Cupid’s Ground Bass
Cupid’s Ground Bass brings together two central strands of seventeenth century Italian music: love and the repeating bass. Composers used familiar bass patterns as foundations for variation and improvisation, while new approaches to text and drama changed how love could be represented in song and opera.
Developed from Bellot Ensemble’s debut album of the same title, the programme places music by Strozzi, Cavalli, Monteverdi and their contemporaries alongside instrumental works and Bellot’s own diminutions and arrangements. It features soprano and viola da gamba player Lucine Musaelian, tenor Kieran White and Bellot’s period instrument ensemble.
MUSIC BY
Barbara Strozzi • Francesco Cavalli • Claudio Monteverdi • Marco Uccellini • Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger • Carlo Farina • Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber • and their contemporaries
THE ALBUM
Released by First Hand Records in November 2025 with support from the Continuo Foundation, Cupid’s Ground Bass is Bellot Ensemble’s debut recording.
The album was selected as a One to Watch by Gramophone, received a Supersonic distinction from Pizzicato and was named Featured Album of the Month by the Early Music Shop.
“A very handsome calling card indeed.”
Gramophone
“Constantly intriguing and enjoyable.”
Early Music Review
“Heartfelt and tender, fiery and passionate.”
Pizzicato
Watch
Filmed at the VOCES8 Centre with director Thomas Guthrie and filmmaker Bobby Williams, with support from the Continuo Foundation.
Featured artists
KIERAN WHITE
Kieran White is a British haute contre tenor and a distinctive interpreter of seventeenth and eighteenth century repertoire. Recent highlights include debuts with the New York Philharmonic in Handel’s Messiah under Ton Koopman and at Teatro Real, Madrid, in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Vox Luminis.
He also appears on the acclaimed recording of Lully’s Atys with Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset. In Cupid’s Ground Bass, his clear and expressive singing brings the theatrical world of Cavalli and Monteverdi into intimate focus.
“Frankly I could listen to White’s elegant, expressively plangent tenor all day.”
Planet Hugill
LUCINE MUSAELIAN
Lucine Musaelian is an Armenian American soprano, viola da gamba player and composer, known for bringing voice and instrument together through self accompaniment.
She studied at Yale University, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Royal Academy of Music, where she is now Professor of Viol Consort. She has performed with La Nuova Musica, Phantasm, the Dunedin Consort and the BBC Philharmonic, and is a City Music Foundation Artist with the voice and viol duo Intesa.
Her ability to sing while accompanying herself on the viol gives Cupid’s Ground Bass one of its most distinctive colours.
FOR PROMOTERS
Cupid’s Ground Bass is a flexible concert programme rather than a fixed reproduction of the album. Repertoire, duration and performing forces can be shaped around the venue, audience and practical requirements while preserving the programme’s central dramatic arc.
Representative running orders and technical information are available on request.
Performers
Bellot Ensemble - New Generation Baroque Ensemble - with tenor Kieran White.