Fifty minutes of shocking drama & exquisite music by La Brigata, Sue Tyson and Kristine Szulik sing, act and play the music and the horror of the Black Death, that swept through Europe between 1348 and 1450.

The perfect lunch-time or evening piece for your festival, combining early music with authentic history, vivacious entertainment with chilling drama, Danse Macabre will enhance your educational, literary or musical programme.

Dance of Death,allegorical theme in art, literature, and music. It was based on the popular belief, fostered by the plagues and wars of the 14th and 15th centuries, that the dead, as skeletons, rose from their graves and tempted the living, of all ages and ranks, to join them in a dance that brought them finally to death.

The dance of death, or danse macabre, or Totentanz, was first embodied in murals and a poem (1424–25) in the Church of the Holy Innocents in Paris. The Parisian printer Guyot Marchant published a version in woodcuts and verse (1485), which was circulated throughout Europe. The dance of death was subsequently painted on many church walls and inspired a famous set of 40 drawings by the German painter Hans Holbein the Younger.

The Composer, Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October 9th, 1835 and died in Algiers on December 16th, 1921.  His musical life was very successful early in life and he never had to struggle before arriving at recognition. At the age of 22 he was already an established musician: the organist at the Medeline, the composer of two symphonies and having won an important prize. Berlioz called him "one of the greatest musicians of our epoch," and Anton Rubenstein said that he was the greatest organist in the world.

He showed his outstanding talent in many different ways. While only four-and-a-half years old, he made an appearance performing on piano the Beethoven sonata for violin and piano. He also took a score of a Gretry opera and read it through at sight. In his sixth year he read through the full orchestral score of Mozart's Don Giovanni as if it were a fairy tale. Saint-Saëns once wrote: "The artist who does not feel completely satisfied by elegant lines, by harmonious colors, and by a beautiful succession of chords does not understand the art of music."