The life of Christina of Sweden seems to have come straight out of a novel—or rather, an opera. Born on December 18, 1626, in Stockholm, she ended her days in Rome in 1689, after an exile that led her to encounter ever more protagonists in the various stages of her life. A great lover and defender of the arts, her life was marked by the omnipresence of music, of which she was a great patron. This concert musically retraces her life in three stages—and a prologue—through works she might have heard, or even commissioned.

Prologue: The Coronation and Abdication. The concert opens with a selection of works that could have been performed at his coronation – about which we know nothing musically. The highlight of this moment is Carissimi's Veni Sponsa Christi (of whom Christine was an admirer, and would meet him much later). But the joyful prologue ends abruptly with Fader War , which was sung at his abdication.

The first act takes place in the city of Innsbruck in 1654, when Christine is invited by Archduke Ferdinand Charles of Austria, where she affirms her new conversion to Catholicism and attends the performance of L'Argia, an opera by the imperial composer Antonio Cesti, given in his honor. The third act is her brief visit to the French royal court in 1657. While Lully had not yet written his great motets – this was Henry Du Mont who held this position at the time. The final act: Rome. Christine was then a great patron of the arts and supported many composers such as Stradella and Melani. The latter wrote a sumptuous Requiem preserved in the Santini Collection, which brings together numerous artistic possessions, accumulated by the most European of princesses of her time.

The Royal Opera Production

Programme:

Christine of Sweden

After André Danican Philidor: The Swedish woman

Gustav Düben: Venite Sancte Spiritus

Giacomo Carissimi: Come, Sponsa Christi

Gustav Düben: Fader War

Antonio Cesti: The Argia: Prologue

Henri Du Mont, Michel Lambert and Jean-Baptiste Lully: Airs de cours and extracts from Alcidiane

Alessandro Melani and Antonio Bertali: Requiem and excerpts from the Missa Archiducalis