Most opera fans are familiar with Gluck the reformist -- the composer of Orphée et Eurydice who sought to balance drama and music in his works. But few know his early works which show him to be a master of the Baroque opera seria tradition he later rejected. L'innocenza giustificata, a festa teatrale written in 1755, is one of these works. Its ...
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 ...
The quality of the vocal performances in this live recording of Alcina can be strongly correlated to the singers' prior experience in the Baroque repertoire. Contralto Sonia Prina, with a solid background in Baroque opera, is absolutely stellar in the role of Bradamante, a woman impersonating a man in her quest to release her lover from the spells ...
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 ...
Like Chevalier de Saint-Georges, François-André Danican Philidor gained fame both as a composer and a sportsman. In addition to his facility as a composer of opera and as a pioneer in the field of opéra-comique, Philidor was the most famous chess master of his era, celebrated for his ability to win games while blindfolded. While this has kept ...
This is the first authoritative recording of Alessandro Scarlatti's Griselda, rendered with exquisite beauty by René Jacobs, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and an outstanding cast led by Dorothea Röschmann in the title role. Warming to the story of Griselda (originally by Boccaccio) -- the low-born woman who endures a string of indignities as ...
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 ...
France's Naïve label has overdone it this time with the electronica-like design for the cover of this release, which gives the buyer little idea of what he or she is going to hear. Even the title is not much help; most of the music does not come from Italy in the years around 1600 nor from Argentina around 1900, and the South American selections ...
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![Georg Friedrich Händel: Alcina [SACD]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/m42036j92m0_t.jpg)
![Antonio Vivaldi: Orlando Furioso [Highlights]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/m67566gsxnn_t.jpg)
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