IL BALLO
Early Baroque stage music meets contemporary puppet theatre
The performance is based on Monteverdi’s staged work Il ballo delle ingrate and Arianna’s Lament, the only remaining fragment from the opera L’Arianna. Both of these works are based on libretti by Ottavio Rinuccini, and were originally premiered at the wedding of Francesco Gonzaga and Margherita of Savoy in Mantua in 1608. Both libretti are moral contemplations of female desire: Arianna loves and desires too much, whereas the women of Ballo delle ingrate are blamed for too little lust. Arianna sings a lament for the beloved she can’t have; the women of Ballo are being punished in the Underworld, where they have lost their voices and bodies for rejecting the men who had desired them.
Our interpretation uses the controlling of female desire as a starting point, a theme which occurs in both of these works. The contemporary puppet art will act as a staged realisation of the lost voices and bodies. At the end of the Ballo, the silenced women do sing, and thus their voices act as a statement against said control. In our version, sound artist Tuomas Norvio will create electronically extended music sections that help build a dissonant dramaturgy.
Performance venues
Finnish National Opera - Alminsali early autumn (October) 2026 (3 performances)
Rauma / August 2026 (1 performance) TBC
Turku / August 2026 (1 performance) TBC
Music
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643): Il ballo delle ingrate, L’Arianna (Lamento)
Libretto: Ottavio Rinuccini
Tuomas Norvio: electronic musical elements based on Monteverdi’s music
Roles (4)
Amore (S), Una ingrata/Arianna (S), Venere (Mezzo), Plutone (B)
(For instance: Tuuli Lindeberg S, Jakob Bloch Jespersen B, Erica Back Mezzo)
Orchestra (10)
2 vln, 2 vla, 1 vlc, violone, dulcian, 2 keyboards, 1 lute
Working Group
Direction: Siljamari Heikinheimo / Niina Lindroos, Aura of Puppets
Musical Direction: Marianna Henriksson
Sound design: Tuomas Norvio
Orchestra: Finnish Baroque Orchestra
Collaborative partners
Rauma Festivo
Aura of Puppets (Turku)
Finnish Baroque Orchestra
Finnish National Opera