John Blow: Venus and Adonis
Croatian Baroque Ensemble
Cantoría (Spain)
Chamber Choir
Soloists
Inés Alonso (Venus)
Lluís Arratia (Adonis)
Lucija Varšić (Cupid)
Conductor
Jorge Losana
Venus and Adonis
John Blow (c. 1649–1708)
Venus and Adonis by John Blow is one of the most significant works of early English musical theatre and is widely regarded as the forerunner of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Composed around 1683, this masterpiece combines elements of the court masque, opera, and pastoral drama to tell the tragic love story of the goddess Venus and the young hunter Adonis, based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Gods—or, more precisely, goddesses, as the work focuses far more on its female than its male characters—appear alongside shepherds, hunters, courtly dances, humour, sensuality, and one of the most moving laments in the entire English Baroque repertoire.
Beneath its seemingly simple mythological narrative lies a universal meditation on human desire, freedom, the transience of happiness, pain, and loss. Blow’s music masterfully intertwines tender love scenes, sumptuous dances, humour, and tragedy, while Venus’s final lament remains one of the most poignant moments of the English Baroque. The work is also remarkable for the unresolved question of its libretto’s authorship, now commonly associated with the poet Anne Finch, one of the few women whose voice managed to break through the rigid social constraints of the seventeenth century.
More than three centuries after its creation, Venus and Adonis continues to speak powerfully of love, loss, and human vulnerability, securing its place among the finest achievements of European Baroque music.
