Focus on Music

Let's talk about music! Vitali Alekseenok, chief conductor of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, will take you by the hand - or rather by the ears - together with members of the ensemble and instrumental soloists, and lead you to the cradle of music theater in a narrative and musical way: the Italian madrigal. The special thing about these polyphonic compositions for voice, which set the tone in Italy during the Renaissance: They offered singing a stage away from the ecclesiastical environment for the first time. Composers such as Claudio Monteverdi, Carlo Gesualdo and Luca Marenzio set Italian poems with secular messages to music, thus paving the way for opera as secular music theater...