Woes in the Dead of Night: Atalante @ BEMF, 6/13/13

The ensemble Atalante was formed by lironist Erin Headley as part of a life-long exploration of the lirone and its repertoire. The lirone, one could be forgiven for not knowing, is a stringed instrument in the cello or bass gamba vein, only with a big flat headstock and a much wider fretboard to accommodate its many more strings.  The instrument had about a 200 year heyday, and was particularly popular among 17th century Italian composers following in the footsteps of Monteverdi. Several of these were based in Rome -- Rossi, Marazzoli, et al. -- and it is around their work that Atalante's first album, Lamentarium, is focused.

And it was with a program centered around Lamentarium that Atalante made its BEMF debut on Thursday night of the festival at Boston's Emmanuel Church, in an exploration of the baroque lament as form. On this night -- it was the late slot at 11pm -- the ensemble consisted of singers Theodora Baka (mezzo) and Nadine Balbeisi (soprano), Siobhan Armstrong's triple harp, Elizabeth Kenny on chitarrone, and Kristian Bezuidenhout on harpsichord and organ. Erin Headley should of course have been there, but sadly had suffered a mishap earlier in the week and was placed on the dl (as they say in baseball) for the remainder of the festival. Bass gambist David Morris was enlisted to fill her place, and although the lirone's particular resonances were surely missed, the glass half full was that at this festival (and perhaps only at this one) such a fine replacement, let alone any at all, could be improvised on short notice.

Being something of a Gesamtkunstwerk in and of itself, the ensemble performed the material semi-staged, with singers in costume. Baka and Balbeisi wore 17th century-style satin gowns purposely reminiscent of women in Caravaggio paintings, and accessorized according to character: a mirror for the aging Helen, a cup/urn for Artemisia, period-specific notion of oriental headgear for the bereft  Zaida. (Having ornately-carved ecclesiastical furniture on hand was an additional bonus.) The singers entered black-hooded, and began with Misereris omnium, Domine, part of a larger work by Domenico Mazzocchi, which set the tone at appropriately goth and nicely displayed the singers' individually lovely and well-matched voices. In the works that followed, whether solo or two-hander with both character and narration, Baka's approach proved more dramatic while Balbeisi's was more rhetorical -- though this could have had something to do with the characters they were portraying. Baka had Artemisia, after all, and a lengthy externalized consideration of drinking one's beloved's ashes...well...let's just say that's a journey.

Vocal works were interspersed with instrumentals. The playing on these seemed tight despite the roster change, and the standout, for me, was Luigi Rossi's Passacaglia dell' Seigneur Louigi, which opens the Lamentarium album as a lirone showcase but here featured Armstrong's triple harp and Bezuidenhout's harpsichord. If that was also an improvised fix, then it was beautifully done.

Some of the pieces on the program, it seems, have yet to be recorded, so we'll hope for another CD release down the line, and for Atalante's return at BEMF 2015.