Mirror, mirror…

We increasingly accept the collision between life and art. Whether we’re puzzling over the real identity of Elena Ferrante, choosing our own adventure in Bandersnatch, or boycotting the latest Polanski film, we’re buying into culture that’s more mirror than window.

But wasn’t it ever thus? It’s a case Barbara Strozzi would certainly argue. The most-published Italian composer of her age, a musician whose work could stand alongside Cavalli, Rossi, even Monteverdi, was caught throughout her career in the double-bind of biography. You have only to look at her famous portrait — gazing insolently out at the viewer, breast bared — to see the erotics of performance at work. But whether Strozzi merely accepted the inevitable inferences of her male audience or actively fostered them, building the only brand possible for a female artist at this time, is unclear.

What is beyond question, though, is her talent. Spilling out of the neat, miniature forms — songs, madrigals — that were permitted her, it’s a raging, passionate thing that begs for the scope of the opera stage.