Roby Accademia Del Caos

Joyce DiDonato becomes more interesting and more of a complete artist with each performance and recording. Even though we are living in a time of great coloratura mezzos (Bartoli, Genaux), DiDonato still stands out. A video of her Dejanira in Handel's Hercules a few years ago alerted us to the fact that she wasn't just another pretty Rosina and Cenerentola; indeed, she had fine dramatic chops as well. Well, while she remains the Rosina and Cenerentola of choice, with this CD she seems poised to enter the dramatic-Rossini-role sweepstakes as well, heretofore the property of Gencer, Caballé, Sutherland, and in one case, Callas.

Most of Vivaldi's operas were composed for Venice, but between 1718 and 1720, he was in the employ the Austrian governor of Mantua, and he composed Tito Manlio for the governor's wedding celebration. The wedding never took place, but the opera was performed in 1719. The Mantuan court was very wealthy, and this is clear from the lavish scoring of Manlio: in addition to the usual strings, Vivaldi uses horns, trumpets, oboes, bassoon, two different registers of flutes, timpani and viola d'amore.

On stage they’re usually rivals, but in real life Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tézier share a close friendship. After many live performances together these two extraordinary artists have recorded their first duet album: “Insieme”, meaning “together” in Italian, to be released on Sony Classical. Accompanied by the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Antonio Pappano, they present duets they’ve sung together on stage, plus works specially chosen for the album.

With this new recording, the madly epic and romantic opera, Il Giustino, finally receives its place in the spotlight, something that the history of music has denied it up until now. The fifty-eighth recording and eighteenth opera in the Vivaldi Edition, which began in 2000, solidifies the status of Vivaldi as the greatest of opera composers - and of composers full stop. It needed the talent, charisma and poetic energy of a great conductor to bring back to life this gem, and it is Ottavio Dantone who assumes this mantle.

Maestro di cappella in two conservatories in Naples, Francesco Durante was one of the prominent representatives of the eighteenth-century Neapolitan school. A unique case in the history of Neapolitan music, Durante did not write any opera and devoted himself exclusively to pedagogical works and to the composition of sacred and instrumental music. His Concerti per archi are among the most significant contributions to the genre of the orchestral concerto. They represent a summa of the early eighteenth-century Neapolitan style.

Melancholia is Italian bass Andrea Mastroni's most recent recording project. Mastroni is a true custodian of this type of singing, and this release represents a journey of discovery of the work of Handel that was written especially for Antonio Montagnana, one of the most exceptional singers in England during the period the German composer was working there. Desperation, anger, incantations, warrior instincts and human passion are some of the diverse elements captured in these pieces. A worthy companion for this vocal marathon is the Accademia dell'Annunciata, a baroque orchestra of great quality, conducted by Riccardo Doni.