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Muses: Women Composer-Performers - Renaissance and Baroque Italy with Kate Bolton-Porciatti

Muses: Women Composer-Performers - Renaissance and Baroque Italy with Kate Bolton-Porciatti


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Can't make this time? A video recording will be sent to all participants after the seminar.

the fourth of a quartet of seminars celebrating the role of women in music and dance from Antiquity to the 18th century

From the lyric poet, Sappho, and the hetairai of Greek Antiquity, women through ancient history have written and performed music and poetry, often in defiance of convention. Women performers have been seen in a variety of ways: as divine muses or dangerous seductresses who, like the Sirens, could lure men to an ill-fated end. Many women musicians were also poets and artists whose poetry and self-portraits shed light on their musical talents.

4Renaissance and Baroque Italy
The number of women composers and performers associated with the Italian courts and city-states begins to proliferate from the 16th Century onwards. In this seminar, we'll evoke the hauntingly beautiful sound-worlds associated with some of the celebrated 'muses' and 'sirens' of the period and we'll see how painters like Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana cultivated their self- image through music. We'll go on to explore some of the first published works by women composers: the nun and organ virtuosa Raffaella Aleotti, and Maddalena Casulana - a proto-feminist whose intention was 'to show to the world the vain error of men who believe that they alone possess the gifts of high intellect and artistry, and believe that such gifts are never given to women.' Finally, we'll listen to extracts from the first ever 'opera' by a woman - Francesca Caccini's 'La Liberazione di Ruggiero' of 1625 - setting it in its broader cultural context. 

Led by an expert on Italian music and cultural history, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, this Conversation is an ode to female creativity. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with an increased appreciation of women musicians and their broader role in society. 

Kate Bolton-Porciatti is a professor of Italian cultural history and music at the Istituto Lorenzo de'Medici in Florence, where she teaches BA and MA courses in the humanities. She also lectures at the British Institute, Florence, and at the Chigiana Music Academy in Siena. Kate has published extensively as an academic and a journalist; she is a music critic for BBC Music and a travel writer for The Daily Telegraph, UK. Before moving to Italy permanently in 2005, she was a senior producer and broadcaster for BBC Arts & Classical Music in London and has won prestigious Jerusalem and Sony Awards for her programs. She did her M.Phil. thesis in Italy, exploring the musical culture of early Renaissance Florence.

This conversation is suitable for all ages.

90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.

Customer Reviews

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Camilla Galluzzo (New York, US)
Delightful

So enjoy Kate’s lecture. Whether she is talking about art, music or her city of Firenze she is easy to understand and insightful.

Customer Reviews

Based on 1 review
100%
(1)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
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C
Camilla Galluzzo (New York, US)
Delightful

So enjoy Kate’s lecture. Whether she is talking about art, music or her city of Firenze she is easy to understand and insightful.