Flavio Giurato

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi owes much of his fame to La Serva Padrona, a comic intermezzo designed to be performed between the acts of an opera seria. In it, a maid and a servant conspire to convince their master to marry the maid. When Aldo Tarabella was asked to direct a performance of Pergolesi’s intermezzo, he wanted to do more than simply pair it with one of the operas it traditionally sits alongside – so he composed Il Servo Padrone, a companion piece, and a kind of sequel, to Pergolesi’s original.

From the very first note Rea and Boltro prove themselves to be excellent lyricists. The first piece of the album, Monteverdi’s "Lasciatemi morire", sounds like a soundtrack of a Sergio Leone film. On most of the pieces Boltro trumpet has a classical, pure sound, which occasionally resembles a Bach trumpet ("Sinfonia dal Barbiere di Siviglia" by Rossini). Rea presents himself as a pianist with highly virtuoso touch and outstanding subtlety.
Despite the respect for the opera classics that is evident throughout the entire album, there is also lots of space for musical innovation. Being two of the most creative improvisers of the scene, Rea and Boltro constantly come up with exciting rhythmic variations. Classical music and jazz merge into one another, without ever sounding contrived or unnatural…

John Duarte (1919-2004) was educated at the Manchester University Faculty of Technology. He worked as a professional chemist until 1969, then abandoned chemistry in favor of full-time dedication to music, after having been persuaded by Len Williams, father of John Williams. His only formal musical education consisted in jazz guitar lessons with Terence "Terry" Usher, the rest he learned by self-instruction. He also worked professionally as a player of the trumpet and

As the rather extensive booklet notes by countertenor Flavio Ferri-Benedetti state, the Italian secular cantata was a byproduct of the so-called focus of the early 18th-century intellectual circles on good poetry based generally on classical themes. The result was a veritable torrent of smaller chamber works meant to highlight this literary genre, which had the effect of establishing it as one of the preferred vocal formats of the period. The settings were generally for voice and continuo, but here one finds a selection of works that include a full four-part accompaniment of strings. This allows for a fuller texture, making them more akin to brief opera scenes.