Cantata Profana’s next mainstage event, Lucretia, features CP superstars Annie Rosen, Hannah Collins, and Arash Noori in Handel’s utterly striking solo cantata La Lucrezia. Handel’s original telling of the classic story still speaks so powerfully to modern ears because it takes an unusually sustained look inside Lucretia’s mind immediately following her rape; spinning out from the moment her power is stripped away to the moment she is able to muster up the courage and resolve to act.
All that she sings is heard by no one, including the gods and demons that are heedless to her pleas for death. She is forced to take responsibility for the “sin” of violence against her with respect to her father, her husband, and society. The intensity of emotion and drama in the Handel explodes outwards into works by Respighi, Britten, Joan Baez, François Sarhan, Shirley Collins, and the 12th century poet-composers of the original Carmina Burana.
Cantata Profana is a fearless vocal and instrumental chamber ensemble now finishing its season of presenting “every kind of classical music you might imagine” (New Yorker).
