Giulio Aristide Sartorio

There is still no consideration of the musical depth of Giulio San Pietro del Negro, an avant-garde composer of the early 17th century, Salentinian by birth (from Lecce) but Lombardian by artistic adoption. Thanks to in-depth studies conducted by Maria Giovanna Brindisino and Sarah Marianna Iacono, we have a rich and varied historical-biographical profile of del Negro: from a young age (1580-1600) the composer lived in Lecce; during those two decades, he probably studied under the direction of maestro di cappella Francesco Antonio Baseo; then, in the first decades of 17th century, he was warmly welcomed into the Lombardian artistic environment (artists and writers from the Accademia degli Inquieti in Milan and the Affidati in Pavia).

It could be argued that Händel’s Giulio Cesare is, in a sense, the La Bohème of Baroque opera: surely performed both more frequently and more widely afield than any of Händel’s other operas, Giulio Cesare is the most popular of Händel’s operas and the one that is most known even by audiences with limited exposure to Baroque opera. This familiarity led to the long-held assumption that Giulio Cesare was likewise the finest of Händel’s operatic scores, a supposition that has been challenged during the past two decades by more frequent – and more impressive – performances of Händel’s lesser-known operas…

In Baroque opera the dramatic figure of Gaius Julius Caesar received a considerable amount of attention from librettists and composers alike, and not just from G.F. Handel working with Nicola Francesco Haym. With Giulio Cesare, a Baroque hero, Raffaele Pe creates a full recital devoted to the Ancient Roman warrior and Dictator of the Republic, drawn from operas spanning the length of the eighteenth century.

Florence, 1600: Giulio Caccini and Jacopo Peri, two virtuoso singers and rival composers. Striving to rediscover the expressive powers of ancient Greek tragedy, they revolutionized the art of singing and created a new style, which eventually would give birth to opera. In reaction to Renaissance polyphony, these monodies were intended to be sung with the simple accompaniment of a plucked intsrument in order to express the full range of human passions. Peri and Caccini would often accompany themselves but they would also perform with certain family members. Thus brother and sister in this duo follow most naurally a tradition passed on by those great musicians.