Sat 10/8 @ 8PM
Sun 10/9 @ 4PM
Fri 10/14 @ 7:30PM
Sat 10/15 @ 8PM
Apollo’s Fire opens its season this weekend and next with a series of performances of “Monteverdi Vespers of 1610,” which they’ve performed at intervals over the past two decades and released on a recording.
Written for orchestra, chorus and soloists, the Vespers focuses on the Old Testament’s Songs of Solomon, a group of sensuous love poems. “The Vespers unites the structure and counterpoint of the West with the sensuous allure of the East,” they tell us. “With this choral masterpiece, Monteverdi forged a dramatic and vivid new musical style, evoking the struggle between the archaic with the revolutionary. An ambitious work of sacred music for Monteverdi in his time, this piece requires a bold ensemble even for performances today. The composer did not indicate much of the instrumentation, nor tempos or dynamics – leaving all such decisions to the conductor.”
The ensemble’s founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell will lead the group in performances in four venues, including the campus of Northwestern University just outside Chicago.
“Monteverdi was a giant,” says Sorrell. “I think of him like Beethoven — a revolutionary, living at the end of one style period, and almost single‐handedly forging a new one through sheer force of will. He used the tools of the Renaissance but created a new and intensely emotional form of expression, which we call Baroque.”
Soloists include sopranos Erica Schuller, Molly Netter and Rebecca Myers; mezzo-soprano Kristen Dubenion-Smith; tenors sopranos Jacob Perry and Steven Caldicott Wilson; and baritones Edward Vogel and Andrew Padgett.
Venues include First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights (October 8), St. Raphael Catholic Church in Bay Village (October 9), St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron (October 14), First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights (October 15) and Alice Millar Chapel at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (October 16).
For tickets, go to www.apollosfire.org.