Brian Elias

Infidas Song (2004)

This work was written to celebrate Michael Berkeley's 10th year as Artistic Director of the Cheltenham International Music Festival. It was first performed on 11th July 2004, in the Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham, by Helene Hebrard and Julius Drake.

The setting of this poem by the Elizabethan author and dramatist Robert Greene takes a slightly unusual approach to a conventional but, I suspect, somewhat tongue-in-cheek complaint of Venus to Adonis. Infida is in love, and demented by it; in Italian, an infida is an untrustworthy or unfaithful woman, someone who does not inspire confidence.