‘King Charles had a very ingenious vertuoso, one Nicholas Laniere, whom he employed into Itally to buy capitall pictures … And after his returne, he composed a recitativo, which was a poem being the tragedy of Hero and Leander. The King was exceedingly pleased with this pathetick song and caused Lanier often to sing it, while he stood next with his hand upon his shoulder.’

So the biographer Roger North wrote of Nicholas Lanier, musician, art agent for Charles I, and resident of Greenwich. It is rare for such detailed accounts of musical performances to survive, and rarer still that we can identify a place in which a performance took place that has been spared the ravages of redevelopment and war. The Queen’s House is such a space, and this event will be the first time since the 17th Century that Lanier’s music has been performed there – possibly the only time since he performed there himself.

Lanier’s travels in Italy led him to try and instill something of
La Nuova Musica – the ‘new music’ being championed in Italy by the composers of the first operas – in his own work, leading to the creation of Hero's Complaint: the first recitative aria in the English Language. Musica Antica Rotherhithe will pair Lanier’s work with that the Italians who inspired him - one of whom he even met, Claudio Monteverdi – and instrumental music by his neighbour and brother-in-law, Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger, in a beautiful programme of madrigals and songs accompanied by theorbo and viola da gamba.