The best was just good enough when Ferdinando I de’ Medici married Christina of Lorraine in Florence in 1589, even for interludes. In the so-called intermedia for the comedy “La Pellegrina” not only the stage sets unfolded enormous splendor. Some of the best composers also praised the power of music and the new golden age in madrigals of up to thirty voices. At least 31 singers and specialists for historical instruments bring the Ensemble Phoenix Munich to the residency week in the Antiquarium, which was decorated at the same time, plus a couple of dancers.
Admirably, some singers accompany themselves on the instrument, similar to the premiere. Like the bass and lutenist Joel Frederiksen, who is not only in charge of the overall artistic direction, but also reserves the vocal climax: the ornate aria “Dunque fra torbid’onde”, caressed by two echo voices, which the composer Jacopo Peri wrote to the ancient singer Arion puts in the mouth.
Almost ten years later, Peri was to write the first opera in music history, just as other intermedia composers found their vocation in the new genre. One can already anticipate this when, for example, the inhabitants of Delphi beg Apollo for help in harsh dissonances. At the same time, the structure remains largely choral, with a lively alternation of sections of varying polyphony. In the Antiquarium they sound homogeneous and intonationally pure, but could sometimes gain in drama if Frederiksen as conductor approached the music more closely from the rhetoric of the texts. Unfortunately, many of the spectators in the long room could hardly have seen the couple of dancers choreographed by Verena Weiss. In any case, the merit of the Residenzwoche and the Ensemble Phoenix that should not be overestimated is that they made it possible to experience this rare forerunner of opera in Munich.