A performance by Rebecca Cypess, harpsichord; Dongmyung Ahn, violin

The Raritan Players offer “incomparable musicianship” (Early Music America); a recording from the group is “as ravishing as it is fascinating” (Classical Music).

Although Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) made her career in painting, she was also a gifted musician. In Rome in the 1780s, she hosted a salon that featured her own musical performances on guitar and on the English piano that she owned, as well as performances by some of the leading poetic improvisers of the age, such as Fortunata Fantastici and Teresa Bandettini. Her guests included local dignitaries as well as international travelers including the English writer Hester Thrale Piozzi and the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

In this performance in the Academy’s intimate Library, the Raritan Players imagine an evening in Kauffman’s home, in which music mixed with discussion of literature and visual art.

The Raritan Players explore lost performance practices and repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries through engagement with period instruments and new research in musicology.See bios of the performers.

Watch the Raritan Players’ Fall 2022 concert at the Italian Academy, “Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy.”

Please see our website for details.