Bella Gigogin

It is with much pleasure that Glossa is able to announce the release of a further new recording featuring the marvellous vocal talents of that queen of Baroque music, Roberta Invernizzi: La bella più bella. Known for her dazzling and elegant displays in the music of the later Baroque – Handel and Vivaldi come to mind, but also her Naples-related travelogue on the recent I Viaggi di Faustina – the Milanese singer has also nurtured, across her career, the more delicate and nuanced art of the Italian song repertory from the early 17th century, a time when courtly and polyphonic expression were giving way to the “moving of the emotions” by a solo singer accompanied by a single instrument. Renato Dolcini guides us through the musical evolution of this form in his illuminating booklet essay.

In attempting to select something from the vast pool of solo cantatas left behind by Alessandro Scarlatti, it's hard to know what to highlight. Argentine soprano Maria Cristina Kiehr, a prominent European early music specialist who honed her craft in the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis under René Jacobs, casts in her lot with both the elder Scarlatti and Concerto Soave in a recital consisting of three of the elder Scarlatti's solo cantatas in Harmonia Mundi's Alessandro Scarlatti: Bella madre de' fiori.