitate it.” That is the first sentence of Silvestro Ganassi’s "La Fontegara", one of the most important and extensive sources for the interpretation of XVI century music in Europe, published in 1535 in Venice. Due to flexibility and semantic possibilities of the voice, composers and performers considered similarity to it as the goal to be aimed by all instruments.

“The cornetto is the most excellent of all the wind instruments ... because it mimics the human voice better than the other instruments do”, is stated by Girolamo dalla Casa in his "Il vero modo di diminuir", published in 1584 in Venice. Dalla Casa was the creator of the first permanent instrumental ensemble at the Basilica di San Marco.

Thanks to this reflexion, from the beginning of the seventeenth century many composers used the cornetto to dialogue with the voice. In vocal pieces from that period instrumental interventions by the cornetto employed and developed subjects proposed by the vocal part.

Besides that, the cornetto was the instrument used in churches to replace sopranist singers. When one or more top parts were missing for some reason, cornetto players were involved to complete a vocal ensemble, because of cornetto’s flexibility and timber similar to the voice.

In this program Canto Fiorito presents different aspects of the dialogue between the voice and the cornetto, exploring the splendour of Italian sacred music in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

RODRIGO CALVEYRA, cornetto, recorders and artistic director

Born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Rodrigo Calveyra studied recorder with Conrad Steinmann at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and received a master degree in 2000. Simultaneously he specialized in recorder and medieval music at the Civica Scuola di Musica di Milano with Pedro Memelsdorff. In 2012 he graduated with a master degree in cornetto from the Hochschule für Musik of Trossingen at the class of Frithjof Smith.

R. Calveyra played as a soloist with orchestras in Brazil, Switzerland, Italy and Argentina. In 1995–2010 he directed a Brazilian based ensemble Instrumentarium, with which he performed more than 150 concerts in South America and Europe. Since 2013 he is the leader of the Vilnius based early music ensemble Canto Fiorito, and since 2017 – the artistic director of the International Kretinga Early Music Festival in Lithuania. He is a regular member of the Ensemble Cappella Mediterranea, directed by Leonardo García Alarcón, and his assistant for operas. He is also a regular member of the ensemble I Gemeli and the assistant of its artistic director Emiliano Gonzalez Torres. With these and other ensembles he performed in the most prestigious early music festivals in Europe and South America. He recorded for Sony, Hamonia Mundi France, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, etc.

RENATA DUBINSKAITĖ, mezzo-soprano

Renata Dubinskaitė, mezzosoprano. Already after becoming a Doctor of Humanitarian Sciences in art history and theory, Renata Dubinskaitė turned to music and finished opera singing studies in Vilnius with bachelor degree in 2015 and master degree in 2023 in Kaunas with prof. Vladimiras Prudnikovas. She continues her singing education privately with Fernando Cordeira Opa in Bologna. The singer specialises in early music repertoire, having deepened her knowledge in many mastercourses with such professors as Maria Cristina Kiehr, Vincent Dumestre, Rodrigo del Pozo, Jan van Elsacker, Barbara Bonney, Paul Eswood, Julie Hassler and others.

She is the main soloist and producer of early music ensemble Canto Fiorito (Vilnius) as well as Kretinga International Early Music Festival, alto singer in Chamber Choir of Namur (Belgium), the artistic director of the ensembles Duo Barocco and Lux Maris. Together with Canto Fiorito she performed solo recitals and concerts in all Europe. She performed roles in many baroque operas, such as a nymph in Rossi’s “Il Palazzo Incantato” (with Cappella Mediterranea, conducted by Leonardo García Alarcón, Dijon, Nancy and Versaille), Circe in Stradella’s “La Circe” (with Canto Fiorito, Vilnius), Cesonia in Pagliardi’s “Caligula” (with the ensemble “Le Poeme Harmonique”, conducted by Vincent Dumestre, Vilnius), Holofernes in the staged version of Vivaldi’s oratorio “Juditha Triumphans” (Vilnius) and others.

JEAN-MARC AYMES, organ

Harpsichordist and organist Jean-Marc Aymes studied at the Conservatoires de Toulouse, La Haye and Bruxelles, and was part of many early music ensembles. In 1992, he founded with the soprano María Cristina Kiehr Concerto Soave, a musical formation with variable numbers, of which he is now the artistic director. Specialized in the Italian repertoire of the 17th century, the ensemble has acquired an international reputation, also through a series of recordings for Harmonia Mundi, the label Ambronay, Zig-Zag Territoires, Lanvellec Editions.

He also leads a career as a solo harpsichord. He is the first to have recorded all the keyboard music published by Girolamo Frescobaldi (Ligia Digital), hailed by critics. His discography includes more than sixty recordings. Jean-Marc Aymes has conducted several opera and oratorio productions (Monteverdi, Handel, Purcell, Campra, etc.), including many world premieres (Cavalli, Perti, Colonna, etc.). Since 2009 he teaches harpsichord at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, and since 2019 baroque music at the I.E.S.M in Aix-en-Provence. Since 2007, he has been the artistic director of the Mars en Baroque festival in Marseille.