Rapsodia di Terra e di Luna – Le voci femminili dell’antichità | JULY 4TH

“RAPSODIA DI TERRA E DI LUNA – LE VOCI FEMMINILI DELL’ANTICHITÀ” – ANGELICA CATHARIOU, MARIA ELENA BOVIO, ALEXANDAR GRANDAL

There are voices that arrive from afar and have never stopped speaking to us.
They are voices carved in stone, entrusted to the memory of temples, preserved in fragments of poetry, having survived the collapse of empires and the dust of centuries. Voices of women who do not belong only to the past: they traverse it, they break through it, and they illuminate it.

With Rapsodia di Terra e di Luna, the voice of Angelica Cathariou, the harp of Maria Elena Bovio, and the bassoon of Alexander Grandal open a sonic gateway toward archaic Greece and even more remote civilizations, forgotten only in appearance. The concert thus becomes a journey between vanished worlds and contemporary sensibility, where music does not simply reconstruct the ancient, but awakens it as living matter—fragile and incandescent.

At the heart of this journey emerge female figures who inhabited the word as an act of love, power, and prayer. Enheduanna, princess and priestess in the empire of Sargon and among the first authors known by name, projects a voice that unites the sacred with politics, and song with spiritual authority. Sappho, from her thiasos, transforms desire into an absolute poetic form, making intimacy a force capable of spanning millennia. Sulpicia, in 1st-century BCE Rome, imbues the language of love with a surprising freedom that remains close, direct, and ardent even today.

Giving body to these presences is a trio with a rare timbre: the intense voice of Angelica Cathariou, an artist capable of moving between musical theater, operatic repertoire, and contemporary research; the harp of Maria Elena Bovio, professor at the “G. Verdi” Conservatory in Milan and an active performer across classical repertoire and the music of today; and the bassoon of Alexander Grandal, principal bassoon of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra—an instrument with a deep, archaic, almost terrestrial voice.

Voice, harp, and bassoon form an unexpected sonic constellation: breath, string, and wood. Three different materials that evoke ritual, storytelling, and memory.

Rapsodia di Terra e di Luna is not a museum-piece tribute, but a living experience of listening. It is an invitation to recognize, in the words of these women, questions that have never been extinguished: desire, power, the relationship with the divine, the body, freedom, and the possibility of leaving a trace. Because some voices do not ask to be remembered: they ask to be heard once again.