Neapolitan Madness From The Muffat Collective
Join the Muffat Collective for Neapolitan Madness, an afternoon of musical drama and excitement, featuring Australian soprano, Anna Sandström. This concert is the last in the popular Spring Series for 2017 and explores passionate cantatas and dramatic concerti by Antonio Vivaldi and his contemporaries.
As always, the concert includes a mouth-watering selection of cakes and refreshments at interval.
Comprising four Australian graduates recently returned from elite institutions in The Netherlands, The Muffat Collective is a unique group of historically informed performers bound by their passion for re-discovering the performance practices of the 17th and 18th Century. Neapolitan Madness explores passion, drama, love and sorrow through the eyes of the exuberant ‘Red Priest’ Vivaldi. The concert also features rarely heard gems by contemporaries of Vivaldi: Scarlatti, Porpora, Hasse – and more – whose exquisite music will transport you to the magic of 18th century Italy.
Naples cultivated much native talent and its three conservatories were renowned for their systematic educational system. Their students also participated in the city’s musical life as performers and composers and after graduation they were often employed in Europe’s most powerful courts. The teaching of this time was vastly different from our own; students studied theory for five years before being allowed to pick up an instrument and when they did, practiced in a large hall at the same time (with the trumpeters banished to the stairwell!).
Also featured in the concert is music from another musical centre on the Italian peninsula: Venice. Venice’s musical idiom, like its dialect and customs, was distinct from Naples’, especially in terms of instrumental styles. It was in Venice that Antonio Vivaldi wrote his famous violin concertos, however in his own time it was his operas that won him most admiration. This program feature his work and that of other rare contemporaries whose music is as full of energy, vitality and bravura as that of the ‘Red Priest’.
This concert explores the vocal music of the time, which exploited the wondrous world of the eighteenth century’s “doctrine of the affects” whose goal was to move listeners. Muffat’s Anthony Abouhamad says they are thrilled to have soprano Anna Sandström join the Collective in this program. “As a singer knowledgeable of the performance style of the time, we could think of no one better to portray the diverse emotions eighteenth-century vocal music presents.” Violinist and director of the Collective, Matthew Greco added: “This program is a rollercoaster ride through the full gamut of human emotions: joy, sadness, hate and love.”
The full ensemble featured is Anna Sandstrom (Soprano), Matthew Greco (Violin), Rafael Font-Viera (Violin), Anthony Abouhamad (harpsichord) and Annika Stagg (cello).
Complimentary refreshments are served at intermission.
Tickets: $37 Adult, $27 Concession $15 student and $10 child.
Bookings www.theindependent.org.au
