CORO The Sixteen Edition CORO live The Sixteen Edition Other Sixteen Edition recordings available on CORO Heroes and Heroines cor16025 Delirio Amoroso cor16030 Sarah Connolly - Handel arias Ann Murray - Handel Italian secular cantatas Harry Christophers Harry Christophers The Symphony of The Symphony of Harmony & Invention Harmony & Invention "Connolly seals her "...a dazzling revelation... reputation as our best Ann Murray sings Handel mezzo in many superlatively." years." bbc music magazine financial times Vivaldi: Gloria in D Allegri - Miserere cor16014 Fedel e Costante Bach: Magnificat in D cor16042 & Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli, Stabat Mater Russell, Fisher, Lotti: Crucifixus Browner, Partridge, "Christophers draws HANDEL ITALIAN CANTATAS George brilliant performances from "Singing and playing his singers, both technically on the highest level." assured and vividly Elin Manahan Thomas bbc music magazine impassioned." the guardian Principals from The Symphony To find out more about The Sixteen, concert tours, and to buy CDs, visit www.thesixteen.com cor16045 of Harmony and Invention There are many things about The Sixteen her unique amongst her peers. This live elcome to the world of four that make me very proud, above all the recital of Handel Italian Cantatas was part of women, all of whom have nurturing of future talent. Over the years, the 2006 Handel in Oxford Festival. Those Wbeen betrayed by love and its we have produced some outstanding who were actually present at that concert deceitful charms, to varying degrees and performers; among them are Carolyn were witness to a performance of captivating for numerous reasons. Sampson, Sarah Connolly, Mark Padmore, communication and sparkling intelligence. Agrippina condotta a morire pretends Christopher Purves and Jeremy White. It is now for you to enjoy the immediacy to voice the words of Agrippina, sister Elin is someone destined for that stardom; of this Live recording. of Caligula and wife of Claudius, on she is not only a stylish and intelligent the eve of her death. She has poisoned singer but also possesses an individuality her husband to ensure that the Roman of expression and interpretation that makes empire falls under the control of her son, Nero, and now he in turn, after Agrippina bo Recit: L’occhio nero vivace 0.53 years of struggling against his mother’s 1 Recit: Dunque sarà pur vero 1.05 bp Aria: Se Licori, Fili ed io 1.29 control, decides to kill her. In fact, 2 Aria: Orrida, oscura l’etra 3.03 bq Recit: Ma, se non hai più 0.45 Nero organised several attempts on his mother’s life – three times through 3 Recit: Ma pria che d’empia morte 0.57 br Aria: Se non ti piace amarmi 4.06 poison, once with a rigged ceiling, and 4 Aria: Renda cenere il tiranno 2.35 bs Recit: Ma il tuo genio incostante 0.49 5 bt once using a collapsible boat! – until she Recit: Sì, sì, del gran tiranno 1.17 Aria: Sì crudel, ti lascierò 1.09 was eventually stabbed and clubbed to 6 Arioso: Come, o Dio 6.20 Armida abbandonata death by an assassin. 7 Aria: Se infelice al mondo vissi 6.08 bu Recit: Dietro l’orme fugaci 1.03 In Handel’s account of her last to a noble death, at the hands of her cruel, 8 Recit: Trema l’ingrato figlio 1.02 cl Aria: Ah, crudele! 4.47 moments, Agrippina is furious at the ignoble son. 9 Aria: Su lacerate il seno 2.28 cm Recit: Per te mi struggo, infido 0.26 savage audacity of her son, and at the In a happier vein, but still focussing cn bl Nel dolce dell'obblio 7.32 Recit: O voi, dell’ incostante 0.51 barbarity of fate, as the Rome she loves on love’s treacherous ways, Nel dolce dell’ co Aria: Venti, fermate, sì 2.30 abandons her. The cantata sees her oblio describes the sweet oblivion of sleep, Tu fedel? Tu costante? cp Recit: Ma che parlo, che dico? 0.53 vacillate from fiery monarch in outrage as the beloved Fili lies dreaming of her to a tender mother appalled by her son’s darling. In her thoughts, love plays tricks, bm Sonata & recit: Tu fedel? 3.24 cq Aria: In tanti affanni miei 4.13 weakness. At the last, she resigns herself deceiving her with charming images of bn Aria: Cento belle ami Fileno 5.19 Total playing time 65.10 2 3 her beloved so as to make her love him returns to his ship and abandons her. In all the more. But surely, Handel sagely some versions of the story, the pair are Italian Cantatas suggests, even if we all awoke from the eventually reunited, but Handel’s cantata ost of Handel’s chamber cantatas was usually played out in a never-never dream of love and realised its deception, picks up the tale at its saddest point, were written during his youthful land of lush pastoral groves inhabited by we would still decide that its lies have and