As a feather on the breath of God

As a feather on the breath of God
Female intonations of the Old Testament in the eighteenth century

Music by: Domenico Cimarosa, Ferdinando Bertoni, Joseph Schuster, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Introduces Tiziana Plebani
Susanna Armani (soprano); Alexandra Bochkareva (piano)

Inaugural MusicaAltrove cycle devised by the Friends of the Venice Music in collaboration with Ateneo Veneto, City of Venice, Veneto Region, Teatro Stabile del Veneto which will take place between December 2016 and April 2017 in eight events.

As a feather on the breath of God, the title of the first concert, summarizes in the words of a great personality of the Christian Middle Ages, Hildegard von Bingen, the idea of musical expression of feminine spirituality, and it is here referring to the sacred dramas that virtuous Daughters Choro of the Conservatives (or hospitals) Venetians they used to sing in the eighteenth century.

The phenomenon of virgins who lived in the Conservatories has already been the focus of recent study meetings at the Ateneo Veneto, but this concert will allow listening to a repertoire that still lies largely unpublished despite its great artistic interest.

Wide action for recovery of the surviving musical sources, parts and scores stolen from the archives of the Venetian Hospitals after the fall of the Serenissima and scattered around Europe, allowed the soprano Susanna Armani, who will be accompanied on piano by Alexandra Bochkareva, to compose a significant anthology of arias unearthed from valuable sources of diaspora: the listener will find himself immersed in an atmosphere of rare beauty and vivid dramatic force and will have the opportunity to taste pages which demonstrate the importance of the music general flourished in Venice in the eighteenth century.

When important authors like Cimarosa, Sacchini, Bertoni and Schuster worked alongside the Daughters inspired by Choro these were now become an important link in the female leading role in the public arena and in the cultural system of the eighteenth century Venice.