RIAM Opera & Vocal Studies: Monteverdi: Il ballo delle ingrate (1608) / Falvetti: Il diluvio universale (1682)

Chris Moran, director

David Adams and Andrew Synnott, conductors

Owen Gilhooley-Miles, artistic producer

In 2027, RIAM Opera presents a double bill of Baroque works wrestling with questions that define our century: climate collapse, the repression of women, and the need for us to “apprendete pietà”, to learn compassion.

Il ballo delle ingrate (The Dance of the Ungrateful Women) is an all-too-familiar portrait of the misogyny at the core of power. Summoned by Pluto and Venus, a chorus of “ingrates” – unmarried women – return from the Underworld to plead for pity. Commissioned by the Duke of Mantua as a warning to the women of his court, Monteverdi’s music finds amid this cruelty a humanity that sings to us across the centuries.

Il diluvio universale (The Great Flood) is the Biblical story of the Flood, reimagined with characters including Divine Justice, Human Nature, and a delightful Death. Rediscovered in Sicily after 300 years and nearly destroyed by natural disasters, Falvetti’s oratorio is here given its first-ever staging as an opera.

Sung in Italian with English surtitles

Presented in collaboration with IADT Dún Laoghaire