English Madrigals on the Jesuit Stage

Musical Theatre of Martyrdom at the Venerable English College, Rome

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Throughout the early Stuart period, Catholic seminarians at the Venerable English College, Rome, staged elaborate religious plays for multinational audiences on a nearly annual basis, typically Neo-Latin dramas about martyred English saints. This study shares original archival findings to critically reconstruct the many varieties of music featured in these productions, from French solo song to English madrigals and balletts. This collection of dramatic music includes surviving evidence of English compositions performed in seventeenth-century Italy. The author argues that by embracing foreign musical cultures while also deploying their own musical talents, repertoires, practices, and patronage in service to dramatizations of Catholic martyrdom, this English community was uniquely positioned to build cultural, social, and political connections between Britain and the European Continent during a significant period of rising English hegemony in the Mediterranean region and wider world.