Les Traversées Baroques & le Chœur de l’Opéra de Dijon

Following on from last season's admirable Vespers, Les Traversées Baroques, the Opéra Chorus and Étienne Meyer leaf passionately through the Selva Morale e spirituale, the sacred testament of the great Monteverdi.

A major work of Western vocal music, endowed with a noble allegorical title, the "Moral and Spiritual Forest" is a collection of more than forty sacred pieces published in 1640, three years before Monteverdi's death. Most of them are dedicated to the liturgy of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, and bear witness, in an almost testamentary manner, to the influence of this sanctuary on the art of the Cremonese. But the most prodigious aspect, of course, is the extraordinary quality of these pieces, which are nonetheless extremely varied in form: At the heart of this cosmogony, made up of ardent faith, joy and poignant sorrow, Monteverdi reveals himself to be as masterful in the use of severe counterpoint as he is in expressive figuralism, mass effects and dramatic intensity: Although devoted to religious life, he had forgotten nothing of the experience of Orfeo or The Coronation of Poppea.