Listening to the Lament of the Nymph or to Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, in the musically-cherished versions by Fahmi Alqhai and the Accademia del Piacere, I was able to notice that, strange though it may seem, time ceases to be. Quoting Fray Luis de León: “the air becomes still and dresses with beauty and with spotless light…” Calmness, beauty, special light. Hardly can someone express the sorrow for the beloved’s absence in a more sensitive, dramatic way as Monteverdi does in his Lament of the Nymph. His music most gently accompanies the lines in which the betrayed woman sadly complains. An unrequited love story, inspired on a canzonetta by Ottavio Rinuccini, to which Monteverdi sets a kind of music that combines melancholy and reflection. “So, in lovers’ hearts, Love mixes fire and ice.” Bellissimo.

Juan Ángel Vela del Campo