Lagrime di San Pietro is the final masterpiece of Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso. It sets 21 poems by Luigi Tansillo on the general theme of Peter’s regret at betraying Christ and his lifelong regret for that. They also deal with the end of life when the nearness of death and the pain of living make one long for death. There’s even one poem where Peter regrets that he, who has seen Christ raise the dead and heal the lame, can no longer remember it happening. Unsurprisingly they were banned by the Catholic Church and so di Lasso can have had no expectation that the work, composed in the last weeks of his life would ever be performed. Structurally the work is seven part polyphony sung a capella. There are 20 eight line madrigals plus a motet.
February always seems to be a busy month and the first half is shaping up that way. Things kick off on the 1st with the Sellars staging of di Lassus’ Lagrime di San Pietro at Koerner. On the 3rd Danika Lorèn is curating a concert at Heliconian for UoT Music. It’s called A Few Figs from Thistles, it’s at 7.30pm and it’s free. We are promised new songs by Danika based on poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Tekahionwake (E. Pauline Johnson) and Lorna Crozier.
The second half of January kicks off with the COC’s 
John Adams’ 2005 opera Doctor Atomic, about the development of the first atomic weapon, comes over very effectively on CD. I think this is because, in essence, it’s more oratorio than opera. There’s very little action in the stage version. So little in fact that Peter Sellars staged the original production rather the way he stages oratorios 
operaramblings 