Il Combattimento di Tancred e Clorinda FRI 21 SEP 6 PM

Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

In Claudio Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, we are presented with the devastating story of Tancredi and Clorinda, who meet one another on the edges of the battlefield at dusk for a duel to death. The story is made tragic through the hubris that drives them to forego opportunities to reveal themselves to one another, ego denying the knowledge that would not only prevent Tancredi from unknowingly battling a woman, but the very woman with whom he has fallen in love. While the original story is pointedly historical — crusades, Christianity, and conversion are main themes — a broader lesson of (not) knowing the other is poignant. Indeed, Combattimento asks important questions about who the “other” really is, drawing out the complicated and often double nature between friend and foe, neighbour and stranger, lover and enemy. Through the blindness caused by Tancredi and Clordina’s stubborness and myopia, we are witness to an unravelling of one’s enemy as an unravelling of oneself, prompting us to reconsider some of the most urgent questions of our own fraught times about perspective, politics, and the place of pride.

– Director’s Note from Sasha Amaya