Sara Mingardo / Cenacolo Musicale SE CON STILLE FREQUENTI

SE CON STILLE FREQUENTI

Silvia Frigato / Accademia d’Arcadia / Alessandra Rossi Lürig ET MANCHI PIETÀ

Inspired by the work of painter Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593Naples ca. 1656), this release aims to explore features of both paintings and music of the early Italian Baroque, highlighting their creative features and their emotional foundations. Daughter of Orazio Gentileschi (one of the rst Italian Caravaggesque painters) Artemisia was, until a few decades ago, remembered chiey for the scandal of the rape trial she brought against Agostino Tassi, one of her fathers artistic partners, who abused her when she was 17. She had to wait over 300 years to see her value as a painter fully recognised. The music is performed by Accademia d'Arcadia, an ensemble comprising 13 musicians playing period instruments and a singer. The CD contains a 28 page, full colour booklet featuring 3 of Artemisias most famous paintings, detailed infos and texts, together with detailed background information, resulting in a concept that is both interesting and affecting.

La Venexiana / Claudio Cavina FRANCESCO CAVALLI Artemisia

Where next for Claudio Cavina and La Venexiana after their exhilarating run of recordings of Monteverdi madrigals, operas and much more? One route is proving to be in the direction of Francesco Cavalli, the 17th century composer who spent much of his working life in Venice, starting off as a chorister in St Mark ’s Basilica when Monteverdi himself was in charge.

Although Cavalli has been known as a composer of Venetian seicento sacred music, it is his prolific contribution in the field of opera – where he became one of the leading figures involved in the development of commercial opera companies from the 1640s onwards – that has been receiving greater attention from artists in more recent times. And it is with a dramma per musica in Artemisia from the mid 1650s, with its tale of love, deceit and honour and the upholding of the virtues of the Venetian Republic (all this richly captured by the expressive style of Cavalli), that Cavina has chosen to contribute to that fresh look at Cavalli’s music on this new recording from Glossa.

Singers in the established style of La Venexiana, including the vocal star of ’Round M, Roberta Mameli and a recent finalist in the Handel Singing Competition in London in Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli (who takes the role of the love-torn Queen Artemisia, a character strong enough to drink her dead husband’s ashes...) give vent to this glorious display of Venetian operatic splendour. (GLOSSA)

Roberta Invernizzi / Silvia Frigato / Thomas Bauer / La Risonanza / Fabio Bonizzoni G.F. HAENDEL Duetti e Terzetti italiani

Fabio Bonizzoni returns with a further Glossa release dedicated to the chamber vocal output of Georg Friedrich Handel: here, a second volume of duets (and trios), which features the vocal talents of Roberta Invernizzi, Silvia Frigato, Thomas Bauer and Krystian Adam.

Whilst Handel wrote these small-scale vocal works across his career, this new selection focuses on that astonishingly fertile brief stay that the young Saxon made in Italy from 1707-09 (when he also produced many of the cantatas which Bonizzoni has recorded to great critical success for Glossa). These sensual duets and trios are imbued with Handel’s discovery of Italian – especially the Arcadian – culture, which included him hearing and understanding the music of Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti. How quickly and successfully Handel developed the chamber duet form is discussed in another of Stefano Russomanno’s detailed explorations of Handel’s music in the booklet essay.

Much of the music for these duets and trios on this recording is scored for soprano and bass singers and Roberta Invernizzi, in particular, is afforded another opportunity to demonstrate her magical reaction to Handel’s responsiveness to the Italian language. Not to be outdone in this respect are also the other vocal solists and of course the experienced continuo team from La Risonanza: Caterina Dell’Angello (cello), Evangelina Mascardi (theorbo) and Fabio Bonizzoni himself (harpsichord). (GLOSSA)

Duetti e Terzetti italiani. pdf