Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

A madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi drawn from Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, presented at the Opéra Royal of the Château de Versailles with William Christie and Paul Agnew.

Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda is a madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi, published in his Eighth Book of Madrigals, Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi (1638). It sets an episode from Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered: the nocturnal duel in which the knight Tancredi mortally wounds Clorinda without recognising the woman he loves. A narrator carries the story forward, while the two protagonists sing their own lines.

The work is written for two voices and a string ensemble. In it Monteverdi experiments with the stile concitato, a style of rapid, repeated figures intended to convey the violence of the combat. The artists announced are William Christie, founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants, and Paul Agnew, conductor and singer well known in this Baroque repertoire.

The venue is the Opéra Royal of the Château de Versailles, a theatre built under Louis XV by Ange-Jacques Gabriel and inaugurated in 1770 for the wedding of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, and Marie-Antoinette. Designed for the court, the venue today hosts concerts and performances, including this programme devoted to Italian music of the seventeenth century.