Più dura che Petra
Dante and the music of his time: artifices and expressionism
4 singers and istrumentalists
1 narrator
Within the production of Dante Alighieri's Rhymes, the so-called Petrose Rhymes are dedicated by the poet, who had already missed the presence of the Muse Beatrice since 1290, to a mysterious Petra, probably not identifiable with a real woman, perhaps instead the personification of denied love or philosophy. The language, deliberately harsh, is a prelude to the compositional style of the first Canticle of the Divine Comedy, with dark and visionary atmospheres, very distant from the poetics of the former Stil Novo.
This atmosphere of the Rime Petrose guides the musical path from the XIVth century to the beginning of the XVth century; in the verses of the selected ballads, the subjects are not spring and the triumph of love, but the cold winter and the cruelty of the beloved, the merciless passing of time and the betrayed hope.