On Wednesday, 13 May 2026 at 8 p.m., the ensemble L’Homme Armé returns to the Sala Zubin Mehta. Conducting the concert is Maestro Fabio Lombardo.

The programme, entitled Dolcezze amarissime, features a substantial selection of madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi.

Florence, 12 May 2026 - Following the ensemble’s concert at the Maggio last June, the Teatro renews its collaboration with L’Homme Armé, which for more than four decades has been engaged in extensive research, concert performance and recording activity devoted primarily to vocal repertoire from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, with particular attention to Florentine music. Maestro Fabio Lombardo, who made his Maggio debut in spring 2011 at the helm of the ensemble, returns to the podium for this performance.

The evening’s soloists are Giovanna Baviera (mezzo-soprano and viola da gamba), Marta Fumagalli (mezzo-soprano), Andrés Montilla Acurero and Riccardo Pisani (tenors), baritone Gabriele Lombardi, and Giovanni Bellini on chitarrone.

The programme presents a selection of madrigals drawn from the books published by Claudio Monteverdi between 1592 and 1619, works in which the Cremonese composer explores with extraordinary depth the many facets of the experience of love: from the lightness of Augellin to the more tormented and dramatic tones of the Lamento d’Arianna. Dialogues and soliloquies alternate in a continuous expressive quest that places the relationship between poetic text and musical invention at its centre. Alongside verses by Torquato Tasso, Francesco Petrarca and Giovan Battista Marino, particular prominence is given to Giovan Battista Guarini and his Pastor Fido, a work destined to exert a decisive influence on the evolution of European opera.

The concert thus offers a perspective on the madrigal as a “laboratory” for the representation of human emotions, a privileged space for experimentation in which Claudio Monteverdi guided music from the language of the prima prattica toward a new dramatic and expressive conception. Through a musical language capable of combining textual clarity, emotional intensity and formal innovation, the composer brought about an epoch-making transformation in the history of Western music, redefining the relationship between poetry and sound. With Dolcezze amarissime, L’Homme Armé presents a journey through the poetic and musical world of the early seventeenth century, entrusted to performers specialising in Renaissance and Baroque repertoire and conceived as an immersion into the passions, conflicts and anxieties of the love portrayed by Monteverdi.

About L’Homme Armé

Founded in 1982, L’Homme Armé has pursued an intense programme of research, concert performance and recording activity devoted primarily to vocal repertoire from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, with particular attention to Florentine music, while also exploring major masterpieces of early music literature, including the Vespro della Beata Vergine, the Intermedi della Pellegrina and the Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo. Over the years, the ensemble has collaborated with musicians and conductors such as Frans Brüggen, Andrew Lawrence-King, Christophe Coin, Andrew Parrott, Kees Boeke and Alan Curtis. For many years the ensemble’s artistic direction has been entrusted to Fabio Lombardo. In recent years, the group has developed a reflection on the affinities between certain issues raised by “early music” and forms of contemporary musical thought, seeking analogies between the performance practice of early repertoire and that of contemporary music. This reflection has led L’Homme Armé to expand its field of research and performance to include contemporary music as well.