Search - George Frideric Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti, Gérard Lesne :: Handel & A. Scarlatti - Cantatas / Piau, Lesne, Il Seminario musicale, Lesne

Do Not Hesitate! Buy it!

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 07/20/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Scarlatti and Handel overlapped in their careers in Rome. They might well have become fierce competitors for audience and patronage, but Scarlatti moved off to Naples and Handel to England, and there's no evidence that they formed any bond or an rivalry. But think of it! The two greatest composers of the 18th Century outside Germany! It makes me yearn dyschronistically to be present at the musical Shoot-out at the OK Corral which never occurred.



At the end of the 17th Century, Pope Innocent XII prohibited stage opera in the Papal States, including Rome itself. In prompt response, composers developed the sacred oratorio, essentially stationary opera, and took it right to the steps of the altar in Romes's major churches. Wealthy music lovers also commissioned secular oratorios for salon performance. Boom times for the young Handel and the mature Scarlatti!



The cantatas on these two disks were all written on secular texts, the usual ardent love-drivel of late Renaissance madrigalists operatically updated to include recitativo and da capo arias. CD 1 features four short cantatas and a splendid instrumental sonata; the cantatas are virtuoso diplay pieces, calling on male alto Gerard Lesne to emote passionately in his recitativos and to soar gymnastically in his arias. Lesne is more than up to all demands. CD 2 is all Scarlatti, with a spectacularly operatic duet cantata dialogue between Marc Antonio and Cleopatra, sung by Lesne and soprano Sandrine Piau, and another gloriously languid duet between Hero and Leander. Love was cruel but captivating in the salons of Rome, with Scarlatti on the scene.



Sandrine Piau, Gerard Lesne, and as a bonus, violinist Fabio Biondi! The boys down by the Corral tell me "it don't get no better than that!""