Royal Wedding

Works by MONTEVERDI, ALLEGRI, PALLAVICINO, PRAETORIUS, PHILIPS, SUSATO…

Royal Nuptials — The Splendours of the Renaissance

Conceived especially for the Seine de Fête! festival, this extraordinary project transports us to 1599, during the triumphal entry of the sovereigns Albert and Isabella of Austria into Brussels, following their wedding in Valencia. For the occasion, the greatest musicians from across Europe gathered—from Monteverdi to Praetorius, Philips, and Allegri—for festivities of unparalleled splendour.

Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel have designed the evening as it would have been in the period, in three parts: a processional musical promenade, dazzling sacred polyphony, and a final ball with dance music and spirited popular songs.

The project also has a rare musicological dimension: research has made it possible to reconstruct a specific Renaissance instrumentarium, reviving the sounds of rare and visually spectacular instruments—drums of impressive dimensions recreated for the occasion, fifes, natural trumpets, bombardes (ancestors of the oboe), cornetts, sackbuts (ancestors of the trombone), Renaissance violin bands, and regals—those small portable organs with manual bellows.

An immersive and jubilant celebration, to be experienced as if you were there.

This concert is performed on period instruments.