Eva Zaïcik, Le Consort - Royal Handel (2021)
FLAC tracks | 64:49 | 303 Mb
Genre: Classical / Label: Alpha
The fast-rising young French mezzo-soprano Eva Zaïcik has looked to London for this Baroque recital, and specifically to the birth of the first Royal Academy of Music. Founded in 1719 by a group of aristocrats, and based at the King's Theatre, this was a musical venture whose audacious aim was to make London the centre of the operatic world via Italian opera, sung exclusively in Italian. Appointed as Music Director was Georg Friedrich Haendel – neither Italian nor English, but an exciting talent with ambitions in the operatic domain, and recently landed in London after four years in Italy honing his operatic skills and making key contacts.Further names were then lured over from Italy itself: notably the composers Attilio Ariosti and Giovanni Battista Bononcini (whose skills as strings players also raised the virtuosic level of the orchestral music), and star singers such as the castrato Francisco Bernardi Senesino, and sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni; and with such an array of names and talent, success duly followed, because over the course of nine years, the Royal Academy staged no fewer than thirty-four operas, including masterpieces of Handel's such as Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Ottone and Radamisto.