Sonya Yoncheva / Cappella Mediterranea REBIRTH

 

REBIRTH

 

Imaginarium Ensemble / Enrico Onofri SEICENTO!

SEICENTO!

Le Banquet Céleste / Damien Guillon STRADELLA San Giovanni Battista

                                                         SAN GIOVANNI BATTISTA

Il Pomo d'Oro / Andrea De Carlo ALESSANDRO STRADELLA La Doriclea

Alessandro Stradella’s place in the annals of the history of music is not only due to the adventurous circumstances that marked his brief existence, but also to the reputation as an opera composer he has acquired since the 18th century. Inaccessible for many decades to specialists and scholars, La Doriclea is definitely the least known of all Stradella’s operas. However, it constitutes a particularly significant chapter in his overall output: composed in Rome during the early 1670s, to our knowledge La Doriclea represents the first opera entirely composed by Stradella. From the dramatic point of view, La Doriclea belongs to the comedy of intrigue genre typical of the 17th century Spanish theatre tradition. Refined and amusing, it alternates touching lamentos with irresistibly comic scenes, in which the character of Giraldo, a veritable precursor of the basso buffo, allows us to glimpse Rossinian atmospheres. Emöke Baráth (Doriclea) and Xavier Sabata (Fidalbo) alongside Giuseppina Bridelli (Lucinda) and Luca Cervoni (Celindo) and the comic couple of Delfina (Gabriella Martellacci) and Giraldo (Riccardo Novaro) bring a complex and fascinating role-playing game to life. This world premiere release of La Doriclea is a major achievement for The Stradella Project, which here reaches its fifth volume. “Through his festival and recording project, Andrea De Carlo is raising the profile of this pioneering Italian composer.” (Gramophone)

Chantal Santon-Jeffery / Galilei Consort / Benjamin Chénier STRADELLA Lagrime e Sospiri

Alessandro Stradella’s music is currently enjoying a moment, and not before time. Ensemble Mare Nostrum’s Stradella Project is now four volumes into its comprehensive recording survey of the composer’s oratorios, leading the revival of fortunes that Stradella’s expressive and multifaceted music has long deserved. This recording from soprano Chantal Santon Jeffery and France’s Galilei Consort cherry-picks from both the composer’s sacred and secular works, as well as his instrumental music, to create a more accessible (and even more persuasive) case for this neglected master.

The problem, as the disc’s own notes acknowledge, is that for a long time Stradella (whose fragmented career began in Rome before relocating to Venice and finally Genoa) was better known for his colourful biography than his music. Sex scandals, attempted murders and actual murders may make for a great story but they also bring a certain energy to music comfortable at the emotional extremes.

Take the mad scene from the opera La forza dell’amore paterno, for example, which reels and wails in explosive and unexpected musical directions. Jeffery’s light soprano rides the waves of musical emotion with ease, marshalling the shifting moods with precision but also a wonderful expressive abandon. Another opera scene, this one from Moro per amore, shows us the ‘hell of love’ in grotesque musical detail that lurches between despair and fury with bewildering speed thanks to the ferocious brilliance of the Galilei Consort’s musicians, directed from the violin by Benjamin Chenier.

The oratorios are no less charged. From its exquisite Overture through both the colourful recitative and the arias, the lovely Santa Pelagia charts an appealing course between sensuality (the saint was a former courtesan) and chaste self-control, while San Giovanni Battista’s Salome is a young woman terrifyingly in control of her sexual allure and power, reaching its peak in dizzying semiquaver passages that twinkle like the gemstones in Salome’s dress as she dances.

Anyone looking for a quick introduction to Stradella’s music should find more than enough incentive here to search out more, while those already familiar will take pleasure in the dramatic scope of these fine performances. (Alexandra Coghlan / Gramophone)

Concerto Italiano / Rinaldo Alessandrini UN VIAGGIO A ROMA

"The programme on this CD provides a snapshot of music over a few decades. An incomplete one, in that it focuses firstly on the contribution of Stradella, who lived in Rome between 1652 and 1678, with his S. Giovanni Battista, performed in the church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in 1675; then the visit of Georg Muffat, a Frenchman interested in Italian style, a pupil of Pasquini between 1681 and 1682, and a great admirer of Corelli; the young Handel, who was the object of admiration in the papal city between 1707 and 1709; Alessandro Scarlatti, prolifc, tireless composer and musical traveller, and lastly Corelli, the classic symbol of the splendour of Roman musical culture, who spent the whole of his life from 1675 ‘in urbe’." (Rinaldo Alessandrini)

Francesca Aspromonte / Il Pomo D'Oro / Enrico Onofri PROLOGUE

The prologue is a unique feature of early baroque opera: an opening scene where an allegorical figure enters the stage to prepare the audience for the musical drama to come. Thus Prologue is the musical introduction of Italian star soprano Francesca Aspromonte and her exclusive, long term engagement with Pentatone, promising great joy as well as drama in the years to come.

Prologue is a highly original album consisting of several prologues from early-baroque operas by Monteverdi, Caccini, Cavalli, Landi, Rossi, Cesti, Stradella and Scarlatti. Strung together, they form a representation in a single act, a theatre full of small, complete dramas: the opera before the opera.

Francesca Aspromonte is quickly establishing herself as a shining star in the Baroque firmament. She has curated this album together with musical director Enrico Onofri, who leads il pomo d’oro, one of the most important and successful period ensembles of today.

Filippo Mineccia / Nereydas / Javier Ulises Illán SIFACE

With Siface: l’amor castrato, countertenor Filippo Mineccia, together with Javier Ulises Illán and Nereydas, presents a short imaginary pasticcio opera reflecting the music-making and life of the contralto castrato known by that stage name. Born Giovanni Francesco Grossi in 1653 in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Siface was acclaimed for his exciting musical performances, yet who became famous also for the tragedy of his love life. He was called upon to sing in operas and oratorios by the likes of Stradella, Pasquini, Bassani, Pallavicino and Agostini. For a long time in the service of Francesco II d’Este in Modena, Siface was an active member of the musical “ducal circuit” in the Italian peninsula, even, on one occasion, additionally being sent to England, where he performed before monarchy, and met and impressed Henry Purcell.

Filippo Mineccia brilliantly captures the kaleidoscopic rush of emotions coursing through this selection of arias, which reflects the torrid and spectacular musical pace of life in late seventeenth-century Italy (as well as mirroring Siface’s own downfall on the road from Ferrara to Bologna).

The Spanish ensemble Nereydas fully enter into the spirit of this, by turns, colourful, heartfelt, poignant and vivid celebration of vocal and instrumental music, which also features works by Alessandro Scarlatti (the emotive lullaby Dormi o fulmine), Francesco Cavalli and Purcell (My song shall be alway). Elena Bernardi puts flesh on still little understood aspects of the early stages of opera in the late Seicento. (Glossa)