Francesco Gasparini (1668-1727)
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)
Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747)
Giovanni Porta (1690-1755)
Filippo Amadei (1683-17??)
Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-17883)
Leonardo Vinci (1690-1730)
Nicola Porpora (1686-1768)
This is not my chosen territory so it was an agreeable surprise to discover
that this disc was full of the flightiest music you could imagine. London
of the early 1700s must have been an operatic hothouse if these 'hits' are
at all representative. They are given here with no feeling of exhumation
or post-mortem. There is nothing of the museum case about the celebratory
performances. The music simply lifts and flies away in well-judged clarity
and exuberance. The two voices (Vassiliou and Elliott) are well nigh ideal
in their relaxed and unstrained access to coloratura and lilting melodic
line. With its good documentation and full texts (in Italian and English)
altogether a rather nice album. It is spoilt, at the margins, by the short
playing time. The thing about these aria anthologies is that it is always
easy to slip in a few more; so a 75+ minute disc should surely have been
possible and would then have made a complete winner in music which has a
degree of rarity value. Lovely for what it is but it could have been more
generous.
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
Other reviews in the same series
The Country
House
The Grand Tour