Les Informatici ed

Alessandro Scarlatti’s oratorio is an exciting drama of life, love and death, set in the 4th century Roman Empire. Preferring to devote her life to God, Teodosia rejects the love of Arsenio, the son of the Roman governor, and welcomes death. St. Theodosia of Tyre died at the age of 18, in the year 308. One cannot help but be struck by the dramatic strength and the vocal beauty of this work, performed here by a very talented cast, including Emmanuelle de Negri, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Anthea Pichanick, Renato Dolcini and the fiery orchestra, Les Accents, led by Thibault Noally.

Teseo (HWV 9) is an opera seria with music by George Frideric Handel, the only Handel opera that is in five acts. The Italian-language libretto was by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Philippe Quinault's Thésée. It was Handel's third London opera, intended to follow the success of Rinaldo after the unpopular Il pastor fido. First performed on 10 January 1713,Teseo featured "magical" effects such as flying dragons, transformation scenes and apparitions and had a cast of notable Italian opera singers. It was a success with London audiences, receiving thirteen performances even though the stage machinery for the "magical" effects broke down, and would have received more performances had not one of the theatre's managers run away with the box office receipts.

‘Perhaps the best of all my works’, said Gluck of his Armide. But this, the fifth of his seven ‘reform operas’, has never quite captured the public interest as have Orfeo, Alceste, the two Iphigenies and even Paride ed Elena. Unlike those works it is based not on classical mythology but on Tasso’s crusade epic, Gerusalemme liberata. No doubt Gluck turned to this libretto, originally written by Quinault, to challenge Parisian taste by inviting comparison with the much-loved Lully setting. Its plot is thinnish, concerned only with the love of the pagan sorceress Armide, princess of Damascus, for the Christian knight and hero Renaud, and his enchantment and finally his disenchantment and his abandonment of her; the secondary characters have no real life.

This is a mixed bag, but it is a mixture of wonderful stuff put together with considerable expertise. Marc-Antoine Charpentier was a major composer of the French Baroque, served at the Sainte-Chappelle in Paris, and wrote much music of solemnity and grandeur, but was also principal composer for the Comedie Française where he wrote music of a lighter nature. What we get here is mainly the latter, more directly entertaining Charpentier, and we get it in the forms of airs serieux, which are refined songs intended for court circles, and airs a boire, in a more popular style.

Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre return to Handel with a complete recording of his opera Alcina.The title role is interpreted by Magdalena Kožená, who reunites with Les Musiciens and maestro Minkowski after a series of acclaimed baroque recordings.She is joined by an excellent cast of soloists, consisting of Erin Morley (Morgana), Anna Bonitatibus (Ruggiero), Elizabeth De Shong (Bradamante), Alois Mühlbacher (Oberto), Valerio Contaldo (Oronte) and Alex Rosen (Melisso).This studio recording transports the listener to Alcina’s enchanted island, and shows Handel at the peak of his power: the score is dramatic, lush and colourful as well as introspective and profound where the story requires it.