{"id":6252,"date":"2019-01-22T12:35:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T12:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6252"},"modified":"2019-01-22T12:35:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T12:35:03","slug":"barbara-strozzi-and-venus-unwrapped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6252","title":{"rendered":"Barbara Strozzi and Venus Unwrapped"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Venus Unwrapped\/kings place\n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There was no other word for it: \u2018sublime\u2019. I knew nothing more than that Barbara Strozzi existed, and that she was a Venetian singer and composer of the 17th century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I was unprepared for the richness of sound and the depth of feeling in the concert by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at Kings Place earlier this month. Strozzi might have been yet another woman whose output would have sunk without trace had she not, at her own expense, published several volumes of her music, including madrigals, arias and cantatas. The programmes notes described her work as \u2018erotically charged and emotionally stripped to the bone.\u2019 I second that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strozzi\u2019s\nfather initially nurtured her vocal talents, but when her flair for composition\nbecame clear, he engaged the composer Cavalli to teach her. At the salons that\nher father arranged in his own home to give her more exposure to Venice\u2019s elite\nStrozzi sang like an angel and played the gracious hostess, but was also, contrary\nto custom, was a lively participant in the intellectual discussions that took\nplace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Bevan and the members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (which included their choir) explored the full range of Strozzi\u2019s compositions: witty, sensual, \u2013 and, in \u2018Lagrime mei\u2019 (\u2018My tears\u2019) heartrending, submerged in the torment and despair of thwarted love. This fantastic opportunity to discover a long-departed diva dame came courtesy of the \u2018Venus Unwrapped<\/a>\u2019 season at Kings Place, which is running all this year. It features the music of 140 women and will cover nearly a thousand years of music, from the ethereal beauty of medieval choral music in works by Hildegard von Bingen to the avant-garde output of Anna Meredith, who has admitted that \u2018my GCSE piece included the instructions to play with nose and hands, and to headbutt the keyboard!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many\nof the artists involved in the season have seized on the opportunity to bring\ninto the light of day music by women we are unlikely to have heard of: the\nBrandenburg sisters, daughters of the bullying King Frederick William of\nPrussia, who hated music, persevered with their studies and produced pieces of\nreal quality; the Polish composer Gra\u017eyna Bacewic, who died in 1969, has been\ndescribed as \u2018gloriously bracing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nrange of performers is no less diverse, embracing all genres and sometimes\nfusing them. Laura Mvula and Black Voices will be singing music by Aretha\nFranklin and Billie Holiday (though you\u2019ll have to be quick \u2013 this is on 23\nJanuary), while in May legendary folk singer Peggy Seeger takes to the stage.\nKate Rusby, Cara Dillon and Kathryn Tickell are among the other folk luminaries\non offer. In February pianist extraordinaire Joanna McGregor is time-travelling\nfrom Beethoven to Nina Simone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I flick through the programme for the year, I realise I may just have to set up a camp bed in some quiet corner of Kings Place. All hail curator of Venus Unwrapped Helen Wallace, who has devised this irresistible feast of music by women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I may have to set up a camp bed at Kings Place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,59],"tags":[176,173,175,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6252"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6264,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6252\/revisions\/6264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}