Pianta Anima

Maurice Bourbon is a choral conductor and teacher known for his interpretations of early polyphonic music. He is the director of the French early music vocal ensemble Métamorphoses. From its inception in 1983, the ensemble has specialized in French and Italian music from the Renaissance and Baroque. Bourbon leads Métamorphoses with or without instrumental accompaniment, depending on the repertoire.

The oratorio as a musical form emerged toward the end of the seventeenth century as a kind of "spiritual exercise" encouraged by the Congregazione dell'Oratorio in Rome. The performances took place in oratories (prayer halls) constructed above church naves and were intended to be attractive but edifying entertainments. Then as later, oratorios generally reflected the popular forms and styles of secular music – and in late Renaissance and Baroque Italy, this meant opera, though based on religious rather than mythological and heroic themes. The most prolific composer in this genre was Antonio Caldara (c1670-1736); New Grove lists 43 oratorios (in addition to many operas) and there are probably more that have been lost, written for patrons in his native Venice, Rome, Florence, Mantua, and Vienna.

Born in Venice around 1670, Caldara gave Barcelona the first opera ever heard in Catalonia, Il più bel nome (1708), commissioned by his patron, the future Emperor Charles VI, before eventually settling in Vienna in the latter’s service in 1716.

The king is dead! Berengario and Matilde are determined to seize power over Italy at all costs. To this end, they intend their son Idelberto to marry the newly widowed Adelaide. But the proud monarch has long since summoned Lotario, the noble German king, to her aid. The struggle for power begins… The Göttingen Handel Festival continues its close collaboration with the Accent label, which has already yielded great recordings of works like Siroé, Faramondo, Joshua, Susanna or Agrippina. The addition to the series of this May 2017 recording of Lotario is without doubt a very welcome one for all Handel lovers.