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Sacred Hearts Serafina

“How old is this one? Fifteen, maybe sixteen? Young enough to have a life to look forward to yet old enough to know that it is being cut short. What had the abbess told them when they voted her in? That hers was a noble family from Milan with important business connections, eager to show loyalty to the city by giving their daughter to one of its greatest convents…”

Sacred Hearts Ferrara

Ferrara, the setting for the novel Sacred Hearts, is a charming medium-sized city nestled at the center of Italy’s breadbasket, the Po river valley. Often passed by tourists for Bologna and Mantua, Ferrara offers a magnificent Italian experience in a more intimate environment. The town is still surrounded by more than 9 k, (5.4 mi) of ancient walls, mainly built in the 15th and 16th centuries. Together with those of Lucca, they are the best-preserved Renaissance walls in Italy. Ferrara is the birthplace of the legendary director, Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow Up, L’Avventura) and of the famous friar Girolamo Savonarola, a religious fanatic, depicted in Sarah Dunant’s The Birth of Venus, who assumed leadership of late 15th century Florence and burned numerous art pieces before his demise and subsequent execution.

Sacred Hearts Musica Secreta
(in collaboration with Sarah Dunant’ newest novel).

“Were Botticelli's Primavera to burst into song, she would probably sound like this.” - Independent on Sunday.

Many of us have heard the baritone echoes and meditations of Gregorian chants. With Musica Secreta we finally get an ensemble that makes public the exquisite harmonies of oft-overlooked women musicians from the 16th and 17th centuries. When they could, cloistered nuns took advantage of their physical confinement to refine their musical talents. Listen to Musica Secreta’s newest CD, Sacred Hearts, Secret Music and you will experience women expressing their intellect and devotion with celestial and mellifluous beauty. www.musica-secreta.com

Sacred Hearts Zuana

“As she moves down the stairs into the main cloister and enters the courtyard, she is held for a second, as she often is, by its sheer beauty. From the moment she first stood here, sixteen years ago, the walls around threatening to crush her, it has offered a space for peace and dreams.”

Sacred Hearts The Convent

By the second half of the sixteenth century most noble families could not afford to marry off more than one daughter. The remaining young women were dispatched – for a much lesser price – to convents. Historians estimate that in the great towns and city-states of Italy, up to half of all noblewomen became nuns.

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