Marracash È Finita LA Pace

Dieses Oratorium ist möglicherweise genau jenes Stück, mit dem Johann David Heinichen (1683-1749) sich die Kapellmeisterstelle am Dresdner Hof Augusts des Starken, des Kurfürsten von Sachsen und polnischen Königs, eroberte und so sein berufliches Schicksal an einen der glänzendsten Höfe Europas band. Das Werk entstand in Venedig, wo Heinichen während eines ausgedehnten Italienaufenthalts 1716 dem sächsischen Kurprinzen Friedrich August begegnete. Dieser zeigte sich von der Musik seines Landeskindes überaus begeistert und empfahl ihn nachdrücklich am heimischen Hof.

Maria Callas s talent as one of the world s greatest singing actresses remains unchallenged to this day and she has acquired legendary status as one of the most iconic figures in the world of classical music. There are very few films of Callas on stage, so it is through the medium of her audio recordings that her art lives on. She recorded exclusively for EMI for most of her career, and these six CDs present a fully representative sampling of her recorded legacy on EMI.

Three serenatas by Vivaldi survive (he is known to have composed at least eight)‚ of which La Senna festeggiante is by far the most enjoyable…One of the work’s most interesting features is Vivaldi’s deliberate use in places of elements of French style‚ for instance in the solemn ‘ouvertur’ which opens Part 2 and the courtly minuet of The Golden Age’s second aria‚ thereby adding to the richness of a work which for the most part is vintage Vivaldi at his most buoyant and irresistible.

Alessandro Scarlatti was only 24 and had just begun his enormously successful operatic career when he set a libretto by that great Roman patron of the arts, Cardinal Pamphili, on the subject of repentance and divine grace. It was performed before a distinguished audience by a small group of leading singers and instrumentalists of the day in March 1685—the year of the birth of Alessandro's son Domenico (in fact, as a matter of interest, three days before the birth of J. S. Bach). This simple little morality (oratorio is too grandiose a term for it) shows Magdalen torn between youthful pleasures and repentance for hedonistic living: the subject is treated in a sequence of extremely brief arias (and a few duets) and recitatives, which add up to a rather bitty effect, all the more because of seemingly haphazard key-sequences.