The present release by baritone Sergio Foresti on Challenge Classics. The second where he is accompanied by the remarkable Abchordis Ensemble, conducted by Andrrea Buccarella. This recording is devoted to the arias composed by Nicola Porpora, probably the greatest of the Neapolitan composers as much as the voice is concerned. A selection of arias of different moods and characters that ceaselessly tantalize and intrigue the listener. A disc you can listen to with constant pleasure and commitment from start to end, thanks also to the orchestral accompaniment (and overtures) and the impeccable recording and production.
In 1735, Porpora challenged Handel in London with Polifemo, a work that still resonates today as a vibrant ode to triumphant love. On the bewitching shores of Sicily, Galatea falls in love with the mortal Acis. This pure passion arouses the fierce jealousy of the Cyclops Polifemo, whose rage threatens to sweep everything away. But the unexpected arrival of Ulysses and the intrigues hatched by Calypso weave a complex web where gods and mortals clash. Carried by a constellation of exceptional soloists and conducted by Stefan Plewniak, this opera masterfully weaves together the legacy of a baroque golden age and the timeless power of myth.
Maestri a Sant'Onofrio: Works by Leo and Porpora / Andalo, Fomina, Ensemble Animantica
Bongiovanni
CD
$18.99May 03, 2019
The College of Music of Sant’Onofrio, one of the wonders of baroque Naples, was founded in the late 1500s as a foundling institution to train orphans and abandoned children to work as artisans. Within a few years, its educational policy had shifted to musical training and singing and during the 1600s it was home to the finest composers in the city. They transformed the rigidly austere musical geometry of northern Europe into something wholly new, as though infusing the darkness of the north with the immense, intensely bright light of the south. Nicola Porpora was just such a composer. In 1710 the 24 year-old Porpora presented his opera Berenice in Rome with great success. While in the city, Haendel himself saw it and went to congratulate its composer. Porpora wrote a great deal of music for religious purposes and opened a singing school which Farinelli also attended. Leonardo Leo is the other great composer from Sant’Onofrio. Almost a decade younger than Porpora, a combination of overwork and delicate health killed Leo at the relatively young age of fifty. He had already produced a number of new operas by 1738 when his reputation for music earned him the commission of a lifetime to write an opera to celebrate the wedding of Charles III and Maria Amalia of Saxony. Leo put everything else to one side and took as his subject the wedding of Psyche and Cupid. Yet despite the success of his opera for the imperial wedding, Leo continued to write music – both sacred and opera, whether serious or comic. Unsurprisingly, his name was a household word throughout Europe.
Carlo il Calvo – ‘Charles the Bald’ – was first performed in 1738 at Rome’s leading opera house, the Teatro delle Dame. Porpora’s opera is based on a Venetian libretto dating from 1699 which, under various titles, has been set to music by composers such as Vinacessi, Keller, Alessandro Scarlatti, Orlandini and Telemann. The score has been preserved at the Conservatory in Naples. The plot is set in that period of the early Middle Ages when Charlemagne’s Europe was disintegrating at the hands of his quarrelling heirs. Its distinctive feature is that the titular hero is a child. In contrast to his colleagues, Porpora even gives him some verses to sing. Louis the German, Charles’ half-brother and Charlemagne’s grandson, abducts the legitimate heir to the throne in order to rob him of his sovereignty. This provides Charles’s mother with the opportunity for heart-wrenching scenes of despair and breathtaking outbursts of felling. On the stage of the premiere were acclaimed singing stars of baroque Europe. The vocal demands are correspondingly exorbitant: in this premiere recording sovereignly and first-class interpreted by Franco Fagioli (Adalgiso), Max Emanuel Cencic (Lottario), Julia Lezhneva (Gildippe), Suzanne Jerosme (Giuditta), Petr Nekoranec (Asprando), Bruno de Sá (Berardo) and Nian Wang (Eduige) with Armonia Atenea under George Petrou.
