Following their successful recital in the 2001 Festival, Philippa Hyde and Fred Jacobs return with a new programme of seventeenth-century music for voice and theorbo, focusing on the Italy of Monteverdi’s time.  The programme includes songs and monodies by Monteverdi, including his famous ‘Lamento d’Arianna’, the only surviving portion of his opera Arianna (1608), as well as works by Landi, Rossi and Huygens, who heard Monteverdi in Venice in 1623, and recently discovered pieces for theorbo by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger, the lutenist of German descent resident in Rome.  Philippa Hyde is one of the most exciting young sopranos in the early music scene, and appears regularly at the Festival.  Fred Jacobs lives in Amsterdam, and is one of Europe’s most distinguished lutenists.