Tejo

Madredeus - Movimento (2001) {EMI 7 243 5 31590 2 3}
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© 2001 EMI / Valentim de Carvalho | 7 243 5 31590 2 3
World Music / Fado / Western European Traditions / European Folk

On their ninth CD, this Portugese group's sound is pretty much the same as it has been since their 1992 debut: pan-cultural world music with a decided Brazilian influence. With the emotional resonance of the best Portugese fado, but an ear for melody that's downright universal, guitarist Pedro Ayres Magalhaes crafts gentle, ethereal compositions perfectly suited to Teresa Salguiero's heavenly voice, which floats above the airy tunes like a melancholy angel. With no drums to hold down the rhythm, the songs on Movimento all have a decidedly ambient sense of spaciousness, flowing smoothly along without so much as a ripple to disturb the peaceful waters. And with 16 tracks, the near-constant mood and tempo can get a bit monotonous at times. But the sad, serene beauty of songs like the opening "Anseio" and the lilting "Afinal - A Minha Cançáo" show that while Madredeus may do only one thing, they do it very, very well.

Antonio Mazzoni was a fairly prolific Italian composer in the middle and late 18th century (1717–1785), and he Read more Antigono for the opening season of one of the world’s shortest-lived opera houses: the Ópera do Tejo in Lisbon. It opened on March 31, 1755, and was destroyed seven months later by an earthquake. (Its site is now a navy dockyard.) The libretto is by the famed Metastasio, and Mazzoni was clearly considered an important figure in his time. Metastasio wrote the librettos of the only three serious operas performed in the seven months of life for the opera house in Lisbon, and the choice of Mazzoni to write the music for one of them demonstrates his reputation at the time. He wrote perhaps 19 operas (we aren’t sure), many of which have not survived. Antigono is performed here in a critical edition edited by Nicholas McNayr.