Sigismondo d’India

Program: #22-38   Air Date: Sep 19, 2022

NOTE:  All of the music on this program comes from the recording Sigismondo d’India: Lamenti & Sospiri featuring the Cappella Mediterranea directed by Leonardo García Alarcón. It is on the Ricercar label and is number RIC 429.

Mariana Flores & Julie Roset, soprani

Cappella Mediterranea

Leonardo García Alarcón, harpsichord, organ and direction

Margaux Blanchard, viola da gamba

Marie Bournisien, harp

Quito Gato, théorbo and guitar

Mónica Pustilnik, archiluth

With Leonardo García Alarcón’s Cappella Mediterranea, Mariana Flores and the young soprano Julie Roset present a fascinating portrait of one of the greatest personalities in the history of music: Sigismondo d’India.

Leonardo García Alarcón writes: ‘Sigismondo d’India has a “twin”, a “mirror” in music: Claudio Monteverdi. Both men developed, in parallel, a style that radically changed the history of music. A style inherited from composers such as Luca Marenzio and Carlo Gesualdo, but which d’India and Monteverdi were to transform through the creation of new techniques, theorised by the latter in 1638 under the name seconda pratica, which consisted in breaking the rules of counterpoint in order to express heightened emotion. This is why I like to call Sigismondo d’India’s style “mannerist” – not in the sense of “mannered” as it is sometimes misinterpreted – so as to underline the crucial role played by composers like d’India and Monteverdi in effecting the transition between Renaissance and Baroque. Like the disegno artists of that period, who exaggerated the gesture and form of the Renaissance figure, like Michelangelo Buonarroti in his Sistine Chapel, Sigismondo d’India brings us back to a language, the fruit of the sophisticated reworking of a heritage.’

Composer Info

Sigismondo d’India

CD Info

Ricercar label CD RIC 429