Le Lacrime di Eros. Digital edition

Since a musician cannot move others unless he himself is moved, he must steep himself in all the feelings he wishes to arouse in his listeners; he makes them understand his sensations and so moves them best through a shared feeling. In sombre and sad passages, he becomes sombre and sad. And this can be seen and heard in him.

— Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Mediator between desire and its object, the exuberant and repressed Italy of the 17th century revels in the mixture of pain and pleasure of deferred Love. In the Counter-Reformation imagination there is no enjoyment without guilt, no pleasure without punishment; Love can be reached only as the reward for the torment of the soul, and so it will be shown to us, in all its flavours: delicious in Landi, sorrowful in Bovicelli, blissful in Frescobaldi, desperately hopeful in Monteverdi…

Juan Ramón Lara