Handel / Cummings,Laurence - Joshua - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Heiki M tlik - Der Morgen Der Skulptur [COMPACT DISCS] date 11/11/2001

Carl Heinrich Graun, like other Italian-influenced or Italian-trained German composers of his time, composed Italian cantatas throughout his entire creative period. The three cantatas belong to a small group in Graun's output, for soprano. The greater part of his 38 positively attributed Italian cantatas were composed for tenor, and thus probably for his own voice. Graun's soprano cantatas were probably written in his Berlin years after Friedrich's accession to the throne in 1740, when virtuoso castrati and singers were available for the demanding solo parts. After successful albums with music by Fasch, Hertel and Molter, the ensemble Main-Barockorchester has now joined the Accent tag. Hannah Morrison is regarded as one of the most promising young sopranos of the early music scene.

For a long time, a large portion of Handel's early opera Rodrigo was thought to have been lost. It was back in 1707 in Rome that George Frideric Handel wrote Rodrigo, but it was not until 1974 that the printed libretto turned up again, and nine years later the third act was found in the Earl of Shaftesbury's Handel collection. On August 29, 1984, finally, the work was revived during the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, and in 2019 it's on the programme at the Göttingen International Handel Festival. The opera narrates a freely adapted version of the end to the regency of the Last Visigoth King Roderich. In the libretto by Francesco Silvani, however, the reason behind it is less the lust for power on the part of his opponents than the thirst for vengeance of his spurned mistress.