The document provides a review of the Canzone exhibition at Fortyfivedownstairs, which featured linocut prints by Angela Cavalieri based on the songs and operas of Claudio Monteverdi. The prints told visual stories of the pieces of music. The exhibition also included live music performances of Monteverdi's works through the programs Cantations and Variations. Canzone aimed to bridge the past and present by translating centuries-old music into contemporary art and presenting it in new ways. It provided a surreal experience of being surrounded by the artworks while listening to performances of the same music.

1. Canzone: Music as Storytelling review
Flows of black words on each side of the canvas, alphabets and music notes in between, with
a dark blue background of words and letters. It may not be immediate, but you will see the
words forming two faces singing to each other which represents Roman Emperor and Poppea,
from L’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), with the lyrics of the song, Pur
ti miro pur ti godo at the background.
Titled Pur ti miro pur ti godo, this is the first canvas most audience would come across in
Fortyfivedownstairs, stretching more than 1 metre in height. It is also the first linocut Angela
Cavalieri printed in the Canzone: Music as Storytelling exhibition as part of the Melbourne
Festival, and categorised under visual art for a good reason.
Just like Pur ti miro pur ti godo, all the prints Cavalieri made in the Canzone series are based
on the song, madrigals and operas composed by Claudio Monteverdi, the master of the 1600s
Baroque music.
Monteverdi was one of the earlier musicians to include myths and historical events in music,
making it like a mini opera (if you understand Italian, of course). “What attracted me to the
opera, I’m not an opera buff or an expert, was that it’s visual, it’s drama, there’s a story. Why
Monteverdi was great was because he’s one of the first to use historical stories and myths,”
Cavalieri explained. It is an approach called ‘word painting’, which Cavalieri found really
inspiring, as shown in her monumental prints in Canzone.
Cavalieri used words from the songs as the building blocks of each of her art work, as if leaving
us clues to find out the title and story of the piece. “The colours are symbolic, the words are
symbolic,” said Cavalieri. It will take more than a glance to understand each piece, to see the
story and history of both the print and the song it was based on, because each piece is
overwhelmed with meaning.

2. The Combattimento is one of the linocut print with a beautifully tragic story. Combattimento
is based on Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (The Combat of Tancredi and Clorinda),
a madrigal Monteverdi wrote for Torquato Tasso’s poem La gerusalemme liberate. It was a
love story of Tancredi and Clorinda, who are on opposite sides of the war between the
Christians and Muslims. In a twist of fate, Tancredi kills Clorinda in a duel without realising
his opponent’s identity, only to find out when her helmet falls off. Combattimento had blocks
of texts from the poem to build a huge fort, with clumps of scrambled words on the top and the
bottom of the fort to represent each warring state, which was inspired by the dissonance from
the madrigal.
Meanwhile, Ragionando has more reference to a poetry of love. Featuring two different flow
of words, one blue and the other black, intertwining one another, flowing in and out of each
other, overlapping one another. Ragionando is based on the song Con che soavita from
Monteverdi’s Seventh Book of Madrigals that says: to kiss the words and to speak the kisses.
It described how when one kisses the lips, one will be deprived of the words spoken from the
lips. “I just imagine what the words and the music would look like being intertwined when two
people’s words or lips meet,” Cavalieri said.
It is the ballads of poetry and music expressed through the dances of printed words, bringing
us into a surreal world of textual patterns of the past. As the artistic director of
Fortyfivedownstairs, Mary Lou Jelbart described, “It doesn’t look traditional, but it certainly
is tradition and history that creates the background of the work.”
AngelaCavalieri(secondfromleft) explainingher
worksto an audience.Canvasbehind:Guerra.

3. However, Canzone is not just a gallery or exhibition. What truly makes Canzone unique is the
collaboration with its music programs Cantations and Variations. “To me, art and music are
not separate,” said Jelbart, “I think that the division between the arts are quite artificial”.
Canzone is about music as much as art, presenting Monteverdi’s baroque music in different
ways.
“It just seemed to me that this was the perfect time to do that, particularly I wanted to have
something very different to the usual music in a gallery. Sometimes you find a quartet playing
or some classical music, but not a series of events,” she said.
Cantations is performed by Monteverdi scholar and harpsichordist John O’Donnell and
Accademia Arcadia, which stays as historically accurate as possible. O’Donnell would explain
the history or meaning of each song, mostly with humour, before performing it on a classical
organ made by Marc Nobel, which had a truly traditional baroque sound, while Academia
Arcadia formed a mini choir with four singers. Sticking close to the origins of the exhibition,
Cantations mostly features works from Monteverdi, with two works from Picchi and
Frescobaldi, who were Baroque musicians as well.
Variations is performed by world renowned pianist Sonya Lifschitz and experimental music
group Press Play. Unlike Cantations, Variations presents the baroque masterpieces in a more
contemporary context, “re-interpreted through the prism of modernity”. Variations is done
more similarly to an opera, where the songs will flow without a clear break, and included the
The organ made by Marc Nobel JohnO’Donnellused
for Cantations.

