Clio 72

Andrea Marcon and La Cetra Barockorchester & Vokalensemble Basel sparkle in this new release of Handel's forgotten masterpiece Parnasso in testa, recorded shortly before their hugely successful Netherlands premiere of the opera in November 2016.

By the time that Alessandro Scarlatti was writing the two serenatas recorded here by Fabio Bonizzoni and La Risonanza and inaugurating an exciting new series on Glossa, that celebratory cantata form, often employing allegorical characters, had been in existence for a mere half century. Scarlatti, as Bonizzoni says, “was one of the main sources of inspiration for Handel whilst the latter was in Italy, and this creates a real continuity with what we have been doing in the recent past”; notably the much-admired septet of recordings devoted to the Saxon composers Italian chamber cantatas.