Ku io Caracciolo Andrea Riccardi

Following four successful recordings released on the Ricercar, Alpha and Arcana labels, Rome-based Andrea De Carlo and his Ensemble Mare Nostrum continue their exploration of the Roman repertoire and inaugurate here a new series of recordings, with its own distinctive artwork, devoted to the vast and multifaceted musical heritage of the Eternal City.

Andrea Gabrieli (c. 1510-1586) was one of the first native Venetians to hold the positions of Second and then First Organist in the basilica of San Marco. These were the highest musical appointments in the city, and their holders was expected to compose much of the music they played. In the event, like his predecessor Merulo and his successor (his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli), Andrea was adept at all musical forms, especially the new and up-to-date (very secular) madrigal, a sort of vocal chamber music. A splendid selection of these, interspersed with instrumental canzoni (in which one can see the influence he had on his more-famous nephew) that offer welcome contrast to the vocal music. Manfred Cordes leads Weser-Renaissance Bremen in pungent period-instrument performances.

This release marks the world-premiere recording and rediscovery of Antonio Caldara’s La Concordia de’ pianeti, a musical serenade of operatic magnitude composed for the court of Austrian Emperor Karl VI, featuring the creme de la creme of the day’s singers, including the legendary castrato Carestini (Franco Fagioli’s part).

The disc under review here is the fourth in a series, called ‘The Stradella Project’. I don't know which parts of Stradella's oeuvre will be included in this project. He was a prolific composer, and his extant output comprises music for the stage, liturgical and non-liturgical sacred music, madrigals and cantatas. It also includes six oratorios, and two of them were the subject of volumes 2 and 3. I am sure that the two best-known oratorios, San Giovanni Battista and Susanna, will be recorded at a later stage. As these are available in several performances, it was a good idea to start with those oratorios which are seldom performed. That also goes for Santa Pelagia.

The Best of Andrea Bocelli: Vivere is the first greatest hits album released by Italian pop tenor Andrea Bocelli. It includes five new studio recordings and was internationally released by Sugar on 22 October 2007. Included are duets with Celine Dion, Sarah Brightman, Giorgia and Laura Pausini.

Andrea Marcon and La Cetra Barockorchester & Vokalensemble Basel sparkle in this new release of Handel's forgotten masterpiece Parnasso in testa, recorded shortly before their hugely successful Netherlands premiere of the opera in November 2016.

This new recording in the Edition Vivaldi series – the first of two volumes dedicated to Vivaldi’s "cantate da camera" for soprano – displays the energetic vitality with which a new generation of artists in their thirties is encountering the baroque repertoire. This sixty-eighth album of the Edition highlights the expressively powerful voice of the soloist, soprano Arianna Vendittelli, already heard in the operas Il Tamerlano (2020) and Il Giustino (2018) conducted by Ottavio Dantone, as well as the artistic vision and high standards of the harpsichordist, organist and conductor Andrea Buccarella, who in 2018 carried off the first prize at the Bruges International Early Music Competition with his Abchordis Ensemble.

Cavalli composed more than 40 operas. Less than a dozen have been recorded. L'Orione an opera in three acts and a prologue is about No. 27 and was first heard in Milan in 1653 to celebrate the election of Ferdinand IV as King of the Romans. This September 27, 1998 performance (in a new critical edition by Andrea Marcon derived from the manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice) in Venice is the first in the modem era. The plot is derived from the ancient Greek legend of the giant Orion told in Ovid's Fasti, rewritten in Natale Conte's Mythologiae, and finally dramatized in Francesco Meloslo's libretto for Cavalli. The libretto takes the opportunity for humor, using the plight of the blind Orion to make fun of the gods, as was common in so many Venetian librettos of the time.

Before the release of this disc called Ah! Mio cor!, charismatic mezzo soprano Magdalena Kozená had already made her mark as a Handel singer with her recordings of the composer's Italian cantatas and opera Julius Caesar, but this triumphant 2007 collection of arias affirms her mastery of the German-English composer's music. Featuring selections from the composer's operas and oratorios, this disc is more of a smorgasbord than a balanced meal with one highly expressive and supremely virtuosic aria following another and the only cohesion supplied by the performer.