Porpora: L'amato Nome Stile Galante

Nicola Porpora’s Op 1 set of Italian chamber cantatas receive a new and striking reading directed by Stefano Aresi, a leading interpreter of the Late Baroque composer. Neapolitan-born Porpora brought his nuove musiche with him in the early 1730s when he had set out for London (with his pupil Farinelli) to take advantage of the perceived wavering of Handel’s operatic fame there. Porpora, espying an opportunity there just as Handel himself had done before, quickly ingratiated himself with the nobility in Britain and his 12 cantatas, though probably written in Naples, were published under the patronage of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales of Great Britain.

Nicola Antonio Porpora (1686-1768) was a celebrated composer and singing teacher, his ability to set the Italian language to music was internationally acknowledged during his lifetime. In a career that spanned almost 70 years Porpora worked in Naples, Rome, Venice, London, Dresden and Vienna. As a singing teacher he created stars such as Farinelli, Caffarelli and Porporino. Much of his compositional output is of exceptional quality. He made his chief contribution in the vocal realm, having written many worthwhile secular and sacred operas, oratorios, serenatas and cantatas, as well as various lamentations and duets.

Five years ago, Stile Galante dedicated a CD recording with the renowned Swedish mezzosoprano Ann Hallenberg to the celebrated soprano castrato Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829). Accompanied by soprano Francesca Cassinari, Stile Galante is now going back to this extraordinary musician and presents his work as a composer of chamber vocal music. Marchesi published during his stay in London two different collections of ariettas with fortepiano and harp accompaniment. The Ariette op. 1 & 2 are sweet musical cameos dominated by remarkable elegance. They perfectly embody the taste of the time and represent Marchesi’s wish to use his popularity as an opera singer to push in front of the audience a more all-round image of himself as an artist. The programme is rounded off with brilliant instrumental pieces for fortepiano and harps by female composers Anne- Marie Krumpholz (1766-1824) and Veronika Rosalia Cianchettini (1769-1833) who worked with Marchesi in London.

With this album, Stile Galante continues its work in the world of the Italian solo chamber cantata - here Stefano Aresi’s ensemble joins forces with baritone Sergio Foresti in order to bring us a selection of cantatas by Antonio Caldara (1670 - 1736) for bass. These unusual pieces are preserved in precious manuscripts in Bologna and Vienna and are extremely demanding for the singer, asking for great skills (both vocal and theatrical). The seven cantatas recorded here offer a welcome, unusual view on Italian vocal chamber music, especially as linked to the Viennese court.

Abandoned at the age of two months and taken in by the Ospedale della Pietà, Chiara (or Chiaretta) rose – within that enclosed charitable institution in Venice – to become one of the leading European violinists of the middle of the 18th century. No stranger to such acclaim himself from two and a half centuries later, Fabio Biondi, on his first release for Glossa, has devised a programme drawing on the personal diary of this remarkable musician – taught by Antonio Vivaldi, and later a virtuoso soloist on the violin as well as the viola d’amore – of concertos and sinfonias by composers who, like the prete rosso, taught at the Pietà: Porta, Porpora, Martinelli, Latilla, Perotti and Bernasconi are all musicians whose compositions charm and delight as much today as they will have done in the time of Chiara.