With Olga Pitarch, Marco Horvat, and Fransisco Manalich, join us and discover A Fabulous Bestiary (Un Fabuleux Bestiaire), a tribute to the great fable author, the one and only Jean de la Fontaine! This wonderful concert of ancient music brought to the present will enchant you on Saturday, October 26th at 6:30 PM at the Cité des Rocheuses.
Animals, though discreet, are ever-present in French music of the 17th and 18th centuries, inviting us on a delightful musical safari! Discover them in serious airs, drinking songs, and the early French cantatas. Picture the sheep of shepherdesses, birds, shepherd and hunting dogs, and even lions, tigers, bears, and snakes, all hidden in this marvelous repertoire.
Dive into La Fontaine's fables, set to music in the collections of Spiritual and Moral Poems from the 1730s. Join us for a fascinating musical adventure where fauna and flora reveal themselves in a new light!
Are you an Alliance Française member? Pay $20 (without taxes) instead of $30 (without taxes) with the promo code: 24AF-CdR
Olga Pitarch: chant, épinette, castagnettes | vocals, spinet, castanets
Marco Horvat: chant, guitare, théorbe | vocals, guitar, theorbo
Francisco Mañalich: chant, basse de viole, guitare | vocals, bass viol, guitar
Animals are discreet, yet still very present in French music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Thus, we will amuse ourselves by tracing them
in a musical safari designed to uncover them where they hide best: in serious airs, drinking songs, and the beginnings of the French
cantata. Countless are the sheep of the shepherdesses and shepherds in our pastoral airs, countless the birds, present too are donkeys
and dogs, whether they be shepherds or hunters. We also see cats, bees, butterflies, as well as fierce beasts: lions, tigers, bears, and
snakes. We draw abundantly, for the musical part of this program, from the charming repertoire of La Fontaine's fables, set to music
in the collections of Poésies Spirituelles et Morales, published in the 1730s.
The aristocratic society of Louis XIV was neither a model of fairness nor social peace, far from it, but one of its good sides—probably
due to a debatable passion for the pleasures of hunting—was its respect and admiration for nature, whose wonders were far from fully
discovered. Music by Marin Marais, François Campion, Nicolas de Chédeville, Ennemond Gautier, François Couperin, Jacques-Martin
Hotteterre, Manuscrit Boerez, Fables choisies dans le goût de M. de La Fontaine.
