The buzz surrounding this album has to do with the startling voice of Samuel Mariņo, but it has other attractions as well in the form of pieces that might have been heard at a London concert mounted jointly by Handel and Gluck in 1746. The album bills Mariņo as a "male soprano," a term he has used in his own publicity. How does he do it? Nobody is saying. Mariņo is a product of Venezuela's still strong musical education system, and he was 27 years old when this album appeared in 2020. Buyers can amuse themselves by setting ...
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The buzz surrounding this album has to do with the startling voice of Samuel Mariņo, but it has other attractions as well in the form of pieces that might have been heard at a London concert mounted jointly by Handel and Gluck in 1746. The album bills Mariņo as a "male soprano," a term he has used in his own publicity. How does he do it? Nobody is saying. Mariņo is a product of Venezuela's still strong musical education system, and he was 27 years old when this album appeared in 2020. Buyers can amuse themselves by setting up blind hearing tests for their friends: it is an open question of how many of them will identify the singer as male. Mariņo especially excels in the brutal passagework of the arias by the hotshot young Gluck. These are virtuoso arias, from the years before Gluck simplified the operatic language with his reforms and pointed the way directly to Mozart. They are in the nature of an extreme extension of the old style, and to hear them taken on by a young singer who can handle them...
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