Bedlam
HIP Company (Perth)

HIP Company presents music from their 2025 album, Bedlam. A musical exploration of the dark fascination with madness and the human psyche in the Baroque period, Bedlam draws its title from London’s notorious psychiatric hospital, ‘Bethlem Royal Hospital’ and the tales of madness, gruesome crimes of passion, and horrors of Bedlam itself that pervaded literature, theatre and music of the time. HIP Company’s programme for soprano, violins, viola da gamba and lutes, combines thrilling operatic arias by Jean-Philippe Rameau, ‘Mad Songs’ of Restoration England by Henry Purcell and John Eccles, and dramatic instrumental works within the theme, including a setting of ‘La Folia’ (‘Follies’) by Jean-Pierre Guignon.