Bar La Barca

Bargemusic; Wed 8, July 10

Photograph: Sarapress.com

Episode I: Six strangers on a boat destined for Padua pass the time sharing stories of love and loss, while partaking in drink and music. Episode II: Six strangers in a tavern, seeking shelter from a downpour, pass the time sharing stories of love and loss, while partaking in drink and music. The difference between them? Four centuries. The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, a sextet that specializes in a cappella music, tackles both scenarios with stagings of two madrigal comedies, Adriano Banchieri’s Barca di Venetia per Padova (“The Boat from Venice to Padua”), from 1605, along with Eric Salzman’s Jukebox in the Tavern of Love, composed last year. Collectively titled Bar La Barca, the program will appropriately be mounted at Bargemusic, a floating concert hall under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Barca di Venetia per Padova recounts the seamy cross-canal voyages from Venice to Padua during the 17th century: a somewhat scandalous subject for Banchieri, who spent most of his life in a monastery. His Renaissance masterpiece teems with colorful courtesans, drunken Germans and fishmongers. At the ensemble’s request, Salzman and librettist-director Valeria Vasilevski took their inspiration from Banchieri’s work: Among the six disparate souls united in an implausibly diverse New York neighborhood bar are a Broadway dancer, a nun, a rabbi and a utility worker. Salzman’s music runs an equally wide gamut, drawing upon Renaissance madrigals, Tin Pan Alley fare and barbershop-quartet harmonizing.—Amanda Angel

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