A new version with English words by Edward Dent prepared and directed by John Lowe
BBC Midland Singers with narration written and spoken by Alvar Lidell
From the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham
A studio performance: Friday at 7.5 L'Amfiparnaso is a set of fourteen madrigals, grave and gay, depicting various episodes, sentimental or ribald, in the lives of some of the stock pantomime characters of the Commedia dell'arte 'The spectacle of which I apeak,' wrote Vecchi in the prologue to the work, ' is seen througth the mind, into which i<t enters through the ears, not through the eyes. When it first appeared in 1594 the characters were differentiated by means of dialects. This performance substitutes for dialect the use of three differentiated groups of five singers, each with soprano, contralto, two tenors, and bass. J.L.