Where next for Claudio Cavina and La Venexiana after their exhilarating run of recordings of Monteverdi madrigals, operas and much more? One route is proving to be in the direction of Francesco Cavalli, the 17th century composer who spent much of his working life in Venice, starting off as a chorister in St Mark's Basilica when Monteverdi himself was in charge. Although Cavalli has been known as a composer of Venetian seicento sacred music, it is his prolific contribution in the field of opera - where he became one of the leading figures involved in the development of commercial opera companies from the 1640s onwards - that has been receiving greater attention from artists in more recent times. And it is with a dramma per musica in Artemisia from the mid 1650s, with its tale of love, deceit and honour and the upholding of the virtues of the Venetian Republic (all this richly captured by the expressive style of Cavalli), that Cavina has chosen to contribute to that fresh look at Cavalli's music on this new recording from Glossa. Singers in the established style of La Venexiana, including the vocal star of 'Round M, Roberta Mameli and a recent finalist in the Handel Singing Competition in London in Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli (who takes the role of the love-torn Queen Artemisia, a character strong enough to drink her dead husband's ashes...) give vent to this glorious display of Venetian operatic splendour.

Although this overview of Cavalli's music is necessarily condensed, it nonetheless succeeds in painting a meaningful picture of both the nature of opera as it was developing in Venice at the time, and the composer's own artistic and compositional talent. Cavalli was of course influenced by Monteverdi, yet he imbued his music with his own individual style, in effect setting the artistic seal on the rest of the seventeenth century. The tales told by these early operas had a lot in common with our soap story-lines. Heroes undergo the unlikeliest of hardships, become involved in unrestrained love affairs, get caught out in embarrassing situations, and so on, only for everything to be rapidly unraveled for an unambiguously happy ending, removing all concerns from the minds of a rapt audience (the operatic star system had not yet established itself at this point). There was a sense of liberation from the purely aural allusiveness of the madrigal form, as well as from the compositional and performance difficulties also associated with it, and an increasing interest in the visual impact of the sets and costumes that were soon to become the norm. Madrigal quartets, quintets and sextets were on their way out, seen as music for an aesthetic elite, to be replaced by the more approachable duets. There is perhaps an analogy to be drawn with our own times, in which the spoken and written word are being replaced by a TV videocracy, whose power is taking hold in the same way as opera did in the seventeenth century. By happy coincidence, however, Cavalli was born at precisely the right time and place, and his genius was translated into intricate, convoluted love stories and impetuous passions and rages expressed with perfect aesthetic and expressive musical symbiosis in masterly passacaglias. The Lament can be seen as a kind of condensed version of this artistic sensibility, an opera in miniature, and is therefore essential to the history of opera (cf. The three Lamenti Barocchi CDs I have recorded with Naxos). This kind of love lyric, in which languor alternates with fury, and invective is followed by immediate repentance ("What have I said? What unhappy ravings are these?") drew inspiration from both historical and contemporary episodes (Lament of the Queen of Sweden, Lament of Cinq-Mars), and then moved on to self-mockery in semi-serious laments (such as the Lament of the Castrato - whose details are indelicate in the extreme but fascinating in historical terms - or that of the Impotent Man).

Also available on Blu-ray

Francesco Cavalli, a natural successor to Monteverdi, was the most famous and influential Italian opera composer during the mid-17th century. Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister to the king, commissioned Cavalli to create a Parisian spectacle to celebrate the wedding of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV and the Infanta of Spain. Ercole amante (‘Hercules in Love’) was the flattering subject chosen for this regal extravaganza combining larger-than-life characters with mythology, and genuine human emotions with natural and cosmic phenomena. The result is a sumptuous Baroque spectacle, conceived on a vast scale in this lavish production by directors Valerie Lesort and Christian Hecq.

Also available on Blu-ray

Francesco Cavalli was the most successful Venetian opera composer of the mid-seventeenth century. In the wake of Monteverdi, opera was enjoying a real boom, and this spread to the rest of Europe because the ruling classes often met up at the Venice carnival. Giasone displays Cavalli’s sense of drama and musical lightness, as well as a grotesque humour typical of the great Italian baroque operas.

This new production is orchestrated and conducted by the internationally reputed baroque specialist Federico Maria Sardelli. It is directed by the young Frenchwoman Mariame Clément, who is currently making a name for herself with her infectious directing in German and French opera houses. The title role is sung by the promising countertenor Christophe Dumaux.

