The Theatres of Shadows and Lights

The Theatres of Shadows and Lights: a tribute to Francesco Cavalli (1602–1676)

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Francesco Cavalli stands as the most influential opera composer of the 17th century. Though his name is not yet as widely recognized today as it deserves, in his own time he was celebrated throughout Europe, above all for his operatic works. More than forty operas are attributed to him, of which twenty-six survive in full, an exceptional legacy that allows us to trace, almost uniquely, the evolution of opera from its early Venetian beginnings to a fully developed public art form. His renown was such that in 1660 he was invited by Louis XIV to introduce Italian opera at the French court, culminating in the grand L’Ercole amante, composed for the king’s marriage.

Yet Cavalli’s artistic identity cannot be understood solely through his operas. As Kappelmeister of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, one of the most prestigious musical institutions of Europe, he was also deeply engaged in sacred music. This dual role shaped a musical language in which theatrical expressivity and spiritual intensity coexist and enrich one another. The same sensitivity to text, the same gift for melodic invention, and the same dramatic instinct that animate his operas are equally present in his sacred compositions.

This programme reflects precisely that dual dimension. Alongside a rich selection of arias drawn from operas such as Eliogabalo, La Didone, Il Giasone, Erismena, and La Statira, we encounter Cavalli’s sacred voice in works such as O bone Jesu and In virtute tua. Far from being peripheral, these pieces reveal another facet of his art: a more introspective, yet no less expressive, approach to the human voice, shaped by the liturgical and acoustic context of San Marco.

Entangled with these vocal works are instrumental sonatas by Dario Castello, a leading figure of the instrumental ensemble at San Marco. His highly expressive and virtuosic sonatas provide both contrast and continuity, evoking the rich soundscape of Venetian musical life in which vocal and instrumental idioms constantly interacted.

Through this alternation of operatic and sacred repertoire, the programme offers not only a portrait of Cavalli as a dramatist of extraordinary imagination, but also as a central figure of Venetian musical culture, one whose work bridges the sacred and the theatrical, the intimate and the spectacular.

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