MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Rossini: Cantatas Vol.2

'A magnificent second volume in Decca's Rossini series with Chailly on top form and an outstanding line-up of soloists providing bravura contributions'
Editor's Choice - Gramophone Magazine June 2001

***** Five Stars BBC Music Magazine (July 2001)

Riccardo Chailly and the Orchestra Filarmonica Della Scala come together for the third in their series of Rossini recordings. The vocal music of Rossini has, over recent years, enjoyed a huge renaissance of popularity. These cantatas, on themes from classical mythology, are among his most colourful but least familiar works.
What makes this release especially exciting is the inclusion of the first Rossini recordings by Cecilia Bartoli since the enormous success of the award-winning recording of Il Turco in Italia (458 924).

Since the beginning of her career Cecilia Bartoli has championed the music of her fellow Italian, whose florid writing reveals the vocal beauty and agility which quickly brought her to international operatic stardom.

While the revolutionary period in Europe changed the nature of celebratory music, the restoration of the monarchies brought with it music more fitting to the formality of court culture.

Il pianto d'Armonia sulla morte di Orfeo, in which Harmony (tenor) and attendant nymphs mourn the death of Orpheus, master of harmony, was Rossini's first major cantata (1808) and attests to the rhythmic and lyric talent which would define the composer's style.

Le nozze di Teti, e di Peleo tells of the marriage of the mythical parents of Hercules. It was commissioned in 1816 to celebrate the wedding of Maria Carolina (daughter to the heir to the throne of Naples) with the Duc de Berry (son of the future Charles X of France). The charming cantata, which uses themes from some of Rossini's most popular operas, was a great success though the marriage itself ended after only four years when the Duc was assassinated in 1820.

The soloists on this disc represent the crème de la crème of today's Rossini specialists. Among the most exciting of these is the young Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez who, though still in his mid-twenties, received sensational reviews for his recent performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and La Scala, Milan.