Continuo Connect — Concert // Royal Baroque: Music and Medicine

Royal Baroque present 'Music and Medicine' - a programme featuring music by Marais, Lully, Froberger, Couperin, and Zelenka, reflecting the composers' illnesses, anxieties concerning surgery without anaesthesia, condition of the 18th century 'NHS', remedies of the time, and the healing power of music. The centrepiece will be the 'Tableau de l'opération de la taille' (1725) by Marais, a musical depiction of the stages of Marais’ own operation for removing a urinary bladder, without anaesthesia. The piece is written in a form of storytelling, where music is interrupted by the narrator’s commentary on a gruesome account of the operation.