St Peter’s Church of Ireland, Drogheda

Monday 30th November at 8 p.m

Admission €10 (to include a glass of wine / soft drink at the interval)

Dublin-based early music ensemble eX presents Motion of the Heart a totally unique production in the style of a 17th century masque that glorifies the romantic, spiritual, anatomical and aesthetic qualities and expressions of the human heart. The production features a consort of top international singers and instrumentalists and is made possible by grants from the Arts Council, the Goethe Institut and is presented in association with the National Gallery of Ireland.

Motion of the Heart will be performed on Monday 30th November at 8:00 PM at St. Peter’s Church of Ireland in Drogheda and again on Sunday 6th December at 3:00 PM in the Shaw Room at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

eX’s co-artistic director, Eric Fraad and the English novelist and cultural historian Louisa Young are creating the script and dramaturgy for the production. The renowned early music specialist Erin Headley serves as music director. The production will be directed by Mr. Fraad with costumes by Alessio Rosati, the Italian period design expert who designed eX’s productions of Shipwrecked (2009) and The Rape of the Lock (2008).

Mr. Fraad and Ms. Young are re-creating a Carolingian masque, the 17th century interactive musical theatrical court entertainment, where aristocrats and professional artists performed along side each other. Allegorical, metaphorical and visually rich the 17th century masque incorporated a diversity of artistic genres (music, opera, dance, drama and design) for the purpose of glorifying the virtues and qualities of a monarch or high-ranking aristocrat.

Motion of the Heart is engendered as an occult esoteric masque that positions the heart as monarch and glorifies its virtues and characteristics. The masque employs a four- act structure each corresponding to one of the hearts four symbolic chambers, the romantic/erotic heart, the religious/spiritual heart, the physiological/rational heart and the heart as represented in art. Dancers represent the allegorical figures of Passion and Reason who battle throughout the masque for possession and ownership of the heart.

The text for each of the masque’s four acts are performed by characters who represent the theme for each section, Oscar Wilde for Love, the Virgin Mary for religion, William Harvey for science and Frida Kahlo for art.

The music for Motion of the Heart is 17th century vocal and instrumental music from Italy, England, France and the New World including works by William Lawes, Alfonso Ferrabosco II, Giovanni Rigatti and Claudio Monteverdi.

The name Motion of the Heart is from the English translation of the name of William Harvey’s groundbreaking treatise De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (1628) which for the first time described how the heart circulates the blood around the body.