Philippe Jaroussky's countertenor is not a large instrument, but what an instrument! He sings with flawless intonation; a tone that is sweet, pure, even, and focused over the full extent of his wide range; and a breathtaking command of coloratura technique. The impression that his voice is perhaps more elfin than heroic seems of minor consequence ...
Looks can be deceiving -- take for example Philippe Jaroussky. Attired in expensive, well-tailored shirts and looking off into the distance, young singer Jaroussky looks like he could be actor Mel Gibson's little brother (or, by this time, Gibson's son). Put his Virgin Classics album Vivaldi: Virtuoso Cantatas in the disc drive, and the ...
Following the trend of singers releasing recitals based on the repertoire of great performers of previous centuries -- Cecilia Bartoli's tribute to Maria Malibran and Juan Diego Flórez's to Giovanni Battista Rubini, for instance -- countertenor Philippe Jaroussky has devoted a CD to the repertoire of eighteenth century castrato Giovanni Carestini, ...
The growth in popularity in the countertenor voice has worked to the benefit of the listener, who can now choose from among singers of various types. There are big-voiced, athletic singers specializing in operas and emphasizing the power a male soprano or alto can deliver. There are melancholy tragedians who trade in the dolorous sighs of the ...
Diving into Vivaldi's Orlando furioso with Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Matheus Ensemble, and a shockingly good cast is enough to make even the most jaded listener smile. It is fresh, unrelentingly impressive, and entertaining to a fault. The opera is over-plotted: the first paragraph of the synopsis is enough to confuse anyone not taking notes. And ...
If you thought composing somewhere around 500 concertos was an achievement, remember that Antonio Vivaldi also composed 49 operas. Indeed, Vivaldi probably thought of himself primarily as an opera composer -- with 67 productions in a career of 28 years, he may not have had a chance to think of himself as anything else. Yet, while Vivaldi is well ...
This two-disc set is a sampler of operatic singers from the corporately related Virgin Classics and EMI labels, and like most such samplers it delivers a good deal less than it promises. The marketing is scattershot, for one thing: the two-disc set purports to offer both the "new generation" of singers and "greatest arias" -- whether of these ...
This disc is a sampler of Vivaldi discs released by France's Naïve label, and it's highly recommended to listeners who haven't yet given these recordings a try. The group of performers is pan-European, with French singers and Italian instrumentalists especially strongly represented, but a compilation like this brings home how well this label has ...
Naïve's compilation album Classique & Zen offers no explanation of the relationship between the two concepts other than the simple direction, "You are free to be Zen." The lack of specificity in no way detracts from the effectiveness of the CD and its artful presentation. It stands out from many of the other collections with the goal of inducing a ...
Recording Handel's operas can be tricky. Overly immaculate studio readings tend to rob the long chains of recitatives and arias of the immediacy they need to stay interesting; and live recordings tend to be messy, not to mention noisy. This Agrippina, by Jean-Claude Malgoire and La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy, and starring Veronique Gens as ...
This recording of Monteverdi's great tale of Orpheus in the underworld, the very first operatic masterpiece, was made live during the run of a production of Orfeo in the French city of Tourcoing in 2004. Orfeo is usually heard in studio recordings. A live performance using all of Monteverdi's unusual instruments of 1607 is difficult to put ...
The logistical efforts involved in the making of this album must have been as strenuous as those on the musical side, for this is one of the first real all-star releases to have emerged from the historical-instrument side of the recording catalog. Lovers of vocal music per se may be interested in the dsic purely because it offers a rare ...
In his program notes for this CD, Philippe Jaroussky persuasively argues that, particularly because the traditional repertoire for counter tenors is so small (and much of the Baroque material was in fact written for castrati, an entirely different voice type), there is no reason counter tenors should not explore a broader variety of vocal material ...
The nuanced and lively playing Emmanuelle Haïm draws from Le Concert d'Astrée is the strongest element in this recording of Bach's Magnificat and Handel's Dixit Dominus. Its colorful, briskly articulated performance is a delight throughout, but the singing of the soloists and chorus lacks the same consistency. The chorus' sound is somewhat murky ...
Compilations take their fair share of justified criticism, but sometimes you just feel like listening to one type of music -- maybe slow music -- maybe slow Baroque music -- maybe slow Vivaldi. If that happens to be the case, then this Virgin Classics album of Vivaldi certainly fits the bill and, as compilations go, is nicely put together. Of ...
This set includes one disc of excerpts from Naïve's 2003 recording of Orlando Furioso and one disc that offers samples of other operas and instrumental and sacred music from the Vivaldi Edition, all performed by Jean-Christophe Spinosi leading Ensemble Matheus and Choeur "Les Eléments," with a uniformly outstanding cast of vocal and instrumental ...
A warning to purists: there's little in the packaging of this CD to indicate the interpretive freedom with which the ensemble, l'Arpeggiata led by Christina Pluhar, treats some of the Monteverdi love songs and madrigals on the album. There's a hint in the opening track, the Toccata from Orfeo, in its wonderfully reckless abandon and prominent use ...
Until it was revived in the late twentieth century, Handel's opera Faramondo was performed just eight times in London in 1738 and then fell into obscurity. According to the conventions of Italian opera of the period, men's roles were often written for women, in spite of the lack of dramatic realism, and the use of castrati was common, so higher ...
Naïve's Vivaldi Edition: La verità in cimento is a highlights disc drawn from Opus 111's 2002 complete recording of Antonio Vivaldi's 1720 opera, made in conjunction with the revival of this work at the Bologna Festival, albeit with a different group of singers. This recording has an excellent frontline cast, including veteran singers such as ...
Antonio Vivaldi's probably early Nisi Dominus, RV 608, and Stabat Mater, RV 621, both for solo voice and ensemble, have received several top-notch recordings, so the listener can pick on the basis of voice type and stylistic preference. Countertenor David Daniels has essayed the pair with Fabio Biondi and his Europa Galante ensemble, and you can ...
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