‘Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe’

Arcadia is a utopian land full of flowers, fruit and forests, clear water, birdsong, and an eternal summer. These elements were part of an ideal landscape even back in classical antiquity, a landscape that would once have been there in a lost Golden Age at the beginning of human history. Underlying Herreweghe’s programme is the novel of the same name by Neapolitan Jacopo Sannazaro, one of the most widely read works of the 16th century that profoundly influenced European poetry, painting, and music. Thus, the book stimulated the imagination of composers such as Marenzio, Monteverdi, and Rossi for beautiful madrigals. A throwback to Collegium Vocale Gent, which proves that it also firmly holds its ground in finely crafted structures.