Search - Salamone Rossi, Min-Young Kim , Benjamin Wolff , Dongsok Shin , Isaiah Sheffer Mark Steinberg :: Lady Take a Lover Now: Music and Poetry from the Ghettos of Renaissance Italy

Amorous, irreverent, solemn and devotional -- the poems and music of the Jews of Renaissance Italy are transformed here into a time capsule in sound. Along with a love of entertainment and theater, the Jews of Rome, Florence, Venice and Mantua shared a lively view of religion, love, women, and the fragility of life. Salamone Rossi, friend and colleague of Claudio Monteverdi in the Gonzaga court of Mantua, was the most important Jewish composer of the Renaissance. His Sonatas and Sinfonie, Gagliarde and Brandi, as fresh today as they were four hundred years ago, are here paired for the first time with the beautiful and evocative words of his countrymen.