The Endler Concert Series launches the 2017 Season with a concert by the Cape Consort entitled “Enchanting Eyes”.

Baroque aesthetics, obsessed with beauty as a sure sign for the true and therefore loveable, place special emphasis on the eyes: not only do they enable one to behold beauty, very often they appear as especially enticing themselves. Hence, metaphorical appraisals of eyes as stars, rays, lamps, lights and fires abound in Baroque poetry and music. Yet, there is also a dangerous side to eyes, for they may prove to be traps, ensnaring their prey without requiting the love they supposedly promised. With a slight change of emphasis the same metaphors may appear as menacing, cruel and hurtful.

Aptly opening the 2017 Endler Concert Series with a programme commemorating Claudio Monteverdi’s 450th anniversary, the Cape Consort offers a selection of musical gems on the topic of ‘eyes’. Featuring music by Monteverdi and contemporary composers working in a similarly modern style at the time, the concert illuminates what these composers were after: confronting their listeners with the fascinating, persuasive and potentially enslaving nature of beauty, in this case in the guise of music.

Directed by the composer and baroque cellist Hans Huyssen, the Cape Consort are an ensemble dedicated to stylish and historically informed interpretations of Early Music. Join us for a feast of duetti, canzoni and arie by Monteverdi, Carissimi, Frescobaldi, Strozzi and Legrenzi performed by Elsabé Richter and Antoinette Blyth (sopranos), Erik Dippenaar (harpsichord) and Hans Huyssen (baroque cello).

Come listen and be enchanted – at your own peril!