Egitto

Mosè in Egitto was Rossini’s twenty-fourth opera at its premiere on 5 March 1818 and the fourth of the nine opera seria he composed for the Royal Theatres of Naples during his musical directorship. The date of the premiere, during Lent, determined the biblical connotations of the subject-matter just as it had done with his Ciro in Babilonia composed for Ferrara and premiered there on 14 March 1812. The intrusion of the sacred into the theatre before and during the primo ottocento reflected both the function of the theatre in Italy and the influence of the Catholic Church.

One of the causes of the ‘crisis’ in the music industry is the fact that too many works are recorded over and over again. There are innumerable CDs with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Pergolesi’s Stabat mater. But once in a while someone has the imagination to perform and record a completely unknown piece by a composer hardly anybody has ever heard about. Antonio Florio is one of those creative minds who concentrates on little-known repertoire. In the last decade or so he has explored the musical past of his city, Naples. This time he presents a composition by an Italian who, for the largest part of his life, worked in Vienna. Badia was born in Verona and went to Innsbruck at a young age.

In campo operistico, il periodo storico tra Cavalli e Handel - quello, per capirci, che comprende giganti come Stradella, A. Scarlatti, Legrenzi… - è il più trascurato dalla discografia. Ed è un peccato, perché è il periodo nel quale si sviluppano le forme e gli stili che saranno tipici del Barocco maturo, come l'aria con il da-capo ed il virtuosismo belcantistico. Benvenuta quindi questa produzione dell'austriaca ORF, che documenta dal vivo l'esecuzione di questo rarissimo "Giulio Cesare in Egitto" del veneziano Antonio Sartorio, uno dei maggiori eredi di Cavalli nel florido operismo lagunare.

Meyerbeer’s elaborate use of vocal and orchestral forces is seminal in the development of 19th-century opera. Opera Rara’s edition features all the music written for productions the composer supervised. In the opera Adriano, a Knight of Rhodes, comes to Egypt in search of his nephew Armando, whom he believes may have died in battle. In fact he has married Palmide, daughter of the Sultan of Egypt and she has converted to Christianity. The furious Sultan throws everyone in jail, but all is forgiven when Armando intercedes in a plot to overthrow his father-in-law.