La Più Bella Del Mondo

In its day La scuola de’ gelosi (1778) was one of the best-known comic operas by Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), remaining a box-office hit for decades. All the more astonishing is the fact that it could sink into obscurity. Even Goethe was excited by this masterpiece: “The opera is the audience’s favourite, and the audience is right. It contains an astonishing richness and variety, and the subject is treated with the most exquisite taste. I was moved by every aria.” In the wake of its world premiere in Venice in 1778, La scuola de’ gelosi was performed in opera houses all over Europe, from Dresden, Vienna, Prague and Paris to cities as far away as London and St Petersburg, before it passed into near-oblivion.

That the four main works on this disc have never been recorded before is no reflection on the quality of the music or the composer. Joseph Martin Kraus, the German-born composer-contemporary of Mozart's working in Sweden, was all but forgotten after his death in 1792 and recordings of his works have been few and far between. And his four Italian cantatas on this disc were nearly completely forgotten after the death of the soprano they were written for in 1790.