Mondo Secter

The opera is starring countertenor Valer Sabadus - one of opera's most exciting newcomers - now exclusively signed to Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, a division of Sony Classical. Christoph Willibald Gluck, widely known for fundamentally reforming the 'opera seria' wrote some of the greatest and exemplary masterpieces of this great genre before he started his famous reform of the opera. This makes this work a fascinating and enlightening piece in the puzzle for the evolution of opera and the eminent character Gluck. Gluck's setting of La Clemenza was first performed in Naples in 1752, ten years before his first reform opera.

Céline Moinet is often asked why she decided to become an oboe player. She was adamant: she did not want to play a brass or stringed instrument or even a piano – it had to be woodwind. After having begun, as most children do, with the recorder, she turned at age 7 to the oboe, which had captivated her from the word go. On her new album she takes a look at Johann Sebastian Bach: "Here, the oboe becomes the narrator."

Carl Stamitz, son of Mannheim composer Johann Stamitz, toured all over Europe and was a famous figure in the last third of the 18th century, well regarded almost everywhere. The exception was Mozart, who – probably out of jealousy, as annotator Olaf Krone suggested (the notes are in English, German, and French) – wrote that Stamitz and his brother Anton were "miserable note scribblers and players – boozers and whoremongers – which isn't my kind of people."

Johannes Matthias Sperger was born in Feldsberg in 1750 and trained in Vienna as a contrabassist and composer from 1767. He worked from 1777 in the Hofkapelle of the Archbishop of Pressburg. From 1778 he was also a member in the Wiener Tonkünstlersozietät, in whose concerts he appeared several times with his own works and as soloist. From 1783 to 1786, Sperger was a member of the Hofkapelle of count Ludwig von Erdödy in Kohfidisch. From 1789 he was employed as first contrabassist of the Mecklenburg Schwerin Hofkapelle in Ludwigslust.

The convent of St Francis in Assisi is a place of pilgrimage and the founding location of the Franciscan order. In the baroque period novices hoping to enter the order were trained in music, and there is a long musical tradition there. Most of the performances here are world premiere recordings of baroque vocal compositions from the library of the convent of St Francis in Assisi. All the vocal pieces are for soprano solo (combined with solo alto in Finale's `Oh Quam Jubilat'), and it is thought that the solos may have been sung by young men. Here they are taken by very fine female singers, and the accompanying ensemble is made up of top players.

Giovanni Paisiello was one of the most admired composers of opera in the second half of the 18th century. His reputation was mainly based on his comic operas which he composed while working in Naples. Although not born in Naples, he considered himself a Neapolitan, having studied at the Conservatorio di S Onofri. Paisiello's career can be divided into three stages. In the first he concentrated on composing comic operas, mainly for Naples.