Les Larmes de la Vierge/Vergine addolorata/Blessed virgin’s tears by Rossi, Luigi, Monteverdi, Perti, Vinci, Caldara, Händel, Ds. 10 Jul. 2021, De (2021/2021), Director musical Christophe Rousset, Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria

Through a moving foray into the Italian oratorio of the 17th century , Christophe Rousset and his Talens Lyriques offer us to contemplate the tears of the Virgin in pain. The mezzo-soprano voice travels from Naples to Venice, performing musical treasures taken from sacred works by Rossi, Perti, Handel/Ferrandini and Vinci. The musical compositions depicting the pain of the Virgin at the foot of the cross are heirs to a very ancient tradition. In the 17th century , they found unprecedented fulfillment thanks to the Counter-Reformation, which placed devotion to the figure of the Mater dolorosa at the heart of its theology, a theme which would become so recurrent in Baroque art. At the same time, on the opera stage, the Italian public was moved by lamentations, these large scenes of lamentation which find a special place in lyrical works. The Oratorio, of which Luigi Rossi was one of the great figures in Rome, provides among the most beautiful pages of lamentations of the Virgin, offering the faithful a meditation in the vernacular language, preferring Italian to Latin. The arias and lamentations also constitute the key moments of the oratorios for the Passion or Holy Week, when the composition does not directly take the Marian figure as the main subject. The writing of these pages brings suffering together with great gentleness and tender contemplation, playing on the typically baroque affects so dear to Italians.