Gabriella

Carlo Gesualdo might get all the attention when it comes to colourful composer biographies but Alessandro Stradella (1639-82) gives the murderer-composer more than a run for his money. A fraudster, playboy and serial seducer (wimples no object), Stradella was the subject of at least one failed murder plot and was eventually stabbed to death by an unknown killer. If his music can’t quite live up to the thrills of his life, it’s still got plenty to recommend it, as this latest recording from Ensemble Mare Nostrum demonstrates.

With this production of Francesca Caccini’s 'La liberazione di Ruggerio dall'isola di Alcina', directed by Elena Sartori, an important stepping-stone in the development of 17th-century opera receives a superb new recording from Glossa. For much of her career - Caccini was a composer, a virtuoso singer, a teacher, a poet and a multi-instrumentalist - she worked at the Medici court, and was commissioned by the grand duchess of Tuscany, Maria Maddalena of Austria, to write this commedia in musica for performance in Florence in 1625.