Excerpt: Line Dance from "The Night's Tale"
Excerpt: "The Night's Tale"
In Europe in the Middle Ages, centuries before easy entertainment like television’s rivalries and relationship intrigues of Game of Thrones, lords and ladies gathered at tournaments for diversion. At these events, daytime was the domain of men, where knights jousted and competed for glory; evenings were guided by women, who engaged with knights and lords in music and dance. Mutual attraction sparked during the day culminated in the evening’s varyingly passionate, aggressive, and playful rites of courtship.
With “A Night’s Tale: A Tournament of Love,” led by director, singer, and scholar Anne Azema, the Boston Camerata brings the narration of such a day. The production is inspired by Le Tournoi de Chauvency, a poem by trouvere Jacques Bretel about the tournament that drew over 500 of the greatest knights from Germany and France to Lorraine, France, in 1285.
Employing Bretel’s descriptions as cues for songs from the medieval French troubadour and folk traditions, the Camerata’s hurdy-gurdy, harp, fiddles, voices, and narration tell compelling tales of courtly love and chivalry.