SUMMER SONATA – A FESTIVAL OF OPERA AND BALLET FILMS

This year the festival presents operas, ballets, a ballet biography and choral works

Curated and introduced by Dr. R.P. Jain

 

Claudio Monteverdi: Vespers of the Blessed Virgin 

(90 min; 1990; dvd; English)

Live recording from the Basilico di San Marco, Venice

 

With Ann Monoyios, Marinella Pennichhi (sopranos); Michael Chance (countertenor); Mark Tucker, Nigel Robson, Sandro Naglia (tenors); and Bryn Terfel & Alastair Miles (basses)

 

The English Baroque Soloists

The Monteverdi Choir

Conductor: John Eliot Gardiner

 

A towering masterpiece of the early Baroque — at once intimate and grand, prayerful and dramatic, exalted and sensual. Monteverdi’s rarely performed 1610 Vespers of the Blessed Virgin offers up a dizzying array of textures and sonorities in brilliant instrumental writing, opulent choruses, and moving solo arias and duets