PHAEDRUS // ADONIA

PHAEDRUS // ADONIA
https://www.ensemblephaedrus.com/

Through centuries of re-telling the myth of Venus and Adonis, the ritualistic Adonia festival held in ancient Athens has remained a part of the story which fascinated a number of literary figures during the Italian Renaissance. The ritual was both a lamentation of love cruelly stolen by the hands of fate, and a feverish “final dance” with all of life's short-lived pleasures and desires. The ensemble Phaedrus partakes in an experimental musical staging of the Venus and Adonis mythos as transmitted during the Italian Renaissance by setting extracts of Marino's 1623 Adone and from Girolamo Parabosco's La favola d’Adone, published in 1545, to early frottole music. Phaedrus surrounds these newly arranged frottole with instrumental music inspired by the tragic life of Adonis. Elevating the voice with traverso consort and lute, Adonia aims to find points of commonality between historical aesthetics and contemporary experiences of love, amorality, and ecstatic bereavement.


Recording | Sankt Nikolaus, Hofstetten-Flüh, Switzerland | 16-21 February 2021
Recording, editing & mastering | Fred Schnyder Hiedl
Executive producer | Jan De Winne, Musurgia BV 
Artwork | Venus and Adonis by Giorgio Ghisi (ca. 1570)
Editorial supervision | Susanne Lowien 
Label Manager | Adèle Querinjean 
Ⓟ 2022 Musurgia BV | © 2022 Musurgia BV | PAS 1112 passacaille.be

Camera operators: Clara de Asís, Clara Brunet, Mara Winter
Video editing: Mara Winter