Lina Tur Bonet & Musica Alchemica Antonio Vivald

Like all castrati, Gaetano Berenstadt's hormones had gone crazy, but Berenstadtis were particularly strong. With a height of about 185 cm, he is said to have had 130 cm long legs, arms that were far too short and a corpulent belly; a field day for the caricaturists. But when he stood on the opera stage and sang, he was idolised.

Gaetano Brunetti (1744-1798) was, along with Luigi Boccherini, the main composer of symphonies during Spain ́s Classical period –both because of the quantity of his work and its diversity. Other composers active in Spain in the second half of the eighteenth century were not at the level of the work of the two Italians, although we know of a fair number that wrote symphonies, generally with a religious background. Central European and French symphonic music was freely available, at least in Madrid, and the works of the leading composers of the era were known and performed at the Spanish Court. Names like Haydn, Gossec, Pleyel, Mozart, Wranitzky, Eichner and Rosetti (Anton Rössler) appear on invoices for music purchased or copied for the Spanish court music service, although the composer that stands out above all others is Brunetti.

A hitherto little-known manuscript now in the Czech National Library contains a Missa defunctorum by Caldara that comprises the first three sections of the Requiem liturgy (the Introit, Kyrie and Sequence). Nothing is known about the origins of the music or how it ended up in Prague, but it probably dates from the Venetian’s long years of service at the Habsburg court in Vienna (and it is known that he deputised for his boss Fux at the coronation of Emperor Charles VI in Prague in 1723).

La Dafne (Daphne) is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a favola in musica (fable set to music) composed in one act and a prologue. The opera is based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo as related by Ovid in the first book of the Metamorphoses. An earlier version of the libretto had been set to music in 1597–98 by Jacopo Peri, whose Dafne is generally considered to be the first opera.