Along the way they encounter intimate chamber performances, live art projected on the factory’s walls and ceilings, the extraordinary costumes of Karen Cochet and Bianca Bulley, and sublime music from the Renaissance to now. Performed in the raw industrial setting of the Urban Art Projects foundry (UAP) in Northgate, the production invites audiences to move through the space as six soloists, twelve chorus and the UQ Pulse Chamber Orchestra bring to life the passions and desires of lovers and fighters of the past four hundred years. To highlight how these songs speak to us today, this innovative production by Opera Queensland and The University of Queensland School of Music, places Monteverdi’s madrigals beside contemporary songs of love and war by composers as diverse as ABBA, Beyoncé, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie, reimagined for a full orchestra and ensemble of eighteen voices. In many ways they are like the first pop songs, exploring all the intensity of feeling that comes with falling in and out of love. The “war” of the title is often referring to the fighting emotions of the heart as well as the violence of battlefield. With this as his goal, in Songs of Love and War, Monteverdi conjures the passion that deep love has to offer, with a collection of songs as ferocious as they are sublime. His desire was to express the third – agitation. Up until this point, he believed, the first two passions – the soft and the moderate – had been well captured by composers.
Intent on changing the way stories were told through song, he set out to write music that expressed the third “missing” passion. In 1638, renowned Italian composer, Claudio Monteverdi, published his book of songs titled, Madrigals of Love and War (Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi). Presented by Opera Queensland and The University of Queensland School of Music in association with Urban Art Projects.
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