Two people go into battle against each other and fight until one of them lies dead on the ground. Through the possibilities offered by music, Claudio Monteverdi brings to life the tragic story of Clorinda who, wearing a man’s armour, takes up arms against the crusader Tancredi who is in fact her lover. Monteverdi had already used his madrigals as a kind of laboratory for musical theatre, exploring ways of expressing human emotions through music in them. His Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, composed in 1624, forms the dramatic climax of his eighth book of madrigals whose verses sing of war and love. The musical theatre project Combattimenti, developed for the Kammeroper by director Olivier Fredj in cooperation with the lutenist and conductor David Bergmüller, sees Monteverdi’s works, ground-breaking at the time, against the background of eternal warfare. The battle between Tancredi and Clorinda takes place in Jerusalem, a city which, instead of being a centre of peaceful coexistence, remains a symbol of conflicts related to religion and world politics to this day. What can Monteverdi’s music say to us today, in a time of seemingly insoluble crises?
