I Barocchisti / Diego Fasolis GLUCK Orfeo ed Euridice

Gluck, Mozart opines in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, created characters “so lofty they sound as though they shit marble”. Shaffer’s imagined Mozart is not only potty-mouthed but also harsh on his esteemed predecessor – something the countertenor Philippe Jaroussky confirms on this new recording, singing a very human Orpheus whose story can end only in rejoicing, as Amor obligingly restores Euridice to life in the then-traditional happy ending.

Jaroussky is joined by conductor Diego Fasolis and his ensemble I Barocchisti – almost exactly the same forces as for La Storia d’Orfeo, a lovely disc released last year that spliced together bits of Orpheus operas by Monteverdi, Rossi and Sartorio. Here, again, they are doing something slightly different: this is not the familiar version of Gluck’s work heard in Vienna at the 1762 premiere, but the one performed in Naples 12 years later. For Naples, the opera was tweaked to accommodate a higher-voiced Orfeo and to appeal to a fashionable Italian audience, who expected more contrast and more in the way of florid, yet mellifluous, vocal display. 

The most noticeable changes comes in the music for Euridice. Two of her numbers are new, attributed not to Gluck, but to Egidio Lasnel (pen name of the aristocrat Diego Naselli): the duet as Orfeo leads her towards the edge of the Underworld, in which the short exchanges give the music an almost Mozartian sense of bustle, and her ensuing aria, in which her passion now sounds a bit more marmoreal, for all the expressiveness Amanda Forsythe throws at it. Forsythe, her soprano bright yet soft-grained, contrasts well with Emöke Baráth, whose crisp, knowing Amor makes the prospect of a journey through the Underworld sound almost fun. Fasolis and his players wear the music lightly. As for Jaroussky, his sound isn’t always entirely beautiful, but it’s beguiling, and every syllable means something. (Erica Jeal / The Guardian)

Julia Lezhneva / Franco Fagioli / Diego Fasolis VIVALDI Gloria

Julia Lezhneva, Franco Fagioli and Diego Fasolis: three stars of the Baroque unite to record Vivaldi’s most popular choral work. Julia Lezhneva – “a serene, sleek voice, beatific in timbre, with a bell-like resonance” (Financial Times) – adds the glorious solo motet Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera. Franco Fagioli – “one of today's great vocal technicians” (The Guardian) – records the Nisi Dominus with its haunting ‘Cum Dederit’. Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti are today’s Vivaldi interpreters par excellence.

Philippe Jaroussky / Emöke Baráth MONTEVERDI - SARTORIO - ROSSI La Storia di Orfeo

With Philippe Jaroussky’s new album, Storia di Orfeo, the French countertenor realises a long-held dream: to portray the mythic Orpheus – divine musician who ventures into the underworld to retrieve his beloved wife Eurydice from the clutches of death – in his many guises, an inspiration for the very first opera and beyond.

“This project, which was inspired by three key 17th-century operas, was conceived as a kind of opera in miniature or as a cantata for two solo voices and chorus, and features just two characters: Orpheus and Eurydice,” explains Jaroussky. “The three operas focus on different aspects of the story: Sartorio and Rossi depict the happiness of the young lovers and the scene in which Eurydice is bitten by the snake; Monteverdi, on the other hand, concentrates more on Orpheus’ search for Eurydice in the underworld, and the highpoint of his work is an aria that has remained without parallel in the history of opera: the magical ‘Possente spirto’, which I have the temerity to perform here as a countertenor, for the first time on record.” 

He is joined by sublime soprano Emőke Baráth and period-instrument ensemble par excellence I Barocchisti with Diego Fasolis at the helm. A journey to the beginnings of opera, to the Italian Baroque, to the underworld and back. (Warner Classics)

Orpheus, with or without his lute, is one of the most resonant figures in musical history, the inspiration for dramas from Monteverdi to Birtwistle. This cleverly assembled disc limits itself to the 17th century, and ranges from the Mantuan Orfeo of 1607 through to Antonio Sartorio’s little-known successor of 1672. The presiding genius is countertenor Philippe Jaroussky who sings gloriously (though he is arguably not best suited to Monteverdi’s high tenor hero in his lavish Possente spirto). Jaroussky is well matched by Emöke Baráth’s crystal-clear soprano. Sartorio’s post-Cavalli idiom is sweetly melodic; I was much more taken by the strong, eloquent extracts from Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo of 1647. (The Guardian)

Cecilia Bartoli ST PETERSBURG

This latest disc from mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli is full of arias you have never heard from unknown operas by obscure composers, but that is nothing new. In her recent discs, Bartoli has showed a knack for discovering and re-animating forgotten repertoire. On this disc from Decca, recorded with Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti, investigates the music written for the opera in St Petersburg in the 18th century. During this period the Russian Court relied on foreign models for much of its high culture and for opera they looked to Italy. On this disc there are arias from operas by Francesco Araia, Hermann Friedrich Raupach, Vincenzo Manfredini, Domenico Dall'Oglio and Luigi Madonis, and Domenico Cimarosa. This latter being the best known of the group. The music is all taken from manuscripts houses in St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre Library, coming from the Italian Collection.