Florio

With the 10 arias on Tormento d'amore, Ian Bostridge demonstrates the important place that the tenor voice held in Italian opera from the mid-17th to the mid-18th century - often thought of as the era of the castrato. At this time, there were two main centres of opera in Italy: Venice, where such composers as Cavalli, Vivaldi, Cesti, Stradella, Sartorio and Legrenzi were active, and Naples, home to Provenzale, Caresana, Vinci and Fago. In addition to arias - two of them in world premiere recordings - the album offers five instrumental sinfonie and a traditional Neapolitan song, 'Lu cardillo', or 'The Goldfinch', a songbird closely associated with Naples. Bostridge is partnered by conductor Antonio Florio and his ensemble Cappella Neapolitana.

The Spanish label Glossa seems to be releasing a fair amount of sacred music, especially from the Neapolitan realms of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as the rerelease of the Alessandro Scarlatti Lamentations reviewed elsewhere, though to be fair they are also a conduit, as in this recording, for other European firms as well. This selection of late 17th-century Lessons from Holy Week, along with a few instrumental works for filler, fits nicely within Glossa’s repertoire, which includes Johann Sebastian Bach and Pierre Bouteiller, in addition to a rather quirky offering titled Monteverdi Meets Jazz .

Based on a ponderous libretto by Metastasio (who defined his own work as “stellar”) Leonardo Vinci’s dramma per musica was premiered in Venice in 1726 and was triumphantly acclaimed. Since then, Siroe, Re di Persia was put to music by composers such as Vivaldi, Handel, Hasse, and Galuppi, to mention just a few. The story uses some of the elements of the plot of Partenope, almost as if it were a sequel moved to Persia. Siroe’s plot revolves around a family mystery mingled with passions, traitors en travesti, fatherly affection and filial honesty that echoes Shakespeare’s King Lear. Performed in concert version at Teatro San Carlo of Naples in 2018, this rare opera was chosen to open the theatre’s 281st season. Conductor Antonio Florio , specialist of the Neapolitan Baroque repertoire, revised the score.

The priest Giuseppe Cavallo was Maestro di Canto of the Conservatorio de Santa Maria de Loreto from 1672 until his death in 1684. Otherwise, virtually nothing is known about the composer, and it is only due to the musical archive of the Oratorio di Napoli, a treasure trove of rare scores, that a handful of Cavallo's works survive, including Il Giudizio Universale. This sacred oratorio presents Christ and Saint Michael, a pair of angels, two mortals, and four souls–two damned, two blessed–and begins with Christ commanding the angels to bring on the Last Judgment. What follows is a finely crafted musical drama, except for the confusion caused when the otherwise immaculately presented album fails to reveal which of the seven singers (two sopranos, three tenors, and one bass) is singing which parts.

Ce Vinci-là est un maître de l'opera buffa napolitain et, pour le Carnaval de 1722, excelle à emmener ces «Fiancés en galère» sur les flots de la pétulance dialectale et macaronique la plus débridée. Musique de lumière et de bonne humeur, nouvelle réussite de la série «Tesori di Napoli» que mène Antonio Florio, avec la verve irrésistible de toute son équipe chantante et violinante.

In this very appealing perfomance, Roberta Ivernizzi is in lovely form as Statira, shaping her music with with expressive detail and Dionisia di Vico brings a clarion mezzo with pungent low notes to Cloridaspe's music…Antonio Florio leads the able period-instrument ensemble Capella de'Turchini with style and verve.

Gaetano Latilla (1711-88) is pretty much a footnote, but after its premiere in 1738, this opera, La finta cameriera, was performed at one time or another throughout Europe for the next 20 years. It consists of 44 arias and acres of recitative (indeed, the Parisians objected to all the chatter in 1752). I normally hate these 18th century “intermezzo” operas about people disguised as either the lower classes or their own brothers, particularly because in between the acres of recitative there usually are simple-to-sing, “flavorful” arias. This work, however, is different: many of the arias are very showy and difficult, and require true virtuoso singing.

Everything is done with affection and great character as well as technical finesse. Such music demands innate timing, and these musicians, under Antonio Florio's direction, have it.