In Clorinda e Tancredi, a programme built around the vocal talents of soprano Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli and tenor Luca Dordolo, Marco Mencoboni and Cantar Lontano provide a powerful display of how, in his later secular works, Claudio Monteverdi made the music serve the word at its most intense. A sequence of madrigals – in the broadest sense of the definition of the form – is spearheaded by a dramatic interpretation of the Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (with Luca Dordolo as Testo). Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli – who also appeared on Glossa’s recent Alcina of Francesca Caccini and Silla of Handel – takes centre stage for an impassioned rendition of the Lamento della ninfa, an ostinato- driven work nicely counterbalanced on this recording by a bonus track of Giovanni Felice Sances’ mesmerizing Usurpator tiranno. Two of the other pieces chosen to represent the Baroque musical “shock of the new” for this recording prepared by the Monteverdi specialist Marco Mencoboni are Ed è pur dunque vero (from the Scherzi musicali) and the Lettera amorosa (Settimo libro dei madrigali).In his booklet essay for this new manifestation of Glossa’s abiding passion for the Seicento, Pierre Élie Mamou offers an absorbing analysis of Monteverdi’s adoption of the stile moderno, especially in terms of how it clashed with the ideals of Giovanni Maria Artusi and how it was expressed so potently in the Combattimento.

As part of their comprehensive survey of the music of Claudio Monteverdi, Claudio Cavina and La Venexiana delivered an exceptional version of L’Orfeo, a reading which had been honed by their trailblazing interpretations of the composer’s madrigals. This highly-esteemed recording of the favola in musica – critics applauded and fêted it in many different countries – subsequently dropped out of the catalogue and Glossa is very pleased to have the opportunity to return it there as part of this year’s 450th anniversary commemorations of the composer’s birth. The seductive power of Claudio Cavina’s interpretation lay, in part, in his choice of orchestral colours but also in his shaping of the mythical story of the shared love of Orfeo and Euridice, the latter’s death and descent into the Underworld, and the former’s efforts to rescue from there. Into that reading Mirko Guadagnini excelled with nobleness in the title role, and Emanuela Galli brought sensuality to that of Euridice (and fervour to her Musica), whilst other key roles were taken by Salvo Vitale, Marina De Liso and Josè Maria Lo Monaco. In keeping with his habits of the time Claudio Cavina also found a small part for he himself to sing – the third Shepherd in this case – a reminder not just of his own talents and legacy on record as a singer but of La Venexiana’s tight-knit ensemble approach also. Claudio Cavina’s L’Orfeo has lost nothing of its grandeur in the passing of the years and is recommendable today as when it was first issued in 2006.

On its onward journey across the major secular and sacred landmarks of Italian Renaissance polyphony, La Compagnia del Madrigale has now turned its attention to Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine and this new recording on Glossa presents this award-winning chamber ensemble in its prime and in the company of Cantica Symphonia and La Pifarescha, all under the direction of Giuseppe Maletto: a veritable cornucopia of present-day early music performers! The thorough-going approach taken to this collection reflects the long experience that these Italian musicians have had with such music and covers all areas of the performance: the polarity between psalms and sacri concentus, the pictorial madrigalisms in the text, whether to add plainchant or not, how to interpret the tactus signs, which instruments to use for the bassus generalis, and crucially, the choices relating to tempi and pitch. The answers to such questions can be gained from listening to this major new recording, but Giuseppe Maletto does – in the dialogue which he has with Marco Bizzarini, La Compagnia del Madrigale’s regular booklet essay writer – invite the listener, in this fast-moving world, to respect the spirit of the composer and recover the calm of another age. What emerges is a refreshing, but natural, response to one of the choral masterworks in the catalogue, a piece which reflects a sophisticated musical logic: a summa, avers Maletto, of deeply-absorbed Renaissance experiences projected more towards some far-off future than identifiable with the dawning Baroque.

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“The voice of the Narrator (Testo) shall be clear, steady and with good pronunciation, (…) in keeping with the passions of the oration”. Thus the recommendation by Claudio Monteverdi in the preface to his Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, published in Venice in 1638. Monteverdi's remarks on performance together with his actual music underline the tension between passions – here between love and death, (Amore e morte, as the present collection is entitled), a combination which most people associate with a romantic aesthetic or sensibility. Yet an awareness of this association is better served through Monteverdi's fusion of words and music, heightening the perception of each by the combination of the two. Thus Monteverdi laid the foundations of opera, a genre destined to be as popular as it would be widespread in centuries to come. And his influence would be felt throughout all its stylistic variations each time words were “clothed” in music.

Monteverdi: Vespers of the Blessed Virgin 1610

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Classical Music

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As with scarcely any other work of the 17th c., Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers has found its way into today’s repertoire. + Nevertheless, the Vespers still leaves open many questions. + The present recording is based on the new edition by Carus, which takes up oft-discussed issues concerning scoring possibilities, performance practice, transpositions and liturgical unity and invites an individual musical approach to the challenges the Vespers presents. + Two of Germany’s finest ensembles, the Lautten Compagney Berlin and amarcord, have accepted this challenge.