Cecilia Bartoli, Marc Minkowski, Les Musiciens du Louvre - Opera proibita: A. Scarlatti, Handel, Caldara (2005)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 345 Mb | Total time: 71:55 | Scans included
Classical | Label: DECCA | # 475 7029 | Recorded: 2005
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 345 Mb | Total time: 71:55 | Scans included
Classical | Label: DECCA | # 475 7029 | Recorded: 2005
Cecilia Bartoli's new CD features a collection of music that could not be heard in her native Rome at the start of the 18th century due to Papal censorship. Theaters, the Church felt, were places of evil and corruption and operas led people to immorality. But some music-loving senior members of the priesthood asked composers to write oratorios and cantatas–indeed, operas without staging, essentially–for their own private entertainment. Call it what you will, the music is sensational–by turns virtuosic, gentle, and playful–and always expressive: just right, it seems, for Cecilia Bartoli's temperament. The opening aria on the CD, a call for peace in the name of Jesus, is, in fact, a dazzling martial air with trumpets blaring and the voice going through an amazing array of coloratura fireworks.