Lumi 32

The performance given on 21 March 1967 at Carnegie Hall in New York stems from the now outmoded tradition of casting baritones and basses in the castrato roles, and uses a special concert arrangement. Not only are several cuts made to the score, but the order of the arias is changed and the recitatives are heavily truncated and provided with new English texts, and given not to one of the characters but to a 'narrator'.

'L’incoronazione di Dario' must be considered one of Vivaldi’s most successful operas. Immediately opening with exceptional arias, it moves at a rapid pace, holding the listener’s attention throughout. Recitatives are interspersed with arioso interludes and there no less than eight 'big' numbers sure to join the ranks of 'Vivaldi’s best opera arias'. The excellent cast acts out this drama with conviction: Anders Dahlin’s sings Dario, with impeccable intonation and stunning coloratura passages; Sara Mingardo, as Statira, brings great depth and beauty, most especially in her Act 2 solo Cantata accompanied only by viola da gamba.

Universally admired for his keyboard music, the vocal music of Domenico Scarlatti has until very recently been largely ignored. For many years, the opera Tolomeo e Alessandro was known only from a manuscript of Act I in a private collection in Milan. Recently the entire opera turned up in England and surprisingly revealed that Domenico was after all a very fine dramatic composer, perhaps even more appealingly so than his father Alessandro. It is tempting to think that Handel, whose Tolomeo uses the same libretto, may have known this setting by his old friend, 'Mimmo', and tried to outdo him in setting the same texts to music. He was not always successful.

…Meredith Hall, eine bildhübsche kanadische Sopranistin mit herrlicher Stimme und ausserordentlicher Bühnenpräsenz, war eine Partenope, wie sie im Buche steht. Ihr nahm man jede Äusserung und jede Aktion ab, sei es als furchtlose Regentin, als ständig umworbene, aber stets treu zu ihrem Liebhaber stehende Frau, oder als von Arsace arglistig getäuschte Geliebte.

It is a studio production with all the benefits of excellent acoustics, perfect balance, no disturbing noises from stage movements or audience reactions and the option to re-record momentary lapses. And there is another advantage: these studio sessions were based on a staged production at the Thesaloniki Concert Hall in March 2008! I suppose this is a misprint. If it is, this is the only error in this wholly delightful production.

Following on from the release of Naïve’s critically-acclaimed recording of Ottone in Villa (OP30493) in November 2010, the 16th operatic production in the label’s acclaimed ‘Vivaldi Edition’ features Teuzzone, a vibrant three-act theatre piece first produced in Venice in 1719. The music in this new 3CD set is directed by the internationally-renowned early music director Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations. The outstanding group of soloists include male soprano Paulo Lopez, baritone Furio Zanasi, countertenor Antonio Giovannini, soprano Raffaella Milanesi, and tenor Makoto Sakurada.

Andrea Antico was a printer from Dalmatia who obtained, through the first Medici Pope, Leo X, a monopoly on printing keyboard music. His 1517 collection of frottole – a quasi-rustic word meaning a deceitful, silly story – contains highly advanced, but textually corrupt arrangements of part-songs for keyboard made by an anonymous musician. This world première recording of the complete Frottole Intabulate incorporates a new edition by harpsichordist Glen Wilson.
Frottola means a deceitful, silly story. They were wildly popular songs in the later part of the fifteenth and the first third of the sixteenth centuries.

“Germanico del sig. Hendl”. Since 1929 the printed catalogue of the Conservatorio Cherubini in Florence (section “Opere teatrali”, p. 143) has contained a Handel title not mentioned in any other sources.
In autumn 2009 a photocopy of the manuscript was circulated in London, where a Bond Street jeweller helped to contact top experts in the field with the aim of soliciting an authentication. On behalf of whom? The mystery has been partially solved with an official notice that appeared on 18 May on the website of Sony Classical, convening a press conference on 6 June at La Scala Shop in Milan..

This series of Italian cantatas by three eminent contemporaries makes for refined and focused listening. Cencic…marries virtuosity with colour. The result is singing of great reach and range, in which verbal sensitivity and bravura execution are usually put at the service of the music.

Alessandro Scarlatti La Giuditta was written for five voices and instruments. In 1697, Scarlatti set a second libretto, this time written by Cardinal Ottoboni’s father, Antonio, in which the number of characters was reduced to three. We do not know the occasion for which this second setting was created and lack information on its first performance. The differences between the two versions are discussed in Brian Robins’ review of a previous recording, which interested readers will find in the Archive. (Robins states that the second version was written for Rome in 1700. The notes to Dynamic’s recording state that the first version was the one performed in 1700.)