Johann Gottlieb Naumann's oratorio Betulia Liberata has an interesting and unique history. Pietro Metastasio's 1734 libretto, based on the Biblical book of Judith, was already something of a golden oldie by the time Prince Elector Friedrich August III of Saxony requested that Naumann set it for the Holy Saturday of 1796. Naumann was in poor health ...
This two-disc set introduces the listener to the passionate, agitated, even troubled world of Monteverdi's (1567-1643) extraordinary eighth book of madrigals, consisting of Canti guerrieri (Warrior songs) and Canti amorosi (Love Songs), and performed with exquisite taste, imagination, and passion by the vocal soloists and instrumentalists of ...
For musical fun from the gran siècle -- that wonderful period in the early eighteenth century when Louis XIV created his own personal pleasure palace in Versailles -- try this 2008 Naïve disc called Les Grandes Eaux Musicales de Versailles. With a program featuring selected works written for the king by Lully, Rameau, Desmarest, Gluck, and ...
The revival of Prosperpine, Lully's 1680 collaboration with his longtime librettist Philippe Quinault, by Hervé Niquet and his ensemble Le Concert Spirituel, reveals that while the opera may not have the most compelling dramatic impact, it has an abundance of expressive, elegant, richly varied music, written with inspiration that never flags over ...
The Te Deum text usually called forth splendid settings from Baroque composers of whatever stripe, and the 1692 setting by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, written to celebrate a French military victory that year over the combined forces of the League of Augsburg, is among his most imposing works. The interested listener now has several stirring ...
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