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. (GLOSSA)
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