The Night’s Tale:
 A Tournament of Love
 

The Night’s Tale, as staged and directed by Artistic Director Anne Azéma, is not a decorous concert of “early music.” It’s a theater piece, with lights, movement, gesture, and lively interaction among the cast members. The Boston Globe called it “something hot — raucous, gleeful, impulsive, rowdy.” A leading French critic says that “it may well alter the way we look at the Middle Ages.
 

Play of Daniel

The Ludus Danielis, or Play of Daniel, is a powerful medieval mystery play composed eight centuries ago in Beauvais, France.
 
The Boston Camerata's recent new production of The Play of Daniel, edited, staged and directed by Anne Azéma, renews and transforms this classic work of early music theater. It brings together music and movement, theater and liturgy, light and shadow, to retell the biblical story of the young prophet for today's audiences. Acclaimed by the public and selected as "best of the year" by Boston critics, Camerata's Daniel is now being offered for a 2016 tour.
 
"Lyrical and poignant ... timeless spiritual message."
   –- The Boston Globe
 
"Unexpected energy and immediacy ... memorable"
   –- The Boston Musical Intelligencer
 
"Enchanting ... a pure delight"
   –- The Boston Classical Review
 

Machaut's Magnificent Mass

The Boston Camerata returns to one of the great masterpieces of Medieval musical art,  the monumental Messe de Notre Dame of Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300 – 1377)...

Heaven's Gate/Portes du Ciel

Sung by a celestial trio of female voices, accompanied by vielles and harp, “Heaven's Gate” opens the portals to an abundant treasure of song in French...

Ah, Sweet Lady/Douce Dame Jolie:

Guillaume de Machaut's Last Affair

About two years before he composed his famous Mass, the aging master and churchman Guillaume de Machaut fell in love with the too-young noblewoman Péronne d'Armentière...

Gallery Of Kings

The Kings of France were crowned at Reims, and a majestic Gallery of Kings dominates the Cathedral's façade. This program of medieval music and poetry sings of David, Salomon, Arthur, Marc Alfonse, Rodolp, Thibaut...

The Distant Haven:

Voyage and Encounter in Medieval France

Music and poetry recounting legendary quests, spiritual pilgrimage, and chivalric adventure: beautiful chants,songs and lais of the troubadours and trouvères...

The Maria Monologues

An exploration of the “eternal feminine” in the Middle Ages, via songs and poems around two women named Mary: Mary Magdalen, the repentant sinner and intimate of Christ and Mary the Mother, source of grace and mercy to the human race.

Gothic Pleasures

Some historians see the late Middle Ages as a “waning” period. Here at the Camerata, we hear incredible beauty, sensuality, and tenderness in the magnificent music of Dufay, Binchois, Josquin, and other...

Tristan & Iseult

"Tristan and Iseult," Camerata's most honored production of recent seasons, was originally conceived as a recording project. At the request of Erato records, intense literary and musical research took place during winter and spring 1987.

The Sacred Bridge:

Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe

Much of the music you are about to hear was produced in the saddest and most shamefully cruel corners of old Europe - its ghettos. Yet the Jews and Christians, though forced to live apart, were in many ways...

Lo Gai Saber:

Troubadors and Minstrels 1100-1300

Astonishing in their diversity and grace, the circa-four thousand poems of the Occitanian and Catalan troubadours survive by the forsight of a few enlightened patrons who, sensing the end of an epoch, began...

Le Roman de Fauvel

In the year 1310 manuscript copies of a scurrilous satirical poem, the Roman de Fauvel, began circulating around Paris. Corrosive, pitiless, the poet, a mid-level government functionary named Gervais de Bus...

Le Fou Sur Le Pont:

Bernatz de Ventadorn, Troubador Songs

Every since the middle ages, the troubadours of Provence have exerted a special kind of fascination for historians, poets, and lovers of music and literature. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries...

Carmina Burana

The ages-old manuscript, that lay in the vaults of the Benediktbeuren monastery in Bavaria, did not begin with the usual devotions. On the contrary, the opening song -- meant as some satirical mime, or a dance perhaps...

Cantigas de Santa Maria:

Alfonso X el Sabio, King of Castille (1221-1284)

High among the many achievements of the Spanish King Alfonso X, called "El Sabio" -- the Wise (1221-1284) is the superb collection of more than 400 sacred songs to the Virgin Mary, the celebrated Cantigas de Santa Maria.

The Unicorn

This program of old French music and poetry explores a very important but-little known aspect of the Middle Ages: the art of story-telling. Centuries ago, the frontier between the musical and literary worlds was much...

Le Jeu d'Amour (The Game of Love)

Love is a game, and every game has its rules. In medieval France, the rules are new and give the woman, the dame, a novel status. And the game of love, thus played out with the consent of all those involved, takes...

Provence Mystique

The region now referred to as the south of France was in the Middle Ages known as Proenza (that is, Provence), and was truly a crucible of creative activity that was to change for ever the relationship between men...

Étoile du Nord

This is not the first CD to explore music devoted to the Virgin Mary, but it's unquestionably one of the most beautifully conceived and performed. French soprano Anne Azéma and Berkeley-based string player Shira Kammen breathe warmth and humanity...

The Night's Tale: A Tournament Of Love

In 1285 a French minstrel wrote down an eyewitness account describing a magnificent courtly celebration in the Lorraine region of France. The songs, dances, and games described in his text have inspired this delightful production.