Il Gusto 22

Galuppi is important in operatic history as the pioneer of the finalé, joining movements into a concerted whole in which the dramatic action reaches a crucial situation and is then developed. His most successful operas were written, as here, with the Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni who had reformed the original ‘comedia dell'arte’ and developed this into ‘opera buffe’, thus bringing comedy into the opera house. His texts provided simplicity and directness with reduction of dialogue, more musical numbers, including arias, lovers’ duets and big final ensembles. Galuppi set the dialogue words with secco recitative. In combination Goldoni and Galuppi were said to have invented ‘opere buffe’.

Contemporaneo is the title of the recording project released on Friday 18 November, 2016. This is a definitive collection of the songs by Fossati, an artist who for some years has decided to abandon the recording market to concentrate on the author's work for other artists.

This talented Italian vocal ensemble, under the direction of Rinaldo Alessandrini, has already proved its excellence in previous discs of Monteverdi madrigals. In this engaging new release the artists turn their attention to ‘madrigal comedies’ by 16th-century Alessandro Striggio and his younger contemporary, Adriano Banchieri. These are highly entertaining, often witty pieces, with a strong onomatopoeic element and a profusion of vividly depictive images running through them.

Handel’s Italian oratorio seems to offer a great deal of fascination to continental-based ensembles presumably because the Italian texts make the works easier to perform well with non-Anglophone singers. But there are significant differences, between this work and the later oratorios. The later works use choruses and have quite strong narrative and moral elements. The English Oratorios were written for mainly English-trained singers whose style was expressive rather than virtuoso; in them the older Handel aimed for a new style.

During the early 1990s Antonio Florio (together with Dinko Fabris) was making substantial discoveries in the field of Baroque repertory from Naples for performance and recording, and now that Florio and I Turchini are making new recordings for Glossa (Caresana’s Tenebrae and L’Adoratione de’ Maggi), we are delighted to be bringing back into circulation some of those earlier ground-breaking recordings, signed by Roberto Meo and Sigrid Lee, focusing here – with Il Canto della Sirena – on Neapolitan chamber cantatas from the 17th and early 18th centuries.