Francesco Cavalli
IL GIASONE
Federico Maria Sardelli, conductor
Symfonisch Orkest van de Vlaamse Opera
Mariame Clément, stage director
Julia Hansen, scenes & costume designer
Giasone: Christophe Dumaux
Medea: Katarina Bradic
Isifile: Robin Johannsen
Giove/Besso: Josef Wagner
Demo: Filippo Adami
Delfa/Eolo: Yaniv d’Or
Amore/Alinda: Angélique Noldus
Ercole/Oreste: Andrew Ashwin
Vlaamse Opera, Antwerpen, 2010

Sound Format: LPCM 2.0, Dolby digital 5.1
Picture Format: 16:9
Running Time: 198 minutes & 5 minutes (interview)
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean
Booklet Notes: English, German, French, Italian

Ormindo is the third melodrama to have been born of the collaboration between librettist Giovanni Faustini and composer Francesco Cavalli (1602-76). The plot tells the story of two pairs of lovers (Erisbe and Ormindo, Sicle and Amida) as they experience reversals of fortune, disguise and a fictive death, all of which culminates in the agnizione of Ormindo as Hariadeno's long-lost son in an incomparable coup de theatre. In Ormindo, as in the majority of Venetian operas from the same period, all is wagered upon the expressive power of the voices. The symphonies and ritornelli, sometimes merely sketched out in the score and left to be completed by the singers during performance, have the role of giving body to the fine texture of the character's monologues and dialogues. "This vivid performance has plenty of dramatic conviction... This engaging performance by Les Paladins is an important part of a patchy discography. (Gramophone)

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Francesco Cavalli, a natural successor to Monteverdi, was the most famous and influential Italian opera composer during the mid-17th century. Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister to the king, commissioned Cavalli to create a Parisian spectacle to celebrate the wedding of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV and the Infanta of Spain. Ercole amante (‘Hercules in Love’) was the flattering subject chosen for this regal extravaganza combining larger-than-life characters with mythology, and genuine human emotions with natural and cosmic phenomena. The result is a sumptuous Baroque spectacle, conceived on a vast scale in this lavish production by directors Valerie Lesort and Christian Hecq.

This production of Francesco Cavalli’s Il Giasone was filmed in January 2017 at the Grand Théâtre of Geneva. It forms a part of the ‘Cavalli tetralogy’ of the past few years, conducted by the man who has become Cavalli’s great ambassador: Leonardo Garcia Alarcón. Il Giasone, Dramma musicale, in a Prologue and Three Acts, first performed on 5 January 1649, alternates the tragic with the comic, with no concern for fidelity to the mythological legend of Jason and Medea. Francesco Cavalli’s opera, composed for the carnival season in Venice, presents a mosaic of contrasted episodes, rich in musical emotions. His music here attains a remarkable degree of evocative power, with la musica having the upper hand over la dramma. Il Giasone represents the subtle equilibrium between lyricism and narrative. The comic, the tragic, and the supernatural all meet and mingle, and Cavalli’s Lamenti – forming the climax of the work – are particularly unequalled,. Resolutely burlesque and zany, Serena Singaglia’s production celebrates the opera’s sensuality. Le Temps commented: ‘In the pit, the Cappella Mediterranea with Garcia Alarcón pursue a sense of musical flux with delicacy, lightness and quick-footedness, ideally responding to the score’s demands. With an instrumental sound that is both round and sprightly, they succeed in capturing the ludic dimension of the work, its melodic freshness, and its harmonic tensions. Drama and rapture are artfully fused together.”

-----

REVIEW:

The top-notch cast really savor the score’s lyricism, balancing all the cross-dressing camp with something disarmingly heartfelt. Dominique Visse is an irrepressible Delfa, taking ‘her’ pleasure wherever possible, and there are fine cameos from the veteran tenor Raúl Giménez as the cuckolded Egeo (cruelly styled as Peter Ustinov’s Poirot in Death on the Nile), Willard White’s Oreste and Migran Agadzhanyan as a nervily energetic Demo.

– Gramophone

Francesco Cavalli was of great importance to the history of 17th century Italian music – his fame established in the then new and swiftly evolving world of opera. Cavalli’s sacred music has often been compared to Monteverdi but, drawn from a wonderful anthology published at the apex of his career as a composer, the stylistic and expressive richness documented by the pieces in this program delivers a strong overview of the variety and power of his musical language. The originality in Cavalli’s style was in finding an ideal means of expression for the feelings and emotions suggested by the text, breaking down the boundaries between sacred and secular, and creating a more serene merging of artistic and religious sensibilities.

REVIEW:

Making these works come alive requires some fine singing that is clear and well phrased. Bruno Gini’s soloists, chorus, and ensemble all perform admirably. The lines, even those closely intertwining, are all clear, the diction of the text equally fine, and he is able to massage the tempos to bring out Cavalli’s sometimes subtle changes. In short, this is not a static performance of purely documentary interest, but rather a lovely set of sacred works that gives a sense of the pure melodies, the fluid harmony, and the need for precise phrasing. This is a recording well worth exploring.

— Fanfare

Recorded live during the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 2013, Cavalli’s Elena had not been performed for more than 350 years. The international press hailed this rediscovery as one of the major events on the lyric scene. With Jean-Yves Ruf ’s imaginative staging, served by an exceptional cast made up of young singers brought together by the Academy of the Aix Festival, this work is also sublimated by the talent of the instrumentalists of the Cappella Mediterranea and the theatrical talent of Leonardo García Alarcón. Elena relates the first adventures of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, coveted by numerous men including Menelaus, who disguises himself as an Amazon to approach her, and Theseus, who abducts her and tries to seduce her to the great displeasure of his legitimate fiancée, Hippolyta. Numerous colourful or tragic characters come to complicate the situations in this mythological farce.