Il canto di Orfeo (chorus master: Jacopo Facchini)

The vocal and instrumental ensemble Il Canto di Orfeo was founded in 2005 by Gianluca Capuano. Initially, one of its main goals was to perform the music of Giacomo Carissimi, his students, and his contemporaries. It was in this context that the ensemble added the most important works from the period between 1600 and 1750 to its repertoire, also rediscovering forgotten treasures of Renaissance and Baroque music. Il Canto di Orfeo comprises specialists in historically informed performance practice and has performed at such major early music festivals throughout Europe as Musica e Poesia a San Maurizio in Milan, the Royaumont Festival, the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona, the Bach Festival in Lausanne, Milano Arte Musica, and Musica negli Horti in Tuscany. From 2006 to 2009, it presented the series “Pietre Sonore” at the Basilica di San Simpliciano in Milan, and in 2019 it performed Caldara’s La morte di Abel at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Il Canto di Orfeo’s repertoire extends to contemporary music and includes stage works. The male choir took part in the world premiere of Fabio Vacchi’s Teneke at La Scala in Milan in 2007, while the entire ensemble performed Alexander Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart there in 2013 (and in Lyon a short time later) and participated in the monumental La Scala production of Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten in 2015. The ensemble’s choir has recorded the CD Rhapsody with Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco and singer Varduhi Abrahamyan.

June 2022