‘The first work that I, as a woman, all too daringly bring to the light of day,” Barbara Strozzi wrote when her First Book of Madrigals was printed in 1644. Hugely admired as a singer and songwriter in 17th-century Venice, Strozzi was among the first female composers to publish under her own name. So it seemed entirely appropriate that a selection of her work, performed by the Orchestra and Choir of the Age of Enlightenment under Christian Curnyn, should open Venus Unwrapped, an adventurous celebration of more than 140 female composers past and present that runs at Kings Place throughout 2019.
Strozzi’s work is often startling in its emotional directness. In her day she was particularly famous for performances of her own monologues, two of which were sung here by Mary Bevan, who blazed her way through the anguished Lagrime Mie with great conviction and brought ironic poise to È Pazzo il Mio Core with its expression of the vagaries of desire. Strozzi’s madrigals, however, proved to be the real revelations. Canto di Bella Bocca, with its overlapping vocal writing for soprano (Miriam Allen) and tenor (Nicholas Mulroy), sounded very sexy, and there was some marvellous ensemble singing in L’Amante Modesto and the ravishing Silentio Nocivo, which brought the first half to a close.
The intimacy of Strozzi’s music contrasted sharply with the grander – and notably masculine – statements of Monteverdi’s Volgendo il Ciel and Il Ballo delle Ingrate, both written for state occasions, which came after the interval. Mulroy made a fine Poet in Volgendo il Ciel, presiding over its ceremonials with elegant nobility. Il Ballo delle Ingrate, written for a wedding at the Mantuan court, is a bittersweet cautionary tale, in which Venus (Helen Charlston) and Cupid (Zoe Brookshaw) persuade Pluto (the excellent David Shipley) to briefly release from the underworld the souls of women who rejected love in their lifetimes, one of whom (Bevan) bids a poignant closing farewell to the world she must yet again leave behind. It was beautifully sung, and Curnyn probed its ambiguities with great subtlety and finesse.
Venus Unwrapped is at Kings Place, London, throughout 2019.
