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To sense the emotional charge coursing through Carlo Gesualdo at the time when he was composing his Sixth Book of Madrigals, there is no better starting point than a thrilling new recording being issued on Glossa from La Compagnia del Madrigale. Some of the finest singers in the madrigal repertoire today – including Giuseppe Maletto, Daniele Carnovich and Rossana Bertini, and they have been refining their a cappella artistry over more than twenty years with groups such as La Venexiana and Concerto Italiano – now restore humanness, warmth, pictorial beauty and richness to one of the most complex cycles in all music. This marks the group’s triumphant entry onto a label which has always made the exploration of the Italian madrigal repertory one of its cornerstones.

This is a fine alternative to Christopher Hogwood’s period performance on L’Oiseau-Lyre, and will be welcomed heartily by fans of Marilyn Horne. Orlando is a great role, filled with arias and scenes acrobatic, tender, and exclamatory (he goes mad in Act 2 and stays that way for much of Act 3). In l985, when this present set was taped live at Venice’s La Fenice, Marilyn Horne was still in control of her awesome powers–her breath control, fluidity, big, round tones, impeccable diction, and sheer intelligence still astound after all these years. And she’s certainly superior to the nasty-sounding, if dramatic, James Bowman for Hogwood. Lella Cuberli’s Angelica is fine but is outclassed by Arleen Auger; however, I prefer Jeffrey Gall’s countertenor Medoro to Catherine Robbins’ girly one (both for Hogwood again).

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since Antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age– every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the Revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follow in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century.