da Milano

The story is of Oralto, pirate and despotic ruler of Naxos, an island in the Aegean Sea, has seized in the course of one of his plundering expeditions the old Narete, a shepherd of Scyros, and his two daughters, Licori and Elpina. Licori, an extremely beautiful young girl, had been promised in marriage when she was still a child to Osmino, a young shepherd of Scyros: but Osmino had been carried off by Thracian soldiers. Licori however had never forgotten Osmino and had remained faithful to his memory to the extent of rejecting every other proposal.

This delightful intermezzo per musica in two acts - recounting the old story of a naïve young nobleman and of a sly girl who, after a series of squabbles and pranks, following the best of traditions, declare eternal love to each other and decide to get married - has pleased audiences ever since its first performance at the San Samuele theatre in Venice in 1750, and is here recorded for the first time. At that time the intermezzo was already a well-defined and self-standing music form, detached from opera seria, with which, originally, it had been combined. It was also, however, in a declining phase and nearing its disappearance. And yet L'uccellatrice by Niccolò Jommelli enjoyed many performances (Leipzig, 1751; Bologna, Ravenna and Vicenza, 1753; Parma, 1756; Florence, 1760; Pescia, 1772) and was even translated into French, with the score adapted and enlarged.

Giovanni Battista Sammartini is considered the first great symphony composer of the European musical history. Nine of his symphonies are presented here, as part of an extensive project to release the entire repertoire of Sammartini’s symphonic writing.