Franco Fagioli / Il Pomo D'Oro / Maxim Emelyanychev HANDEL Serse

Franco Fagioli has all the intensity and credibility to make him the perfect guide for listeners exploring the musical world of the eighteenth century. As the drama of Serse unfolds, they will discover an opera brimming with both moving and funny moments, and one which reveals the modernity of Handel, who here travels far beyond the conventional musical confines of eighteenth-century opera seria. In this new recording for the Yellow Label, Fagioli and the rest of the cast – Francesca Aspromonte, Inga Kalna, Vivica Genaux, Marianna Pizzolato, Biagio Pizzuti and Andreas Wolf – are accompanied by the renowned period ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, who give the singers every opportunity to display their vocal talents to the full.

The artists’ delight in historically informed performance practice shines like a beacon from start to finish. In the course of the three-hour production Fagioli brings all the many and varied aspects of the intriguing character of Serse (Xerxes) musically to life. Listeners will share his pain and feel for him as he falls for Romilda, his emotions alternating between loneliness, anger and love. The aria “Ombra mai fu”, with which the king serenades a much-loved plane tree in the opening scene with, is now one of the best-known pieces ever written by Handel. “I did my best to imagine exactly what Serse might have been feeling as he sat beneath the tree, and then tried to bring those feelings into my performance of the aria,” explains Fagioli. The role is one of two that Handel wrote for the celebrated Italian castrato Caffarelli (the other being the title role in Faramondo), an artist whose repertoire the Argentinian countertenor has explored to great acclaim both on stage and in the studio: as well as starring as Farnaspe in the Decca recording of Pergolesi’s Adriano in Siria, he has also released the solo recital album Arias for Caffarelli.

This new recording from Franco Fagioli and Il Pomo d’Oro is a wholehearted celebration of Serse’s many musical delights. Their performance, full of emotional complexity and expressive beauty, is a wonderful gift to the music world.

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.

Capella Mediterranea / Leonardo García Alarcón MONTEVERDI i 7 Peccati Capitali

Passions run high in the operas and madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi, and they dominate Capella Mediterranea's 2016 release on Alpha-Classics, I 7 Peccati Capitali (The Seven Deadly Sins). Interpreted here as the seven deadly sins of sloth, envy, pride, greed, gluttony, lust, and wrath, and accompanied by corresponding virtues listed as hope, extravagance, chastity, humility, temperance, charity, and courage, the excerpts from Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea, Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, and Orfeo, along with selections from Selva morale e spirituale, Ariose Vaghezze, and the Libri dei Madrigali, provide representations of 17th century morality and key examples of Monteverdi's seconda pratica, described by the group's leader, Leonardo García Alarcón, as "the rationalisation of emotions through music, and a meditation on human vanity." The intensely dramatic performances by this ensemble of six singers, joined by a consort playing period instruments, give an idea of the wide expressive range Monteverdi employed in his music and the theatricality and virtuosity of his artists. This extraordinary album was released in anticipation of the 450th anniversary of Monteverdi's birth, and the enthusiasm and high energy of Capella Mediterranea's performances suggest that their celebrations in 2017 will be quite lively and entertaining. (Blair Sanderson)

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 3 SOLO E PENSOSO

Looking ahead to the 300th anniversary of the birth of Haydn in 2032, the Joseph Haydn Foundation of Basel has joined forces with the Alpha Classics label to record all of the composer’s 107 symphonies. This ambitious project is placed under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini, who now presents the third volume, after two previous issues that attracted great attention and received numerous awards, including the Echo Klassik Prize 2015 for the ‘best orchestral recording’ of the year.

Since he sees the music of Haydn as ‘a kaleidoscope of human emotions’, Giovanni Antonini has decided to approach the symphonies not chronologically, but thematically; the theme here is Haydn the philosopher. The Italian conductor has chosen in each of the programmes to make connections between the symphonies and other works. For this volume, he calls on the magnificent soprano Francesca Aspromonte to perform a number of arias including the famous ‘Solo e pensoso’. (Outhere Music)