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Henry Purcell's oft-recorded opera, "Dido and Aeneas", is in fact the only one he ever composed, and renowned Baroque specialist René Jacobs turns out to be an ideal interpreter of this seminal 17th-century musical allegory. Not even an hour in length, the opera is an ideal introduction to this period of classical music, as Purcell melds a tragic love story with Shakespearean-level theatricality and surprising comedy elements. This 2006 reissue of a 1998 performance doesn't have quite the dramatic vibrancy of Emmanuelle Haïm's 2004 six-instrument ensemble, but it compensates with scope and polish...

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Schiff’s performances are, as expected, profound, masterful, and not flashy at all. While he ornaments the works creatively, he doesn’t exaggerate. He is sometimes serious, sometimes playful, yet it’s clear just how much he understands and appreciates this music...

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Luigi Merci, composer of the Baroque era (born c. 1695 - died in London c. 1750). He was engaged around 1720 by the Earl of Caernarvon and Duke of Chandos. In 1730 he married Ann Hampshire and moved to Covent Garden...

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Hail! Bright Cecilia (Z.328), also known as Ode to St. Cecilia, was composed to a text by Nicholas Brady by Henry Purcell in 1692 in honour of the feast day of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians. Annual celebrations of this saint's feast day (November 22) began in 1683, organized by the Musical Society of London, a group of musicians and music lovers. Purcell had already written Cecilian pieces in previous years, but this Ode remains the best known. The first performance was a great success, and received an encore... from Wikipedia

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Although known almost exclusively for his instrumental concertos and the spurious Adagio attributed to him, Tomaso Albinoni was mainly a man of the theater; he composed 81 operas and, late in life, made his living as a singing coach. However, the best efforts of posterity to catch up with Albinoni's operatic creations are significantly stymied by the fact that only three of his stage works are fully extant, the rest preserved only in occasional and fugitive fragments in the form of single arias and other bits and pieces. "Il Nascimento dell'Aurora" is a serenata -- or more specifically, a "festa pastorale" -- a kind of courtly entertainment not really meant to be specifically dramatic or compelling and, in this case, dealing with the birth of Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora ....

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In the past five or six years, the recording industry has been very generous with baroque opera, in general, and Vivaldi's operas in specific (despite the well known crisis of classical music recordings). It has to do with all the research that has been done about this field and the Vivaldi's operas that have been found... Motezuma is the latest recording addition to this operatic side of Vivaldi's music and it is presented as a first world premiere of the original opera with some reconstruction for the recitativos. (In 1992 Jean- Claude Malgoire's make a recording of a pasticcio with the name of Montezuma, using music from cantantas, serenatas and other Vivaidi Operas).

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First staged in 1724 during the Carnival of Rome in the Capranica Theater, the original 'Il Tigrane' was composed by the trio of Benedetto Michell (Act I), Antonio Vivaldi (Act II), and Nicola Romaldi (Act III). While the libretto has surived, the music of the first and third acts are lost. The composers dedicated the opera to the Pope's niece, Faustina Mattei Conti Guadagnolo.

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Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741), nicknamed il Prete Rosso ("The Red Priest") because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe. Vivaldi is known mainly for composing instrumental concertos, especially for the violin, as well as sacred choral works and over 40 operas. His best known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons... wikipedia

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In spite of the decline of the Saxon Hofkapelle, Schütz produced more collections, with which his reputation reached its height in Germany and northern Europe: the collection of motets Geistliche Chormusik (Dresden, 1648) and the third volume of Symphoniae Sacrae (1650), again based on German texts and with which he intended to end his career as Kapellmeister. This was however not to be, and it was only under the young Elector Johann Georg II that Schütz was finally granted his wish to retire.

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Certainly the somber beauty of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater for soprano, alto, and strings has a lot to do with its popularity. But it must be said that the story of the 26-year-old composer completing the work on his deathbed has always been too romantic for the public--or the music business--to resist. "The instant his death was known," wrote the famous 18th-century traveler Dr. Burney, "all Italy manifested an eager desire to hear and possess his productions." And so it's been ever since. In spite of the competition already on the market, it seems Decca just had to get its prize lyric soprano and hotshot young countertenor together to record the piece. --Matthew Westphal

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“you might think...that a performance of Bach's work would not make for the best viewing on video. Yet being able to see a performance can heighten the musical experience - as here, where the players' gestures often clarify the music's structure and texture...In turn, sheer contrapuntal wizardry begins to spill over from cerebral into emotional appreciation.”

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Following on from the release of Naïve's critically-acclaimed recording of 'Ottone in Villa' in November 2010, the 16th operatic production in the label's acclaimed 'Vivaldi Edition' features 'Teuzzone', a vibrant three-act theatre piece first produced in Venice in 1719. The music in this new 3CD set is directed by the internationally-renowned early music director Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations. The outstanding group of soloists include male soprano Paulo Lopez, baritone Furio Zanasi, countertenor Antonio Giovannini, soprano Raffaella Milanesi, and tenor Makoto Sakurada.

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This is an untouchably great performance of one of Handel's most interesting oratorios: its examination of jealousy is on a par with what can be found in Otello and Pelléas. There's drama galore--in fact, during its first run it was referred to as a "musical drama" (rather than an oratorio), and Handel and his librettist, Thomas Broughton, always referred to its "acts" rather than "parts", as sections of oratorios were commonly known. --Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

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Certainly fans of countertenor Andreas Scholl and lovers of Handel's Italian cantatas will not be disappointed with this new release. Scholl's voice retains its clear, fluid, golden-toned beauty, and he absolutely owns these little dramas centered around the common themes of the quest for love (or attempts to avoid its "cruel trap"). On hearing the very early cantata Vedendo Amor, you can't help being overcome with the sheer loveliness of the melodic invention (and the correspondingly lovely singing!) in the aria "Camminando lei pian piano...", and it's always a pleasure to be reminded that the Op. 2 No. 1 trio sonata, an effective complement to the vocal works, contains some of Handel's finest music in the chamber instrumental genre. --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

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