Freeing the Muse

'Freeing the Muse' explores Renaissance ideas of female beauty as shaped by women themselves. Bringing together solo songs and five-voice madrigals by Maddalena Casulana, Raphaella Alleotti & Francesca Caccini, the programme places female creativity firmly at its centre, revealing women who wrote, performed and shaped musical culture in their own time.

These works sit alongside madrigals by Giaches de Wert, Cipriano de Rore and Luzzasco Luzzaschi; music forged in close dialogue with exceptional female singers, whose virtuosity transformed the sound of late-16th-century Italy. Here, the “muse” is not a silent ideal but an active presence. Fieri celebrates the boldness, imagination and artistic authority of women whose voices resound throughout this repertoire.

"The album enchants from the start, both by Casulana’s superb polyphonic writing and by the ensemble’s spectacular musicianship". - Early Music America, 2024 (Karen M Cook)