Pinchgut Opera presents The Spiritual Forest by Monteverdi
The Spiritual Forest is drawn from Monteverdi’s Selva morale e spirituale (1641), his great anthology of liturgical works composed in Venice. It was to be the last collection of Monteverdi’s music published in his lifetime, and represents the final flowering of his great genius. These uniquely inspired works confirmed Monteverdi as the leading composer of his generation, exemplifying his consummate compositional prowess and his ability to put into music the deepest of human emotions.
Erin Helyard, Artistic Director of Pinchgut Opera explains: “Monteverdi called his extraordinary work Selva morale e spirituale, meaning a diverse collection (literally, a ‘forest’) of spiritual works in Latin and moral madrigals in Italian. It’s such a wonderful metaphor, expressing the power, the vitality and the infinite variety of these works, that we simply had to use it as the title of our concert: The Spiritual Forest. It was Monteverdi’s largest publication of sacred music since his Vespers of 1610, and it demonstrates the composer at the height of his powers, at his most creative and ingenious.
“Our program focuses on the Latin works. These are the apotheosis of the Venetian concertino style, in which instruments and voices blend together in artful ways, creating unique sonic and textural possibilities. It’s the same glorious sound world our audiences first heard in our critically acclaimed Vespers concerts last year: sublime music of magnificence, pathos and rhythmic vitality.”
Australia’s premier Baroque vocal ensemble, Cantillation, will include the inaugural Taryn Fiebig Scholar, Chloe Lankshear, along with Pinchgut audience favourites Amy Moore, Anna Fraser, Andrew O’Connor and David Greco. Joining them will be ten of Australia’s finest specialist players of the Orchestra of the Antipodes, led by Erin Helyard to deliver a glorious and meditative sonic experience.
We have very few tickets to this event. Please go here to buy tickets: https://www.pinchgutopera.com.au/the-spiritual-forest
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Laudate Pinchgut!
“Laudate” is a command to give praise, and was the theme of this skilful concert selection of ten numbers from Monteverdi’s massive Selva (= wood) morale e spirituale of 1641. Erin Helyard's genius had each vocal piece flowing seamlessly into the next via bridging instrumental selections, yet there was no sameness. Each new piece was a contrast in tempo and mood, as well as using different vocal and instrumental combinations. The sackbuts, for instance, came in to add colour at just the right time. And the beautiful lighting of the stage added colour, as it moved on from an abstract background pattern. Pinchgut’s ensemble excellence did justice to the architecture of his work: eight glorious singers and ten magnificent instrumentalists played and sang as one, and we were privileged to share their evident joy in this music. In this year of Dante celebrations, the word selva evokes his dark wood. How lovely to be in Pinchgut’s transformative and heavenly wood instead.
Reviewed by Pamela Lloyd
What an amazing night at Pinchgut Opera. The Spiritual Forest opera took us back in time to 1641 to Monteverdi’s great work of Selva moral e spirituale.
It reminded us of the magnificent masterwork of early opera which is very different from nowadays less varied and more standardised opera.
We had around 90 minutes no interval of full enjoyment where 8 artists, 10 instruments, and great conductor “Erin” all blended together to produce 10 of the best variety songs that create a musical forest.
As the songs were in Latin, the Pinchgut Opera's website provides a translation that we downloaded before we went to the concert.
This is one of the greatest show we have ever been to.