Ensemble Contraste

Marco Angioloni, tenor
Arnaud Thorette, baroque violin & viola
Léa Masson, baroque theorbo & guitar

Combining erudition and spontaneity, the Baroque Folk Songs programme explores the circulation of popular melodies throughout 16th and 17th-century Europe and their influence up to the present day.

The festive immediacy of Neapolitan tarantellas and Falconieri's Ciaconna plunges us into the world of dance, an essential source of Baroque inspiration. With Monteverdi – the jubilant Zefiro torna and the poignant Lamento della Ninfa – and Purcell, from his masque arias (If love's a sweet passion) to the famous Chacony in G minor, the voice and instruments traverse a repertoire in which the ostinato bass becomes a driving force for invention.

The journey continues in the Mediterranean with the Corsican hymn Dio vi salvi Regina, the aria ‘Si dolce e'l tormento’, as well as compositions by Provenzale and Fiamengo, a tarantella from Santiago de Murcia's Códice Saldívar, before reaching the shores of Ireland with the ballads She Moved Through the Fair and Star of the County Down. Finally, the echo of these folk songs resonates in contemporary pop: the Beatles' songs Blackbird and Eleanor Rigby, reinvented on period instruments, bring this journey to a close, revealing how much the energy of this music continues to inspire our listening today, just as it did in the past.

Tenor Marco Angioloni, accompanied by Arnaud Thorette (baroque violin & viola) and Léa Masson (theorbo & baroque guitars), weave a thread connecting oral tradition to the great masters of the Baroque era and modern icons, where folk songs and scholarly compositions engage in dialogue in the same breath.