Melothesia aethiopica

Description

Could we imagine that an organ, which left Lisbon around 1600, was transported by boat and on the back of a camel to the depths of Abyssinia? That the viols have resonated in the land of Prester John? That near the sources of the Blue Nile, one can still find the church built by the Jesuit Fathers, at the time when Emperor Susenyos secretly converted to Catholicism? That the greatest treatise on composition of the 17th century, published in Rome, contains music in Amharic, the language of the Ethiopian highlands? When the voice of Cyrille Gerstenhaber intertwines with that of Salamnesh, we dream of all the melodies that have crossed Abyssinia in the 17th century, blending the red earth of the highlands and Murano glass. And when the ebony bodies of dancers Melaku Belay and Zenash Tsegaye, on their way to becoming the most famous Ethiopian artists in the world, unwind to the follies of Spain on the viola da gamba, the trance brushes against us...