Chroniques Vénitiennes

Ensemble baroque La Livri:

• Nihel ZOUBEIDI (6 November) / Alice MARZUOLA (7 November), sopranos
• Ruben BISSOLI, countertenor
• Patrick FARGES, tenor and recorder
• Franz LAVRUT, bass
• Naoko CALLET-NAKATANI: violin
• Pierre SLIOSBERG: recorder, traverso
• Hakim MIOUDI: Harpsichord
• Florence MARTIN: violone, double bass - Cécile BITAN: narrator.

Chroniques vénitiennes, a colourful musical show!

Texts by chroniclers, music critics and observers of musical life in Venice in the 18th century (Marcello, Burney, Casanova) illustrate musical life in the City of the Doges with mischief and humour.

They are punctuated with excerpts from works composed in the 17th and 18th centuries, including previously unperformed gondolier airs in the old Venetian language.

The show takes the form of three successive scenes:

• In the first scene, a traveller observing musical life in Venice, from the top of the Campanile, evokes the memory of Benedetto Marcello, composer and ferocious chronicler, as well as the musicians who bring it to life.
• The second scene then leads the audience into the crowd and onto the canals, close to the gondoliers and their music.
• The third scene finally transports the audience to the opera, where the narrator paints picturesque and scathing portraits written by Marcello of the protagonists of Venetian opera (the theatre director, the male singer, the female singer, the diva's mother, etc.). These texts are interspersed with vocal and instrumental airs that run counter to Marcello's views by highlighting the beauty of the music of the City of the Doges.