Newberry Consort & Haymarket Opera Present Music by Woman 9/22-10/1

CHICAGO — This September, The Newberry Consort and Haymarket Opera Company will offer a mini-festival of 17th-century music by women composers. From Sept. 22 to 24, The Consort will present In the Castle of the Moon: The Music of Sophie Elisabeth, the Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and Sept. 29 through Oct. 1, Haymarket will present a period production of Francesca Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina, which will feature The Newberry Consort’s sackbut quartet as well as other Newberry Consort artists.

Both concerts will feature members of each ensemble performing with the other in a first-of-its-kind collaboration.

The Newberry Consort’s performance, In the Castle of the Moon, will feature the music of Sophie Elisabeth, a 17th century German duchess, composer, poet, and patron of the arts. As a lover of music, Sophie Elisabeth organized countless performances at her court, including large masquerades, plays, and ballets, for which she often wrote music and poetry. Through her extensive patronage, she ended up influencing an entire generation of German musicians.

More than 100 of her pieces of music have survived, but despite her accomplishments, Sophie Elisabeth’s music is rarely performed. In fact, Liza Malamut, The Newberry Consort’s artistic director, said she had never heard of Sophie Elisabeth until she was doing research for one of last year’s concerts.

“I came across her name while I was doing research for Madama Europa in the Gonzaga Court last fall, and I performed two of her pieces for the first time later that year. They were absolutely beautiful works, and it gave me the idea to program this concert and draw attention to her significant—and thus far overlooked—artistic talents,” Malamut said.

The concert will include several of Sophie Elisabeth’s own works, as well as other music by her teacher and some of her patrons, performed by four trombones, strings, and a continuo section with harpsichord. Some of the performers in the concert include tenor Matthew Dean; soprano Erica Schuller; alto Laura Pudwell, bass baritone Jonathan Woody; and Allison Cullin-Ellison on violin; Deborah Fox on theorbo; Allison Monroe on violin, vielle and rebec; Kate Schuldiner on viola de gamba; and Malamut, Ben David Aronson, Paul Von Hoff and Garrett Lahr on sackbuts (early trombones).

In the Castle of the Moon will be performed on Sept. 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Hyde Park Union Church in Hyde Park, on Sept. 23 at Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University in the Loop; and on Sept. 24 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston. Tickets are $45 or $65 for reserved seating.

For the following concert, Haymarket Opera will perform Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina, an opera that was first performed in Florence in 1625 about a deceptive enchantress named Alcina and a captive knight who is imprisoned on Alcina’s magical island, which is also inhabited by gods, nymphs, monsters, shepherds, damsels and more. The singers include mezzo-soprano Sophie Michaux and tenor Scott Bruncheen, as well as Nathalie Colas, Hannah De Priest, Quinn Middleman, Michelle Mariposa, Justin Berkowitz, Michael St. Peter, Schyler Vargas, and Dorian McCall.

The music will be performed on 17th-century period instruments led from the keyboard by Haymarket Artistic Director Craig Trompeter, with an expanded basso continuo team including renowned lutenist Lucas Harris.

The Newberry Consort’s four sackbut players — Malamut, Aronson, Hoff and Lahr — will also join Haymarket’s ensemble.

“This is such an exciting chance to bring to light some of the brilliant works that were composed by women more than 400 years ago,” Malamut said. “I think audiences will love hearing this beautiful and inspiring music and realizing just how influential women were in early music.”

The Haymarket concerts will be held on Sept. 29 and 30 at 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 1 at 3 p.m. at Holtschneider Performance Center at DePaul University in Chicago. Tickets are $50 to $95 and are available at www.haymarketopera.org.

EVENT DESCRIPTION

In the Castle of the Moon: The Music of Sophie Elisabeth, the Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg

Sophie Elisabeth was a 17th-century German duchess who was also a composer, musician, and poet. She influenced generations of German musicians through her patronage of the arts, yet her music has almost never been performed in modern times. In this program, The Newberry Consort will feature music written by Sophie Elisabeth as well as her teacher, Heinrich Schütz, and some of her patrons. Repertoire will include strophic songs, instrumental sinfonias, dances, sacred concertos, and song-ballets for singers, viola da gamba, keyboards, lute, and a consort of strings and trombones. The soundscape recalls that of Sophie Elisabeth’s “Castle of the Moon”—an interpretation of the name “Lüneburg” by the dukes who lived there, as well as an allusion to female power.

Friday, Sept. 22, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at Hyde Park Union Church, 5600 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago

Saturday, Sept. 23 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago

Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023 at 4 p.m. at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 939 Hinman Ave., Evanston

Tickets: $45, $65 for preferred seating, $10 for students with a valid student ID.

To purchase tickets please visit www.newberryconsort.org.

About the Newberry Consort:

The Newberry Consort brings together singers and instrumentalists of the highest caliber to create historically informed performances of music from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque, and beyond. By integrating historical performance and research with contemporary themes and multimedia, we inspire audiences, musicians, and scholars by providing a window into earlier times and diverse cultures. The Consort continues to uplift Chicago’s early music community through mentorships, teaching, and engagement of local artists.