09/05/2026
Today and tomorrow at Berlin's Villa Elisabeth, the Ensemble Cité des Dames will perform the partial German premiere of Kaija Saariaho's TEMPEST SONGBOOK in its version for baroque instruments. The songs form the backbone of the Sonus feminæ concert series' performance SEARCHING FOR JUDITH SHAKESPEARE, with Saariaho entering a dialogue with earlier composers including Elisabetta de Gambarini, Elizabeth Turner, Mrs Philharmonica, and Lady Mary Dering. “Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Judith Shakespeare, the concert explores how voices that seemed lost continue to resonate across time. Music and texts by women create a space in which past and present intertwine.” The performance is directed by Iñigo Giner Miranda� and conducted by Yalda Zamani. More information here: https://www.sonusfeminae.de/8-searching-for-judith-shakespeare
🌩️ TEMPEST SONGBOOK is a collection of arias written on various occasions and for various instrumentations between 1993 and 2014. The project started off as individual birthday pieces written by Saariaho, who handpicked monologues from Shakespeare's play THE TEMPEST for the moment’s dedicatee. Also an opera composer's sketchbook, the cycle rapidly grew into a cohesive whole that samples the classic play in particular for its acoustic drama: sounds abound, orchestrated by the mastermind Prospero and his servant Ariel, and in them the composer found a distillation of the play’s essence as aural theatre-within-theatre. The result is a cycle of six short accompanied songs, which Saariaho also arranged herself for baroque instrumentation, allowing for its combination with early music repertoire.
🎶 Listen to CALIBAN’S DREAM – the heartbreaking aria of aesthetic delight by the 'monster' Caliban, whom other characters consider below such pleasures – performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik conducted by Emilio Pomarico, with baritone Peter Schöne (2 min 30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Cn96SjEqE
CALIBAN
Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again.