Cantato a tempo dell’affetto del animo, e non a quello della mano. Sung to the tempo of the soul’s emotions, and not to that of the hand, Monteverdi instructed his soprano for his great madrigal Lamento della ninfa. Shrouded in a white dress, New Zealand soprano Natasha Wilson sang the recitative-like plaint with a raw hostility, stalking the heather-strewn stage as if compelled to retrace her steps. Her wounded first-person lament, underpinned by a descending ground bass figure, wound itself around the beautifully blended commiserations of US tenor Karim Sulayman, Danish baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen, and Australian tenor Spencer Darby. When the piece drew to a close – with Wilson’s plangent cries subsiding to the note from which it began – the audience remained silent, sharing in the mood of despairing acquiescence.

^{Natasha Wilson in Lamento della ninfa. Photo: supplied.}

This latest staged venture reunites the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra with director Constantine Costi and his creative team after their fresh take on Handel’s Messiah earlier this year. Here they presented three linked, highly-ritualised dramatic tableaux exploring the human messiness of love, grief and addiction. Setting Monteverdi’s masterpiece against a scrim...