Ensemble Agamemnon invites us to a concert designed to awaken the senses. Since 2015, the Baroque ensemble has specialised in historically informed performance of 17th-century Italian vocal and instrumental repertoire. This time, they propose an unusual sensory experience: a “concert of aromas”, in which music by composers such as MONTEVERDI, PALESTRINA, D’INDIA and STROZZI is accompanied by the finest fragrances of the East.
This is no mere metaphor. During the performance, specially designed fragrance diffusers will be activated in complete harmony with the musical works, filling the hall with scents created by the French writer and historian of perfumery Alexandre Helwani, following traditional methods of preparation.
In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composers drew on poetic references to flowers and their intoxicating perfumes as allegories for the intense emotions experienced by the human soul, in both sacred and secular music. Myrrh, saffron and cinnamon in the Song of Songs; the fragrant earth of mythical Arcadia; and the Arabian scents evoked, for instance, in Luigi Rossi’s Lamento, all attest to the fascination that perfumes exerted on Italian culture of the 16th and 17th centuries. Frankincense, myrrh, the Damask rose and other precious Eastern blossoms — fragrances revered since antiquity for their power to stir the imagination — become here the stimulus for a unique musical journey through time and memory, so closely intertwined with the sense of smell.
