Sacred Monteverdi: Leonardo García Alarcón and the Vespers for the Blessed Virgin

With the Vespro della beata Vergine, Monteverdi gave us one of the first monuments of European sacred music. Meditative and theatrical, its score is conceived as a set of prayers, with unhesitating recourse to expressions of joyful delight and even utter sensuality. Baroque sensibilities are unmistakably manifest in these masterful vocal pieces that alternate with defining instrumental sections. Leonardo García Alarcón reveals all this music’s peculiar beauty, a sacred counterweight to the secular L’Orfeo performed at the Amphitheatre only two nights earlier.