Lumi 32

This is the best recording so far of Partenope. Krisztina Laki is splendid in the lead role as is Helga Muller-Molinari as Rosmira and John York Skinner as Armindo. Rene Jacobs in the counter-tenor role of Arsace does a fine job considering the date of this recording. The orchestra plays with great vitality. This is the recommended recording of this opera.

Ever since the operas of Handel started to return to the stage in the 1920s, Giulio Cesare has been one of the pieces held in high regard. Always known by name through the most famous of Cleopatra’s arias (”V’adoro, pupille” and “Piangerò la sorte mia”) and often produced successfully in Germany, it has gathered a reputation as the best of the composer’s operas-the reasons for which can now be verified by anyone who acquires RCA Victor’s current release of the highly successful New York City Opera production.

Handel’s cantatas can be divided into two groups, those accompanied by continuo and those that add one or more obbligato instruments or a full orchestra. On disc 1, Jochen Kowalski sings five cantatas, one orchestral and four continuo. Kowalski has an attractive countertenor voice, not hooty or hollow sounding. He is adept at coloratura, and his voice is strong throughout its range, aside from a couple of high notes. He does not display much emotional range, but the cantatas he chose are not particularly dramatic and thus do not require it. Tasteful ornaments are added to da capos. The accompaniments are good. The orchestral cantata, Splende l’alba in oriente, is only available in one other currently available performance, by Gerard Lèsne on Virgin, a recording I have not heard.

NICOLA PORPORA'S Germanico in Germania is the latest Baroque opera seria to get worked over by a conductor who confuses over-caffeination with excitement. There’s little drama, shape or contrast when everything’s so loud and frantic, and the whole work sounds like one long string of agitated arie di tempeste. Even without understanding Italian, it’s easy to tell what a Baroque aria is about by the instrumental setup and the vocal writing.

L’Empio Punito is a dramma per musica in three acts composed by Alessandro Melani, on a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni, based on Filippo Acciaiuoli’s adaptation of El burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de piedra (1616) by Tirso da Molina. It was premiered in 1669 and this release features the first performance in modern times that took place at Teatro di Villa Torlonia in Rome in October 2019, 350 years after its debut. Acrimante, the male protagonist of l’Empio Punito, can be considered the first Don Giovanni in the history of opera. His seductive power brings chaos and pain in the lives of the other characters but a lot of energy as well. Although Melani was at the beginning of his career as an operatic composer – he wrote mainly sacred music – in L’empio punito he proves to be very skilful in alternating lyrical moments and pure recitative, and in introducing at the right moment dramatic recitatives that interrupt the course of the arias.

The chamber cantata flourished in Italy as a counterpart to public opera and oratorio, cultivated by aristocratic patrons for their personal enjoyment. Perhaps because of its essentially private origins, this pervasive Baroque form remains little known today. During his years in Italy (1706-1710), George Frideric Handel composed nearly 100 cantatas for a series of important patrons, but they have tended to be passed over in favor of his larger operas, oratorios, concertos and orchestral suites. The plan of La Risonanza to perform and record all of the cantatas with instrumental accompaniment (about one-third of the total) is therefore of signal importance for all music lovers, as it will bring this extraordinarily beautiful music once again to life (2006-2009).

Händel’s La Resurrezione is an oratorio for Easter. It was first performed on Easter Sunday 1708 in Rome. The libretto was written by Carlo Sigismondo Capece. The events related in the story are those of the period between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, when Christ ‘descended into Hell’ to redeem the souls of the patriarchs and prophets who had prepared for His coming. The events in the underworld are set out in series of lively exchanges between an Angel and Lucifer. Meanwhile, the story as seen on earth is related through the conversations of three mortal characters, Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas and St John the Evangelist. The two planes of the drama are united when the Angel appears to the women at the sepulchre and announces the Resurrection to them.

2009 release from L'Arpeggiata, the French-based ensemble directed by Austrian-born harpist and lutenist Christina Pluhar. L'Arpeggiata has made a speciality of exploring and exploiting the close links between Baroque repertoire and the traditional music of the Latin world and its characteristic forms such as the tarantella, the folia or the canario. On Via Crucis, 'the way of the Cross', the focus is on the pervasive presence of religious feeling in Southern Europe. The Passion of Christ evokes the same fervour in composers such as Giovanni Felice Sances (1600-1679) or Tarquinio Merula (1594-1665) - both active in northern Italy – as it does in the streets of Naples or the villages of Corsica. The two main works in the collection are Sance's extraordinary Stabat Mater and Merula's Hor ch'e tempo di dormire, in which the Virgin Mary lulls her baby to sleep while weeping for his future suffering and both enthrall the listener with a basso ostinato and hypnotic swaying rhythms.

World premiere recording featuring a superb performance presented by Antonio Florio and a cast of true Baroque specialists. This opera waited almost three centuries before its rediscovery by Antonio Florio and the Turchini orchestra. Founded in 1987 by Antonio Florio, the ensemble I Turchini consists of instrumentalists and singers living and working in Naples who specialize in the performance of Neapolitan music from the 17th and 18th centuries and in the rediscovery of music by highly-gifted composers who are now largely unknown.

According to Charles Burney Handel's operas represented the most complete concerts during which, in addition to the most perfect singing and the effects of a mighty and well-disciplined orchestra, there were excellent acting and splendid scenes and stage decorations.