Cesti - Le disgrazie d'Amore - Ipata, Auser Musici

 

Release Date: January 12, 2010 Label: Hyperion Number of discs: 2  Composer:  Antonio Cesti Performer: Carlo Ipata, Auser Musici  cd info/ buy

Review:

Cesti was on of the most illustrious representatives of the seventeenth-century Venetian school of opera composers. He had an eventful and successful life and, like the murdered Stradella, he died in murky circumstances (probably by poisoning). Cesti’s Viennese operas display great variety among themselves but generally differ from his earlier ones in treating allegorical or mythological plots  rather than historical ones and in exploiting the larger forces available at the Emperor Leopold’s resplendent court. The work recorded here dates from this period at the Viennese court (1667), and is characteristic of Viennese opera's synthesis between comedy and parody and the moral, edifying dimension inherent to court opera. Le disgrazie d’Amore (libretto by Francesco Sbarra) contains some of Cesti’s finest music, especially the more contrapuntally conceived instrumental sections.

 

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