Amor

Out on Glossa is the first-ever recording of one of the most important preserved dramatic works by one of the major figures of the European full Baroque, José de Nebra: Vendado es Amor, no es ciego, a 1744 summertime zarzuela success in Madrid. Alberto Miguélez Rouco conducts an animated vocal sextet and Los Elementos in a production prepared for and executed under the auspices of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

Out on Glossa is the first-ever recording of one of the most important preserved dramatic works by one of the major figures of the European full Baroque, José de Nebra: Vendado es Amor, no es ciego, a 1744 summertime zarzuela success in Madrid. Alberto Miguélez Rouco conducts an animated vocal sextet and Los Elementos in a production prepared for and executed under the auspices of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Rather than the moralizing plots of the dramma per musica, zarzuelas focused on tales of love, power and slanging matches between mythological figures with commentary provided by comic frequently bawdy characters.

A daring wife disguises herself in order to be hired as a prison guard and thus rescue her unjustly detained husband: the story of Leonora, taken from the French novel by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, is familiar to us through Beethoven’s only opera.

Manuel de Falla is renowned as the greatest Spanish composer of the early 20th century, melding diverse stylistic, folk or literary influences into distinctive new musical languages and forging masterworks that have become cultural emblems of his homeland. This synthesis can be found in the original 1915 version of El amor brujo, a heartfelt representation of a young Roma woman’s dramatic quest to free herself of the ghost of her lover. The mini-opera El retablo de Maese Pedro pays homage to Cervantes’ beloved Don Quixote using instrumentations and rhythms that conjure both Spain’s Golden Age and the vibrant energy of new European music in the 1920s.