San Francisco Early Music Society to Present ‘Secret Byrd’
By David Salazar(Photo by Rob Youngson)
San Francisco Early Music Society will present the Gesualdo Six in a performance of “Secret Byrd.”
Set for July 17 and 18, 2025, the showcase is described as an “immersive theatrical production” by Concert TheatreWorks in collaboration with Wildcat Viols and will be staged by candlelight in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral.
Audiences will be able to roam around the space while Byrd’s “Mass for Five Voices,” among others, is performed.
“For Byrd’s 400th anniversary, I wanted to explore the feature of Byrd I found most compelling: his open activism at risk of the most heinous consequences. Byrd was a known Catholic at a time when they were systematically being tortured and killed, their lands seized and their families ruined. Yet at the height of his fame, he composed three masses to worship the old Latin rite, defiantly at odds with Protestant law, all but daring those in power to make an example of him,” said Bill Barclay, founder and director of Concert Theatre Works.
“Secret Byrd” was presented at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston last fall. It was also presented by St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Of that performance, OperaWire’s Benjamin Poore wrote, “’Secret Byrd’ is a novel and engrossing way of bringing Renaissance music to the public and is done with an intimacy and imagination that embeds this music within the world. As concert pieces, they are often beautiful but sometimes strangely detached. It will be interesting to see how the Gesualdo Six and other groups continue to develop this format.”
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