If Opera

Our double bill features the early Baroque master, Giacomo Carissimi and his oratorio, Historia Jonae, the story of Jonah and the whale, which will be immediately followed by a semi-staging of Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, written for the Venetian carnival season of 1624 and adapted from an episode in Tasso’s epic about the First Crusade. The Christian knight, Tancredi, challenges a Saracen to fight to the death, only to discover his vanquished opponent is the woman he loves.