Dolce Languore

There is a state of a summer day when the heat becomes almost sweet. When you do not want to rush anywhere, when time slows down and the body asks for shade, and the thoughts — for silence. 17th-century Italy knew this state well and had a word for it: languore — languor. Not weakness, but a special way of existing: between sleep and wakefulness, between a sigh and a smile.

Baroque music was born in this space. The sweet pain of love in Monteverdi, the light seduction in the arias of Cavalli and Sances, the melancholy of a passacaglia that stretches like a shadow from an old wall — and suddenly, a joyful chaconne that bursts in like a gust of wind. LC:EME brings together in one program music that knows: the strongest feelings are never unambiguous. An August evening.

The Metropolitan’s House. Baroque violin, cello, recorders, theorbo, harpsichord — and voices that sing of things that have not changed in four hundred years.