de Liso

George Frideric Handel’s Duetti da camera from La Risonanza represent a welcome extension of the ensemble’s award-winning series of Handel solo cantatas on Glossa, and come with the luxurious vocal pairing of Roberta Invernizzi and Marina De Liso.

At the dawn of a new century when André Campra was busy writing his Carnaval de Venise (1699), was the composer aware that he would be passing onto the Académie Royale de Musique a fabulous and legendary work that would remain without successors? And whilst the court of the ageing Louis XIV was endeavouring to conserve the spirit of the Grand Siècle at Versailles, Paris was already humming with the new ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.

‘Judith triumphant over the barbarians of Holofernes’ is the only survivor of the four oratorios that Vivaldi is known to have composed. The work was commissioned to celebrate the victory of the Republic of Venice over the Turks during the siege of Corfu. All characters, male and female, are interpreted by women (originally the singers of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice). Although the rest of the oratorio survives completely intact, the overture has been lost and Jordi Savall has selected two existing concertos as introduction, of which the key, mode and no doubt date of composition coincide most closely with the subject of the oratorio.

Camille Saint-Saëns and the Prix de Rome… surely a strange bringing together of ideas, given that the composer never gained that coveted award and consequently never took up residence in the famous Villa Medici? All the same, Saint-Saëns entered the competition on two separate occasions and, peculiarly in the history of the competition, twelve years apart: firstly in 1852 and then in 1864. On the first occasion he was still an adolescent, devoted to worshipping the memory of the great Mendelssohn; behind him, by the time of the second occasion, were already a number of his masterpieces later to be confirmed by posterity – and he had become acquainted with Verdi and had also discovered Wagner.

The Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini, which has been devoting itself to the research and performance of Pergolesi‘s music for years now, had his operas recorded live at the annual Music Festival in Jesi. Released on this BD are two productions from Jesi of one almost forgotten opera, Il prigionier superbo, and one of Pergolesi’s most popular works, La serva padrona, combined like they were at the original premiere.

Vivaldi's operas are rarely recorded and even less often performed, but happily they are gradually gaining more exposure. The most familiar and most frequently recorded is his 1727 Orlando Furioso. The fact that it has been on the public's radar is due largely to an excellent 1977 recording starring Marilyn Horne and Victoria de los Angeles, which has been reissued on Erato. The opera has since been recorded twice, and a DVD of a 1989 San Francisco Opera production featuring Horne and Kathleen Kuhlmann has been released. The newer CDs are extraordinarily fine; in choosing between Naïve's 2005 version led by Jean-Christophe Spinosi and this CPO release conducted by Federico Maria Sardelli, the listener is in a win-win position. Both feature stellar soloists, who are also compelling actors, and beautiful orchestral playing.

As part of their comprehensive survey of the music of Claudio Monteverdi, Claudio Cavina and La Venexiana delivered an exceptional version of L’Orfeo, a reading which had been honed by their trailblazing interpretations of the composer’s madrigals. This highly-esteemed recording of the favola in musica – critics applauded and fêted it in many different countries – subsequently dropped out of the catalogue and Glossa is very pleased to have the opportunity to return it there as part of this year’s 450th anniversary commemorations of the composer’s birth.

Until it was revived in the late twentieth century, Handel's opera Faramondo was performed just eight times in London in 1738 and then fell into obscurity. According to the conventions of Italian opera of the period, men's roles were often written for women, in spite of the lack of dramatic realism, and the use of castrati was common, so higher voices strongly predominate. Handel wrote the title role, which would have gone to a castrato, usually a male alto, for Cafarelli, who had the range of a mezzo-soprano.

A perfect example of the creativity and diversity of Antonio Vivaldi's musicmaking, the opera Dorilla in Tempe is an enchanting listen. From the pastoral and fairytale-like atmosphere of the story, to the prominent role of the choir (which sings the well known 'Spring') and the insertion of several spectacular arias by fellow composers (thereby creating a ‘pasticcio' opera, as was common at the time): everything combines to draw the listener in to the emotional twists and turns of Princess Dorilla in her valley of Tempe, Greece.