Siena Art Institute

A trip back in time to discover the origins of one of the most characteristic genres of the history of Italian music, the melodrama. Leading the “StARTers” audience in this course will be the musicologist Guido Burchi, who will return as a guest of the Siena Art Institute after last spring’s conversation dedicated to “Senesino.”

Burchi will retrace the birth of the melodrama, which emerged from the cultural environment of Florence in the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, thanks in part to the pat...
ronage of the Medici court. The Bardi and Corsi families were those who most contributed to the birth of this new musical genre.

After a few “test runs” for the Grand Ducal wedding in 1589 with the Sienese Girolamo Bargagli’s commedy “La Pellegrina,” Jacopo Peri’s “L’Eurdice” was represented in 1600 as the first work to which music was added. The occasion was once again a wedding, that of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV, king of France.

After Tuesday, October 23, Guido Burchi will return in his leading role with “StARTers” on Tuesday, November 27 with an encounter dedicated to the German composer Gluck and to the reform he carried out on his work.


“StARTers” is a series of conversations with artists of international repute explores art as a creative process, meeting of experiences, a tool for exploring the cultural complexity of the society in which we live
The calendar is part of the art programs for the community of the Siena Art Institute, a center of excellence for the artistic research and formation of artists, established and emerging, who are interested in reflecting and making others reflect upon the social responsibility of art and on the power of leaving one’s mark on society.