Muta

Alessandro Stradella was, along with Henry Purcell and Heinrich von Biber, among the most striking and idiosyncratic composers of the late seventeenth century. He is known principally for his cantatas on sacred subjects such as "La Susanna" and "San Giovanni Battista," which prefigure Handel's oratorios, and from which Handel borrowed freely. Stradella's musical eccentricities were paralleled by his irregular life. A member of the minor nobility, he ran through his inheritance while young, and thereafter supplemented his musical earnings by questionable financial dealings that incurred the anger of influential families.

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music.
"The sun light the shadows, hurricane is just passed on. I come back to my town, alone and with pain. I do not see my people, roads are desert, I look around me and see life is going away…"

This Da Vinci Classics album focuses on the soundtrack of an ancient Italian film, the subject of which is taken from a poem by Fausto M. Martini (1915). The film was made by Nino Oxilia and covered with sounds by Pietro Mascagni. The film revisits the myths of Faust and Dorian Gray, seen from a female perspective. Mascagni, whose fame was based mainly on his operas, sensed the potential of cinema which he considered as the future of opera, or the artistic expression that would replace singing theater as the public's preferred means of entertainment. But, once again, for Mascagni it wasn't about entertainment; he sought artistic perfection and pursued it. All the minute visual details of the film are echoed in the music, which comments on what was seen on the screen with what was performed by the orchestra. In this album Da Vinci Classics it was decided to record in full, without cuts, the piano reduction of the orchestral score created by Mascagni himself. The attached tracklist refers to the captions of the film, in order to allow the listener to follow, or imagine, the unfolding of the film.