Consort in mini-residency

The Armonico Consort, under founder and artistic director Christopher Monks, will be ensemble in residence for the first weekend of the Petworth Festival.

On Friday, July 15 at 7.30pm in St Mary’s Church, Petworth, they will be masterminding a re-enactment of The Coronation of Henry VIII.

On Saturday, July 16, they conclude their mini-residency by offering a semi-staged version of Purcell’s miniature masterpiece, Dido And Aeneas, together with Carissimi’s heart-rending setting of the biblical story of sacrifice, Jepthe.

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“It’s bizarre,” says Christopher. “From the baroque period, there were hundreds of operas written all over the world, but there were very few written in England. Dido And Aeneas is Purcell’s only complete opera, and it is the most fabulous opera. It is Dido and her love for Aeneas that can never be, and it is just such a perfect piece in every single way. It’s a beautifully-succinct and tragic tale, but it is also quite funny in some ways.

“We have this quite sanitised idea of what the composers from that time must have been like, as very reverential creatures, but actually they were just like the rest of us. They drank far too much, and Purcell wrote some extremely-bawdy music. But the music was also the most stunningly beautiful and the most harmonically adventurous.”

And it is perfect to play it in a church setting: “Churches are very versatile places. They have been up and down in history as places of entertainment, places to eat, places to store your horses and as places that are really quite ethereal. We are now getting back to the point where there is a huge balance in what you can do in these places, and acoustically a church is just perfect for this.”

The concert comes at a good time for the Consort who are currently celebrating their tenth anniversary, well established now as one of the fastest-growing arts organisations of their type in the country.

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Since its debut performance with Dame Emma Kirkby in 2001, Armonico Consort now perform over 50 of its programmes all over Europe, free workshops to over 10,000 children each year, and has over 600 children singing each week in one of its AC Academy children’s choirs.

“The past couple of years have been a very, very tricky time for all arts organisations, and you have to think really, really hard about what you are doing. Because we are quite a large charity in terms of music provision for children in areas where they might not manage to get much music, we see it very much as a duty and we have managed to gain support form a very wide range of supporters and funders. It has been a rollercoaster ride, but we have come out of it stronger for it with great new partners and supporters.”

More details on www.petworthfestival.org.uk.