opens with the sorceress wandering, years in Rome between about fickle nymphs and shepherds endlessly their charms, and so would prefer to be desolate and alone. She bemoans her M 1707 and 1709. The secular cantata bemoaning the sweet pains brought by blinded by it in spite of everything: and fate, torn between a desperate love and a flourished in Rome as nowhere else Cupid’s arrows. Nel dolce dell’ oblio fits so say all of us! furious hatred, and the cantata closes with because opera was banned by Papal decree this mould perfectly – cast in the R-A-R-A a meltingly sad refrain, as Armida faces Tu fedel? Tu costante? has a theme and so cantatas became the main vehicle pattern, and concerned with nothing her destiny of lonely, unrequited love. which has resonated through the ages! for the star singers of the time. Indeed, more than a sleepless shepherdess whose The singer berates her beloved, Fileno, for I have lived and breathed these cantatas some works grew to semi-dramatic nights are filled with thoughts of her lover. his philandering ways. He is in love with a for many months, and have been haunted, proportions – like Agrippina and Armida – Handel lifts the work out of the ordinary hundred beauties, and wishes to share his if not possessed, by the overwhelming with elaborate accompanying instrumental by responding to the theme of sleep – as heart among them all, leaving the singer emotion captured in every one. Indeed, parts and singers in genuine character he often did – by writing an exquisite feeling used and humiliated. Until the last each cantata is almost a whole opera in roles. This was an elite entertainment then, obbligato part for the recorder or flute. aria, that is, when she decides either to itself, and brings to life four remarkable and one in which composers, poets and Armida abbandonata is an altogether love another, or else – horror of horrors! personalities who inspired Handel performers could experiment with new more ambitious work. It was written – to live entirely without love. to compose some of his finest, most ideas which would have been alien to the in Rome in June 1707 for the Marquis Finally, Armida abbandonata tells a dramatic music. It has been a privilege rigid conventions governing contemporary Francesco Maria Ruspoli who employed tale which has been told many times in to perform these works, and I hope that opera seria. Handel at his Roman palace and country music throughout history. It is an episode they will prove a powerful and moving The structure of the cantata had estate at Vignanello between 1707 and which is taken from Tasso’s Gerusalemme collection. been standardised in the later works of 1709. Ruspoli seems to have had virtually Liberata, in which the crusader Rinaldo Elin Manahan Thomas Alessandro Scarlatti and his Neapolitan a standing order for cantatas from Handel, is captured, and indeed captivated, by contemporaries and usually consisted of who supplied him with around forty the Saracen witch, Armida. When she two da capo arias, each preceded by a such pieces. Most were relatively modest falls in love with the warrior, Armida brief recitative – the so-called R-A-R-A in scale, but eight of them, including bewitches him to love her in return, but form. Their subject matter was similarly Armida, required elaborate instrumental eventually her spell fails, so that Rinaldo stylised: love was usually in the air, and accompaniments and tested their soloists 4 5 to the extreme – in this case the talented The change in Armida’s sentiment is his characters by blurring the distinction dated 16 May 1707. As with Armida Margherita Durastanti, who subsequently vividly charted in the two following between recitative and aria and creating and Agrippina, the singer for whom it followed Handel to London and sang recitatives: the first with stark continuo declamatory scenas where the emotions was intended was Ruspoli’s protégée in some of his finest operas during the accompaniment, the second accompanied fluctuate wildly. Margherita Durastanti, and there’s a 1720s. by furious rushing strings. This leads to The plot, drawn from Roman history, strong possibility that the anonymous text The anonymous text was based on an operatic ‘rage’ aria, ‘Venti, fermate, si, is simple. Queen Agrippina is for the was specifically written to reflect her bold the epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata fermate’, full of pounding octaves in the chop, and over the course of five arias personality. It portrays a woman firmly (Jerusalem Liberated) by the sixteenth- upper strings depicting Armida’s wrath and recitatives she laments her fate and and decisively rejecting her fickle lover century Italian poet Torquato Tasso.