4. works of several other artists such as Bach and Saariaho. “They are using Monteverdi as a
starting point and then bringing it into the contemporary context” said Cavalieri.
Canzone is a surreal experience, to be brought in and out of different perspectives of the same
works. To listen to live performances of Monteverdi’s music while being surrounded by
Cavalieri’s art works about the very same music gives the event a touch of magic.
Canzone resembles a bridge for us to cross between the past and the present. It translated
several hundred years old music into art of our contemporary world, and presenting it through
a different light for the contemporary society. As John O’Donnell explained, “the baroque was
a very big break from the past. And I suppose, the art of the last hundred years has been a very
big break with those before it. That says how they’re parallel to modern art in many ways
through itself.”
For Cavalieri, this ‘bridge’ is very natural and completely logical. “I don’t think you can create
something without referring to the past. “Everyone looks back at something that came before
them, and you build on it and create your own stories.” She then explained that even the
renaissance did the same, presenting the Ancient Greek and Roman Empire in their own
contemporary art.
Jelbart found that fact possibly the true appeal of Canzone to her. “It’s the connection to the
past which is important for us. We are the product of those centuries of evolution. And we
benefit from the creativity of those music” she said.
Marrying poetry and art, bridging the past with the present. This is what Canzone is about.
(1144 words)

5. Critical Reflection
The whole experience of Canzone felt personal to me in many ways, from the exhibited art to
the interviews. I did not expect feeling a connection with Canzone as I did as I am not a big fan
of abstract art, but the story behind each art piece and the collaboration with Cantations and
Variations completely changed my mind.
When I went to the gallery, I had made sure to ask myself the first questions Messham-Muir
(2014) listed in his article: what can I see just by looking at this art work? Pur ti miro pur ti
godo was the first art work I came upon in the gallery, and my interest suddenly peaked. It felt
surreal, but I saw music. Then on, I decided to do my article on Canzone.
The next question I answered was: how was it made (Messham-Muir, 2014)? I have tried
linocut prints during secondary school and I knew that producing linocut in the monumental
scale Angela Cavalieri did was an extremely difficult task. And Cavalieri even had a video
published about the process of creating the linocut print, explaining how she needed a group
of artist to help her produce each print due the scale of her works. Mary Lou Jelbart also took
the time to express her admiration for Cavalieri’s group of friends who helped unconditionally
in her interview.
Another point which I found very attractive about Cavalieri’s linocut prints are the sources of
inspiration, which is Claudio Monteverdi’s classical works of baroque music and operas. I
found the idea of expressing classical music through contemporary art with printed words
intriguing. After attending Cantations, I decided that I was to do a Canzone review. Choosing
the interviewees was not a difficult task, I would interview the three most important actors
(Tips for a Arts feature Article), the director of Fortyfivedownstairs, Jelbart, one of the
musicians who performed and Cavalieri herself. Cavalieri had a meet-the-artist session on
Saturday which I attended to have an opportunity to ask questions which answers I cannot
derive from the internet. I had a short interview session with the musicians after one of their
performances. The only interview I had to specially arrange was my interview with Jelbart.
The time constraint I had on two of the interview had myself made sure I asked the most direct
and focused questions to get insightful quotes.
I used an indirect lead (Tips for a Arts feature Article) to start my article as I felt the readers
would have to have an insight to the artworks that might be presented in front of them before
reading on. I made my lead by referring to ‘Melbourne Festival 2015 just got stranger over
dinner with Andrew Schneider’ (Dwyer, 2015), starting my article by describing a scene in

6. front of me. However, I had to be careful to not focus too much on the unusual details or the
lead might end up longwinded.
However, I made an observation throughout the exhibition and the music performances,
Cantations and Variations. The audience were mostly on the senior age group. It reminded me
of the article of Lucinda Schmidt (2014), who explained the declining culture of gallery visiting
and that encouraged me further to do the review on the gallery. I was conflicted for a period of
time on whether I should have included that discussion into my article, but Schmidt had done
well for representing most artist with galleries these days.
I was contemplating on whether I should use a quote from Jelbart or a conclusion I have reached
throughout the experience. And I decided to use both, hoping it might be strong enough of an
ending.
(610 words)

7. References
Dwyer, M. (2015) ‘Melbourne Festival 2015 just got stranger over dinner with Andrew
Schneider’, The Age, 16 October, viewed from
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/melbourne-festival-2015-just-got-stranger-over-
dinner-with-andrew-schneider-20151014-gk7yfk.html
Messham-Muir, K. (2014) ‘Three questions not to ask about art – and four to ask instead’,
The Conversation, 22 August, viewed from http://theconversation.com/three-questions-not-to-ask-
about-art-and-four-to-ask-instead-29830
Schmidt, L. (2014) ‘Are Melbourne's commercial galleries becoming an endangered
species?’, The Age, 24 June, viewed from http://m.theage.com.au/victoria/are-melbournes-
commercial-galleries-becoming-an-endangered-species-20140623-3aoua.html
Tips for a Arts feature Article, ATS3113, Week 9.