il Fogklio

Although known almost exclusively for his instrumental concertos and the spurious Adagio attributed to him, Tomaso Albinoni was mainly a man of the theater; he composed 81 operas and, late in life, made his living as a singing coach. However, the best efforts of posterity to catch up with Albinoni's operatic creations are significantly stymied by the fact that only three of his stage works are fully extant, the rest preserved only in occasional and fugitive fragments in the form of single arias and other bits and pieces. "Il Nascimento dell'Aurora" is a serenata – or more specifically, a "festa pastorale" – a kind of courtly entertainment not really meant to be specifically dramatic or compelling and, in this case, dealing with the birth of Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora ….

The Mozartists continue their MOZART 250 project of staging operas by Mozart and his contemporaries with their recording of the UK premiére of Niccolò Jommelli’s Il Vologeso, first performed over 250 years ago on 11 February 1766 for the Stuttgart court in Ludwigsburg. For this eagerly awaited performance The Mozartists assembled a superb young cast, headed by the Irish mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly, a graduate of the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artist Programme, tenor Stuart Jackson, a former Mozartists Associate Artist, and soprano Gemma Lois Summerfield, winner of the 2015 Kathleen Ferrier Award.

Originally released by Tactus, just before we took over RI, this was probably part of their old, box-set-handsomely-packaged full-price days, before the label went mid-price. The opera itself is literally exceptional: it's set in China and is full of references which would have been truly exotic to audiences of 1719 when Europe was reawakening to the lures of art, spices, fine goods and philosophy of the "Orient". Unusually rich orchestration with such special effects as timpani scordati, although by no means full of the fake Chinoiserie which would follow in the 19th century.