Songs of Love & Desire: Music Theatre based on Monteverdi's Fourth Book of Madrigals for four solo voices and electronics

Songs of Love & Desire is a dramatic presentation of Monteverdi’s 4th Book of Madrigals for five voices. The production employs reflected images and electronic sound treatment to capture the baroque spirit of Monteverdi’s intense and passionate music, placing it in a world of ever-changing sound and vision. Monteverdi’s madrigals trace an erotic narrative from the first flickerings of desire to sex, betrayal and death, employing modes that range from direct address to miniature dramas and third-person narratives. Following Monteverdi’s own narrative of longing and passion, the performance explores a space between reality and illusion that reflects the dissolving boundaries expressed in the madrigals themselves between life and death, presence and absence, self and other.