DINASTIA BORGIA
Chiesa e potere nel Rinascimento

Referència: AVSA9875

• La Capella Reial de Catalunya
• Hespèrion XXI
• Jordi Savall

The celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of St Francis Borgia (Gandia 1510 – Rome 1572), the last of the illustrious members of the “Borgia Dynasty,” prompted us to embark on the present historical and musical project, recalling the most significant events of the age in which the chief protagonists of this extraordinary and fascinating family lived: Alfonso de Borja (Callistus III), Rodrigo de Borja (Alexander VI), Giovanni Borgia, Cesare Borgia, Lucrezia Borgia and St Francis Borgia.

Fr Batllori, the outstanding scholar, humanist and indisputable expert in the history of the Borgias, remarked that the Borgias should not be made the subjects of crime fiction or romance. Instead, what is needed is simply an objective account of who they were and what they did.

Informed by the latest findings of the leading specialists in the field, in our new CD-book devoted to the Borgia “Dynasty” we present some of the essential aspects of ”who they were and what they did” without glossing over the ups and downs of their chequered careers. In doing so, we are aware of the great difficulty of evoking the lives and exploits of these historical figures who were indelibly marked by a terrible and persistent “black legend.” They lived complex and turbulent lives that were deeply enmeshed in a vast web of historical facts and events which we place within their specific historical and musical context: one of the most intense cultural and political periods of European civilization, on the threshold of modern times, distinguished above all by the transition from the medieval world to the cultural and humanistic flowering of the Renaissance. A time of great cultural and geographical discoveries, from Greek civilization to the New World, and also of major conflicts, from the final stages of the Reconquest and the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula to the beginning of the Protestant schism and inevitable war with the Turks.

+ information in the CD booklet

JORDI SAVALL
Turin, 27th May 2010

Translated by Jacqueline Minett