Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Hexperos, “Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life” (2020)

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Hexperos’ 2020 release, “Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life” draws inspiration from Canto I of the Inferno.

“‘Midway upon the journey of our life, we could found ourselves within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.’ Never there was a sentence more apt to describe the disturbance we all feel at some point of our lives, when we feel lost, empty and we don’t know if the road that we have chosen, the journey of life undertaken, is actually the right one for us.

“The songs are stories of life, of sharing as well as in the Divine Comedy. As a matter of fact, who is in pain, often makes new encounters, shares their stories, through sharing and listening to the experiences of others we grow, we find a light in the darkness.” [. . .]    — Alessandra Santovito, Hexperos

Listen to the song here.

Learn more about Hexperos on their website, here.

Album art by Nicolás Menay

Zachary Woolfe, “A Circle of Composers, Intimate and Epic”

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“There is an operatic quality coursing through the work of the Second Empire sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-75), the subject of a powerful exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through May 26, that inspired a concert of French vocal music at the museum on Saturday evening.

“Look at Carpeaux’s best-known masterpiece, the wrenching ‘Ugolino and his Sons’ based on Dante: Here are both epic scope and intimate detail (those clenched feet!), the combination that 19th-century opera specialized in. It’s no surprise, given the adroitness of his balance between exuberance and restraint, that he was asked to design a relief for the exterior of Charles Garnier’s opera house in Paris. The result, a swirling mass of figures called ‘La Danse,’ fairly explodes off the facade.”    –Zachary Woolfe, “A Circle of Composers, Intimate and Epic,” The New York Times, April 29, 2014

Sequentia, Dante and the Troubadours (1993)

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sequentia-album-cover“Although in the works of Dante Alighieri (d. 1321) illustrious poets are often mentioned, a special place of honour is reserved for the troubadours, the Occitan poet-singers of love and war from the 12th and 13th centuries. For this literary and absorbing CD, Bagby & Thornton perform songs (cansos) by six of the troubadours Dante most admired and described in his works.”    —Sequentia, Dante and the Troubadours, 1993

How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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