The Associazione Culturale Musica Venezia and the Alliance Française di Venezia are participating in the celebration of MarzoDonna 2015, organized by Servizio Cittadinanza delle Donne e Culture delle Differenze del Comune di Venezia, with a concert in honor of the 350th Anniversary of the Birth of Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729), French composer and harpsichord player living between the 17th and 18th Century.

Considered “the miracle of the century” already as a child, she grew up in the court of Louis XIV. The Sun King also continued to support her as an adult, although the musician did not follow the King to Versailles, but remained in Paris, and never stopped composing and performing in public theatres as well as in aristocratic salons. In contrast to many virtuosos of the keyboard who limit themselves to writing for their own instrument, La Guerre also wrote theatre works, cantatas, both sacred and profane, songs, sonatas a tre and solo works.

In the program we will hear some Pièces de clavessin (1687), works of great elegance and formal equilibrium. Elisabeth Jacquet was the first woman in France to compose for the opera house, the lyric tragedy Céphale et Procris (1694) and the ballet Les Jeux à l’Honneur de la Victoire. She also wrote numerous pages of vocal music: twelve sacred cantatas, in which she succeeds in combining the seriousness of the subject with an expressive personal style, three secular cantatas and a collection of arias of various types. The life of Elisabeth Jacquet intersects with that of a very well known favorite of the Sun King’s court, Marin Marais, a productive composer of lyric tragedies as well as of chamber music. In this concert we will hear Pièces de Viole and La Gamme et Autres Morçeaux de Symphonie. The concert will also include harpsichord music by the great French composer of the next generation, Jean-Philippe Rameau.

The Ensemble La Dafne was founded in 2010 profiting from the experience of the solo and chamber performance of some of the best musicians active in the Italian and European concert ambience. The objective of the group is the study and performance of the Italian, French and German instrumental and vocal repertoire of the 17th and 18th century.