Monteverdi Project

Sunday with the Cape Consort

Renaissance poetry treats the topic of love as a consuming, deeply unsettling, initiatory experience, inevitably leaving one or both parties fatally wounded. Constant references to an underlying matrix of recurring images include those of the armed god of love, of piercing eyes, lethal glances, cruel beauty, torn hearts as well as the themes of flight and pursuit.

Monteverdi’s subtle yet striking translations of this imagery into richly sonorous, musically congruous scenes, firmly establishes music as the emotionally stirring and communicative medium we know it to be.

Music from the days of moats and knights
The Cape Consort - a group of solo singers and 2 basso continuo players - is fast establishing itself as the leading Early Music Ensemble in South Africa in terms of both introducing exciting new repertoire to South African audiences as well as performing exclusively on period instruments. The Consort‘s artistic approach is aligned with the international Historically Informed Performance Practice Early Music movement.

The Consort was founded by Andrew Cruickshank and Hans Huyssen, who together with Charles Ainslie and Lente Louw have been responsible for its successful growth.

The Cape Consort has performed to wide acclaim since its formation, regularly receiving standing ovations for its programs. Performances in 2011 included Monteverdi’s six-part Vespers, an all Purcell programme in collaboration with a consort of viols and South Africa`s first performances of the Neapolitan composer, Caresana‘s Nativity cantatas, as well as collaborations with visiting artists, such as the soprano Mandie de Villiers-Schutte and the renowned Dutch Baroque violinist Antoinette Lohmann. Presenting a veritable platform for historically informed performances the 2011 Oudtshoorn Klein Karoo Klassique hosted the Cape Consort with three different programmes of Early Music, which were enthusiastically received by festival audiences. Furthermore the group joined forces with Furor Musicus (Amsterdam) in a performance at the Odeion Musik Fest in Bloemfontein.

Patrons are invited to meet the musicians on the theatre’s roof-top deck after the show, where drinks will be for sale.

Tickets (R100p/p - R120p/p) may be booked online through Computicket, or via the Fugard Theatre’s box office, see number below. Friends of the Fugard receive generous discounts when booking through the theatre’s box office.

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