Before Italians invented opera, the oratorio and the cantata, they created madrigals — highly experimental secular songs for a small group of singers whose voices weave and combine in often unexpected and ever-changing chords. Composed for (and in some cases by) nobility in the Renaissance and early baroque eras, madrigals sought to express through music the emotion of each line and even individual words of a poem — what scholars call “word painting.” This was sometimes taken to a literal degree in the written music: The word “ascending” might be set to a line of ascending notes, for example.
According to Filippo Ciabatti, artistic director of Upper Valley Baroque and the source of that example, madrigals were “one of the most refined musical genres of their time.” The repertoire is close to Ciabatti’s heart: The Windsor resident is a native of Florence, Italy. This Friday and Saturday, April 24 and 25, he will direct Upper Valley Baroque’s first madrigal concerts, in Hanover, N.H., and Woodstock.
The concerts feature five singers and a musician who plays both theorbo, a baroque-era string instrument, and lute. They’ll perform madrigals by three of the form’s most prominent practitioners: Luca Marenzio (1553-1599), Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566-1613) and Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643).
In a recent Zoom presentation hosted by the Vermont Italian Cultural Association, Ciabatti — who also directs Dartmouth College’s orchestral and choral programs and is music director of the Opera Company of Middlebury — delved into the history of each composer. Marenzio, from the area of Brescia in northern Italy, wrote nearly 500 madrigals for cardinals and aristocrats in Rome and Florence. His influence was enormous, including in England, where he sparked a whole new school of madrigal writing.
The same could not be said of Gesualdo, a composer from Venosa in southern Italy whose gruesome behavior overshadowed his musical output until Igor Stravinsky rediscovered him in the 1950s. Gesualdo brazenly murdered his wife and her lover, got away with it (he was nobility), and eventually sequestered himself in a castle along with a dozen young men engaged to whip him daily while he wrote some of the most original songs ever heard.
Monteverdi, who makes up the majority of the program, also whipped up controversy over his innovations in madrigal writing — fortunately, the disagreement was expressed only in written words. The Cremona-born composer (northern Italy again) who worked in Mantua and Venice is credited with bridging the gap between Renaissance and baroque styles. His revolutionary move was to emphasize melodic lines in the soprano and bass ranges — a technique that also led to the invention of opera.
Ciabatti cofounded Upper Valley Baroque with board members Jo Shute and Allan Wieman five years ago. Most of its members specialize in early music and travel from all over the Northeast to perform in five concerts a season — three main stage ones at the Lebanon Opera House in Lebanon, N.H., and the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph, and two chamber concerts at smaller venues.
The chamber concerts have so far been guest-curated and guest-directed by visiting ensembles. “Italian Madrigals” is the first for which Ciabatti is responsible for programming, musician selection and directing. The music is “very specific in terms of skills needed from the musicians,” Ciabatti explained. “I wanted to wait for the right group.”
“You need to be particularly capable and nimble with the Italian language. It’s important the words are heard clearly,” added Mary Gerbi, Upper Valley Baroque’s managing director. Gerbi, who lives in Canton, Mass., has sung with the group from the beginning as well as with Boston Baroque in the past and True Concord Voices & Orchestra in Arizona currently.
Among the five madrigals concert singers is soprano Nola Richardson, who earned a dual master’s degree in vocal performance and early music at the Peabody Institute, a conservatory in Baltimore and a doctorate in early-music voice from Yale University. She will be joined by baritone Sumner Thompson, a regular with major baroque music festivals and groups including Boston Baroque, Blue Heron, the Handel + Haydn Society, and Vermont’s own Burlington Baroque Festival.
Ciabatti described the program as “quintessentially Italian” and noted proudly the key role madrigals have played in the development of Western classical music. Monteverdi in particular, he said, “is as important as Beethoven or Wagner when it comes to advancing the musical language of all time.” È vero. ➆
This article appears in April 22 • 2026.
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