No musician has done more for this music than the Argentine director of Ensemble Elyma, Gabriel Garrido. Garrido has an impressive discography on the French label K617. K617 recordings can sometimes be frustrating because they rarely provide English translations to the obscure texts of much of this music. No matter, you can’t go wrong with any of the recordings Garrido has made with his excellent Ensemble Elyma.

This "fiesta" is in honor of the Virgin, and contains music by Roque Jacinto de Chavarria, a Brazilian Baroque composer (1688-1719), Juan de Araujo (Chavarria’s teacher) and others. Don’t let their unfamiliarity and the unfamiliarity of the other composers/arrangers on this CD put you off–all the music is flavorful, solid, Baroque fare, and much of it is rhythmically propulsive with an exciting Latin beat. Musicologist Bernardo Illari has put it all together to create a thrilling, vastly entertaining, and unique experience. It winds ups as a veritable pageant, beginning with a drummed entry into the cathedral, followed by the polyphonic sections alternating with purely instrumental ones and some nice monophony as well. Needless to say, Garrido leads his large instrumental and vocal forces with verve and understanding.

La Dafne (Daphne) is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a favola in musica (fable set to music) composed in one act and a prologue. The opera is based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo as related by Ovid in the first book of the Metamorphoses. An earlier version of the libretto had been set to music in 1597–98 by Jacopo Peri, whose Dafne is generally considered to be the first opera.

Bonaventura Aliotti‚ unrepresented in the CD catalogues until now‚ was a Sicilian composer of the middle Baroque‚ born in Palermo around 1640‚ dying some 50 years later. A Minorite friar‚ he worked as organist in Padua and various other Italian cities‚ ending up as maestro di cappella in Palermo. His oratorios‚ of which only four survive‚ seem to have been greatly admired in his time. Il Sansone‚ first performed in Naples in 1686‚ tells the central part of the familiar story of Samson – his seduction and betrayal by Delilah‚ at the bidding of the Philistine Captain and with the help of the allegorical character Inganno (‘Treachery’) and Morpheus‚ god of sleep. It was revised two years later for performance in Modena‚ and the choral music was added; the Modena score‚ as the only surviving source for the work‚ is used here.