Purcell, Dido And Aenes, Les Arts Florissants

This album of Baroque cantatas and chamber duets grew out of a 2007 performance of Stefano Landi's 1631 opera Il Sant'Alessio starring Philippe Jaroussky and Max Emanuel Cencic (among the eight countertenors in the cast) with William Christie conducting Les Arts Florissants. Christie was so impressed with the blend of Jaroussky and Cencic's voices that he brought them together to explore the vast and rarely performed repertoire of late 17th and early 18th century Italian duets for equal voices.

Joseph Casanéa of Mondonville, a native of Narbonne who died on the hilltops of Belleville, in Paris, was as well-known in his day as Jean-Philippe Rameau and far more celebrated. He conducted the famous Concert Spirituel and his grand motets combine emotion with a dance-like theatricality in perfect harmony with the decorative spirit of Sevandoni, the architect and decorator of Saint-Sulpice and of Saint-Bruno in Lyon.

The culmination of a three-year Monteverdi project led by conductor William Christie and director Pier Luigi Pizzi at Madrid's Teatro Réal, L'incoronazione di Poppea brings a potent blend of sex and politics, high drama and comedy. Leading the cast are Danielle de Niese, Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic and Anna Bonitatibus.

Following on logically from his complete cycle of Monteverdi madrigals, Paul Agnew – here both conductor and stage director – presents his intimate and ‘sacred’ version of the composer’s first opera (and the first great opera in musical history). In a fine collective spirit, the singers and instrumentalists of Les Arts Florissants participate in the drama on equal terms, mingling in a single set that gives increased prominence to the (masterly) lighting and to the protagonists (overwhelmingly moving in their restrained movements and expressions): we are transported to the very heart of Monteverdi’s masterpiece, as if we had fallen into a painting by Nicolas Poussin, caught up in the mystical adventure of two lovers more mythical than ever.

Following the acclaim which met their 2-CD set devoted to the first two books of Gesualdo's madrigals (2020 Gramophone Award), Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants now focus on the composer's Ferrara period. Books III and IV mark a turning point in Gesualdo's output. The murderous prince's inner demons seem to be reflected in the heightened expressiveness of these madrigals, whose reliance on chromaticism and dissonance was so far ahead of it's time that it's like would not be heard again until centuries later.

Fully integrated with the musical line, the singers avoid melodrama through intimate, small gestures as if acting for screen, not stage.’ Gramophone Critics' Choice 2021 Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants conclude their exploration of this fascinating corpus. Even more than in his first books, Gesualdo here displays incredible modernity, playing in inimitable fashion on dissonances and chromaticisms. Love and death, joys and sorrows embrace and clash amid ever bolder harmonies.

Stefano Landi, who was Monteverdi's junior by about 20 years, was active in Rome, whereas Monteverdi was based in Venice. Landi spent two formative years in Venice, though, and absorbed the progressive musical ideas of Monteverdi and other seconda prattica composers. That contact would explain why Il Sant'Alessio (1632) sounds like a Monteverdi opera. Its expressive recitatives, melodically gratifying set pieces, mixture of serious and comic elements, and the complex psychology of its characters make it a piece that should appeal to opera fans who love L'incoronazione di Poppea.

Released in 1995, this Harmonia Mundi CD of five of Handel's Concerti grossi, Op. 6, is an absolute bargain and highly recommended to any lover of great music. Considering William Christie and Les Arts Florissants are among the most brilliant interpreters of Handel, that these gorgeous works afforded them an ideal platform for their talents, and that Harmonia Mundi provided the best possible engineering to capture their glorious sound, this album is an embarrassment of riches not to be missed. One regrets, however, that there are just 5 of the 12 concerti; since Christie recorded only Nos. 1, 2, 6, 7, and 10 for Harmonia Mundi before switching to Erato, there is no follow-up disc for the rest of Op. 6.

1611: After two years of study with Gabrieli in Venice, Heinrich Schütz tried his hand at composing madrigals on Italian poems. This mere ‘graduation exercise’ turned out to be a masterpiece: the young German composer demonstrated his ability to identify each nuance of the text with a different musical emotion, a refinement heightened here by the interpretation of Les Arts Florissants.