The Toronto Consort's season finale is a staging of Orazio Vecchi's outrageous madrigal comedy, The Night Games of Siena (Le Veglie di Siena) at 8:00 pm on April 20 and 21 at Trinity St Paul's Centre.
This lavish musical entertainment comes to us by way of early 17th-century Italy and combines the talents of actor and stage director Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, dancers Anne-Marie Gardette and Pierre Chartrand, and commedia dell'arte artist Jean-François Gagnon. They join the members of the Consort for a spectacular Renaissance revue complete with period costumes and masks.
In The Night Games of Siena composer Orazio Vecchi combines music with characters from commedia dell'arte, the 400 year-old Italian theatrical tradition that brought us such characters as Arlecchino (Harlequin), Pulcinella (Punch) and Scaramouche. The result is a form of musical entertainment that pre-dates opera, and combines musical riddles, mimicry, double entendres and lusty play focused on the theme of love.
The Night Games of Siena features vocal music in the form of madrigals and canzonette, dance music from the period, and instrumental selections performed by a renaissance band of five string players, two lutes, two recorders and percussion. The programme includes selections by composers Orazio Vecchi, Giovanni Gastoldi and French dancing master Pierre-Francisque Caroubel.
Commedia dell-arte relies on the improvisatory skills and comic talents of the performers, and the Toronto Consort has invited two of the country's leading exponents of this art: Jean-François Gagnon is a multi-talented actor, coach and fight director who also directs theatre and opera, and coaches actors and singers in the art of stage movement. He teaches at the National Theatre School, Concordia University, and the Université de Montréal. A specialist in stage combat, he trains members of Fight Directors Canada. Recent credits include director for Mozart's Marriage of Figaro (Sherbrooke), and a lead role in Scaramouche for Théâtre Denise-Pelletier in Montreal. Gagnon is a founding member of the Baie des Chaleurs Chamber Music Festival.
Choreographer, stage director and dancer Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière has been thrilling audiences in Canada and abroad with her performances of historical dance, and commedia dell'arte. She is the artistic director of Theâtre Lavallière & Jabot in Montréal, associate partner of Suzie LeBlanc's Academie Baroque de Montréal and associate artist with Toronto Masque Theatre. She holds a degree in music and studied acting, specializing in commedia dell'arte and mime. Lacoursière has created two shows that toured Canada (Barocambolesque and Folies d'Europe) with Les Jeunesses Musicales du Canada in collaboration with L'Ensemble Caprice. She is a professor of gesture and baroque dance at l'Université de Montréal and has also taught at Stanford and Indiana University.
