Unholy Wars, the third offering in Festival O23, is an opera of a kind, but one that requires some explanation.

Most of the score is an assemblage of musical pieces by late Renaissance and early Baroque composers including the Caccinis (Giulio and daughter, Francesca), d’India and others—some are excerpts from longer works, and all of them brief, though Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda is, I believe, performed complete.

Interspersed are interludes by contemporary composer Mary Kouyoumdjian, whose style riffs on aspects of early music, particularly through wordless choral lamentations—while also sounding much more modern, including the use of amplification…

Click here to read the full post at Parterre Box.