SONNAMBULA

The The Hispanic Society Museum & Library
and Sonnambula present

Apolo y Dafne

a zarzuela by Sebastián Durón and Juan de Navas (c. 1697)

Monday, June 28, 2021, 6PM (EST)

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TEXTS and TRANSLATIONS:

duron_texts_and_translations.pdf
File Size:	389 kb
File Type:	pdf

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Briana Hunter as AMOR

Camille Zamora as DAFNE

Nola Richardson as APOLO

NEW EPISODES AVAILABLE

Sonnambula's first CD, "Leonora Duarte (1610–1678): The Complete Works," was released on JUNE 7 (2019; Centaur Records). The first complete recording of Duarte's seven Sinfonias (rec. 2016), and the first record for us, it's a tremendous honor to bring the works to life. The disc features a spoken essay by Teju Cole and is artfully mastered by Marlan Barry. Here is a preview track:

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RECENT PRESS

Image © The New Yorker. Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro.

Alex Ross's beautiful meditation on our Duarte concert with Teju Cole at The Cloisters — from the February 18/25, 2019 issue of The New Yorker:

"The absence of historical celebrities hardly hurt attendance... It’s tempting to describe the Sinfonias as jewel-like in construction. You could also compare them to Vermeer’s paintings, small in scale and infinite in depth... For a remarkable hour on a cold February night, their world came alive again."

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RECENT HIGHLIGHTS

2018–2019 Ensemble-in-Residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

View the Met Season.

Photos of Sonnambula at The Cloisters are by Paula Lobo for The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sonnambula performs rare old music written for the viola da gamba (viol) and similar instruments.

Those of us who grew up playing music are likely more familiar with what music historians call "violin family" instruments—violins, violas, and cellos—in a modern setup, with innovations that have evolved over the last two hundred years to fill modern concert halls with sound: steel strings, end pins, chin rests, and modern bows.

Viols possess none of these artifacts of industrialization. Their delicate bodies are made with thin slabs of wood, strung with gut strings and frets, and are played da gamba, or 'on the leg'. In short, these instruments are meant for the court, for the domestic interior, and for the cultivation of a quiet beauty, the sort of which is difficult to come by in today's loud and fast-paced world.