Scarlatti fans will rejoice in this 3CD album from Australian early-music ensemble chacona, featuring renowned scholar and harpsichordist Rosalind Halton, who both directs and plays in the ensemble. Includes several world premiere recordings.

Alessandro Scarlatti was undoubtedly the greatest composer of vocal music in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, despite his grandeur being recognized by historians, it s only recently that his music can be heard and appreciated in concerts. The serenata could be considered the form that lies between opera and cantata, a kind of mini-opera with the usual alternation between arias and recitatives but without the effects of staging. A characteristic of the beautiful and rare serenata recorded here is the presence of a general dancing nature of many of the arias along with real instrumental dances that, towards the end, intertwine with the arias.

The first work, ‘Qual prodigio è ch’io miri?’, is often cited, quite correctly, as a source for some of Handel’s ‘plague’ chorus melodies in ‘Israel in Egypt’ – including flies and lice, hailstones and ‘he led them forth like sheep’. But I imagine not all that many listeners will have heard Stradella’s original music, and hearing these passages in their original form is in itself a cause of fascination and delight; for a sample, try the Sinfonia (track 9). The work takes the form of a conversation between two male lovers and the female object of their affections, and is here sung by two sopranos and a bass. All three singers are excellent - as is the superb Alessandro Stradella Consort, directed by Estevan Velardi, who have already brought us several first-class recordings of Italian baroque music including other works by Stradella.

Andrea Marcon and La Cetra Barockorchester & Vokalensemble Basel sparkle in this new release of Handel's forgotten masterpiece Parnasso in testa, recorded shortly before their hugely successful Netherlands premiere of the opera in November 2016.

Giacomo Facco was born on 1676 in the Most Serene Republic of Venice, in the small village of Marsango. The first documentary records of his work are in a series of cantatas, dated 1702, kept in Naples. It is there he may have started working for Antonio Spi?nola. The Spi?nola family was part of the high Spanish nobility and Antonio, during the War of the Spanish Succession, was appointed Viceroy of Sicily, where he lived until 1713. Facco also moved there with the marquis’ court, and had a period of intense activity, during which he premiered several operas and oratorios, as well as some cantatas.

Fabio Bonizzoni returns with his long-awaited new recording of Handel’s 'Aci, Galatea e Polifemo'. Who better to team up with Bonizzoni, performing the role of the luckless shepherd Aci, than scintillating soprano Roberta Invernizzi. Her captivating contributions to Glossa's Handel series with La Risonanza as well as her 'I Viaggi di Faustina' have drawn powerful critical plaudits, including more than one disc of the Month.

This recording of Handel's Acis and Galatea (or Acis und Galatea) features the German translation and arrangement completed by Mozart in Vienna circa 1788, per the instructions of the Baron Gottfried von Swieten to "modernize" Handel's pieces - including Alexander's Feast, Messiah, Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, and Acis and Galatea. Mozart kept much of Handel's original string arrangements, but proceeded to layer harmonies with a degree of sophistication that Handel could only have dreamed of.

This simple celebratory cantata made Stradella a well-known theatrical personality. As opposed to using traditional recitative, Stradella incorporates string interludes interrupting the characters, which allowed them to express emotions during facial expressions and movement, a novelty during the Baroque era. The Concerto Madrigalesco performs these works extraordinarily with historical performance practices.

Il giardino d'amore ou Venere e Adone (Vénus et Adonis) est une serenata à deux voix (SA), trompette, sopranino, cordes et basse continue du compositeur italien Alessandro Scarlatti, sur un livret en italien d'un auteur inconnu et composée dans les premières années du xviiie siècle. On ignore les circonstances de la composition de cette sérénade.

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 – 1725) was the prolific composer of more than 800 cantatas. However, the majority of these compositions are unpublished and preserved in manuscript copy only. In this context, Maestro Estévan Velardi and Alessandro Stradella Consort will give life and exposure to two of Alessandro Scarlatti’s repertoire gems: the Serenatas “Al fragor di lieta tromba” and “Bel piacere ch’è la caccia”, First World recorded in this release on period instruments. The clamshell box with contains 2 CDs and a 100 pages volume edited by musicologists and Alessandro Scarlatti’s music scholars including the late Maestro Roberto Pagano, to whose memory the release is dedicated.

These recordings illustrate the Vivaldi's genius in a way comparable to that of the Four Seasons or the Concertos of Opus 10, they are too, a fresh and delightful demonstration of the art of bel canto.

Andromeda Liberata is a serenata, or two-part ceremonial cantata with a hint of allegorical storyline, given in Venice on September 18, 1726, in honor of visiting Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. Most early eighteenth century works of this type are so courtly, genteel, and refined that often their common destiny is to languish and gather dust on the shelves of some archive rather than be promoted and performed. Andromeda Liberata is an exception in that parts of it are traceable to the pen of one Antonio Vivaldi, whose varied and outstanding contribution to other types of works, including opera, are well noted elsewhere. Vivaldi, however, is not solely responsible for the score; although the musicological jury is still out on many sections contained within Andromeda Liberata, among the suspect roster may be found other prominent names (Tomaso Albinoni, Nicola Porpora, and Antonio Lotti) and some lesser ones (Giovanni Porta and Antonino Biffi).