Francesco Cavalli’s Il Giasone, first performed in Venice in 1649 to a libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, was one of the defining successes of 17th-century opera. The drama sets heroic identity against the destabilising force of desire, and Cavalli’s score continually shifts between public duty, private longing, and the comic or painful consequences of both. Within Act I, the opera introduces Jason at ease in pleasure, having abandoned his pregnant betrothed, Queen Isifile of Lemnos, in pursuit of the Golden Fleece, and already embarked on an affair with Medea – herself promised to Egeo, King of Athens – without yet knowing her true identity. The drama then pivots almost immediately to Medea’s inner world, offering a starkly different perspective on this illicit love story.

'Se dardo pungente' is Medea’s strophic lament early in Act I. Alone on stage, she describes love as a wound, an inescapable force that both exalts and consumes. The aria turns on the image in the opening line, the 'piercing dart' of a radiant gaze, and from that point the text unfolds as a sequence of 'if' clauses that circle around desire’s inevitability. Medea’s language is sensuous, but it is also restless and exposed, the sound of someone trying to reason with their own surrender. In performance, that repeated strophic structure can feel like compulsion, as though the same thought returns again and again, each time landing with slightly altered weight.

Dramatically, this moment is also charged by disguise and divided loyalties. Medea has been moving around Jason incognito, and Cavalli gives her this aria as a private admission of what that hidden relationship costs her. The scene that follows brings her back into the social world of the opera, where relationships, status and obligation reassert themselves, and her private intensity is forced into negotiation.

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Within Bellot Ensemble’s debut album Cupid’s Ground Bass, 'Se dardo pungente' sits as a counterweight to Jason’s 'Delizie, contenti che l’alma beate'. Where Jason greets the morning with contentment and ease, Medea reveals the vulnerability that sits behind desire and the emotional price that such contentment can conceal. In the wider arc of the album, this aria becomes one of the clearest expressions of love’s darker undertow, set alongside moments of radiant stillness, exuberance and sensual display. Heard in this context, 'Se dardo pungente' is both intimate and theatrical: a private confession shaped with the directness and flair of Venetian opera.

The film was directed by Thomas Guthrie, whose insight and sensitivity to Cavalli’s dramatic language shaped the project throughout. Thomas created a space in which gesture, text and musical rhetoric could speak plainly, without overstating the emotion, and with a strong sense of how 17th-century theatre communicates character through clarity and timing. The video was captured by videographer Bobby Williams, whose work balances intimacy with precision, keeping the smallest shifts of colour, articulation and expression at the centre of the frame. We are also grateful to the VOCES8 Centre for welcoming us into such an inspiring and acoustically rich space.

This recording forms part of Bellot Ensemble’s debut album Cupid’s Ground Bass, released on First Hand Records on 21 November 2025, made possible by the generous support of Continuo Foundation.

PERFORMERS
Lucine Musaelian soprano
Edmund Taylor violin
Maxim Del Mar violin
Nathan Giorgetti viola da gamba
Daniel Murphy theorbo
Matthew Brown harpsichord

VIDEO CREDITS
Director: Thomas Guthrie
Videographer: Bobby Williams
Audio Engineer: John Croft (Chiaro Audio)
Producer: Thomas Pickering
Label: First Hand Records
Filmed at: VOCES8 Centre, London
Supported by: Continuo Foundation