From one bank to the other, the tender or tragic melodies of this intimate programme paint a landscape where water flows, trickles and swirls. These are the states in which Baroque poets and composers give voice to the varied and contrasting human emotions.

“This stream, where the pure, flowing water swells with the tears I shed,” we hear in the musette À l’ombre d’un ormeau, whilst the shepherd Tircis pours out his heart to his beloved Annette, sitting “on the banks of the Loir”, in one of the most beautiful 18^th-century French brunettes. A century earlier, Étienne Moulinié set a romantic drama on the banks of the Tagus, an Iberian river with waters that are at times turbulent. In Venice, Johann Hieronymus Kapsberger evokes the canals of La Serenissima in a evocative passacaglia for theorbo.

Also from Venice, Barbara Strozzi stands out with a virtuoso vocal work, such as the aria Che si può fare. A generation before her, Francesca Caccini had already brought the story of Ruggiero and the sorceress Alcina to the stage: La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina, premiered in 1625, is both the first opera composed by a woman and the first dramatic setting of this subject. The concert opens with a siren’s song from this work, drawing us towards its shore, before other stops in Italy, France and Spain, carried along by the water and the voice.