Rhetorica by Lully, Strozzi, B., Carissimi, Rossi, Luigi, Luzzaschi, Bernhard, Christoph, Händel, Aperghis, ven 07 ott 2022, Da (2022/2022)

The lecture and recital are the final presentation of the outcome of the research project “Rhetorica”, started in October 2021. The project “Rhetorica” aims to reinvent and highlight rhetorical connections between early music and contemporary music performance. Considered a type of orator, singers of the 17th century were obliged to move, persuade and please their audience by incarnating the passion and the affects encoded in the text and music. Clear links existed between compositional and textual parameters and certain passions, and it was the singer’s role to de-code this web of affective material and to represent the passions in their voice and body. The research project developed an interpretation and performance methodology based on a composition’s text, its formal structures and its figurative enhancements. This methodology was further applied onto contemporary repertoire during the workshops organized for the singing students of HEM, highlighting the rhetorical similarities between early music and contemporary music repertoire. The lecture will present the outcomes of the research process and the recital will complement the lecture with the actual performance of the case-study pieces.