Madonna Mia

Rome, 17th century: city of popes, palaces, and processions. Among its baroque facades and secret gardens, a queen without a kingdom arrives in 1665: Christina of Sweden. She leaves behind her homeland's crown and throne to found a new realm, here in the heart of the Catholic world: the kingdom of the arts. After her abdication and conversion to Catholicism, she becomes one of the most influential patrons in the city. Her Palazzo Ruspoli turns into a meeting place for poets, painters, and musicians – a laboratory where an entire era takes shape.

Rome in the 17th century is also the city of Marian devotion. Even today more than eighty churches in the city are dedicated to the Virgin. In baroque Rome, Mary is not only a religious symbol but also a projection of comfort, hope, and protection. Antiphons such as Salve Regina, Ave Regina caelorum, and Alma Redemptoris Mater form the musical heartbeat of this devotion.

In this way, Mary and Christina of Sweden stand side by side in a mysterious parallel: one as queen of heaven, the other as a queen without a crown who finds her spiritual home in Rome. Both are figures of inspiration, both shaping the artistic landscape in which the music in this programme was born.

Giacomo Carissimi (1605–1674), a close artistic reference point for Christina, worked at the Collegio Germanico in Rome. This Jesuit seminary enjoyed an outstanding musical reputation, which Carissimi enhanced still further after his appointment. Composers such as Charpentier and Christoph Bernhard travelled to Rome to study with him. His works bridge the seconda pratica and the emerging forms of the cantata with its arias and recitatives. In pieces such as O dulcissimum Mariae nomen or Salve amor noster, he transforms words into music with daring harmonic turns, paving the way for the High Baroque.

Slightly younger but within the same tradition, Alessandro Melani (1639–1703) is already firmly rooted in the High Baroque. His music is marked by clear text declamation and melodic inventiveness, as heard in his motet Quae est ista. Melani served as chapel master at Rome's great basilica of S. Maria Maggiore. Alongside sacred works he also composed operas performed in Christina's presence. Though fewer of his works are known today, in his lifetime Melani was a prolific and highly esteemed composer with strong ties to Europe's princely courts.

As patron, Christina also supported Alessandro Stradella (1643–1682) generously, even providing the plot for a serenata that he set to music. His turbulent life, filled with intrigues, affairs, and flight, later inspired at least four operas. This passion and restlessness resonate in his compositions. His Ave Regina caelorum unfolds like a small sacred drama: full of contrasts, tension, and expressive turns. Stradella shows how Marian music could be imbued with theatrical intensity without losing its spiritual depth.

Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710) was celebrated as one of the most brilliant musicians of his age – renowned as harpsichordist, organist, and composer. His variations dedicated to the diplomat Kaunitz are refined and witty musical games of themes and figures. But his œuvre also includes operas and sacred vocal music that won him great recognition in 1670s and '80s Rome. He was admitted to the Accademia dell'Arcadia, a society of poets and thinkers devoted to the fine arts – founded, unsurprisingly, by Christina of Sweden. Like Melani, and later Scarlatti, Pasquini also served as organist at S. Maria Maggiore.

Finally, Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), a generation younger, also became associated with S. Maria Maggiore some years after Melani and Pasquini. Supported by Christina, he laid the foundations for the Neapolitan school and thus for the Late Baroque. His Magnificat reveals even in sacred music the signs of new beginnings: contrapuntal rigor paired with the expressive force of baroque opera. The text itself, a cornerstone of Marian devotion, speaks passionately of Mary's faith in God – a revolutionary hymn of upheaval and hope.