Two bright talents to have emerged from Italy recently, Giulia Semenzato and Raffaele Pe, join forces for a dazzling collection of operatic arias and duets by that Baroque master of amorous emotions, Francesco Cavalli.

Soprano and countertenor are supported by the modern master of Italian Baroque style, Claudio Cavina, who directs La Venexiana.

Working in Venice with some of the best Italian librettists around in the mid-17th century, Cavalli mined rich emotional seams in his operas conjuring up a stream of productions which enjoyed great artistic and financial success. His influence travelled far and wide, and this included Rameau, Lully, Handel and Purcell in the Baroque period alone.

With five full-scale duets amongst solo arias, ariosos and recitar cantando, this new Glossa recording gloriously shows off the talents of the Venetian, Semenzato, and the Lombard, Pe, who have been gathering important stage experience in the operas of Cavalli. Space is also found for one of the vocal genres which Cavalli can lay claim to instigating – the dramatic lamento, here in the form of ‘Lassa, che fò’ from Statira.

A further intriguing picture of Cavalli and his operatic inspiration is to be found in the booklet essay written by Olivier Lexa.

Reviews

Alongside their outstanding surveys of the madrigals of Gesualdo, Monteverdi and their contemporaries, Claudio Cavina and his superb group have also begun to explore the music of Francesco Cavalli. ... This Venexiana collection can only hint at the full extent of that influence and what treasures might still be rediscovered as more and more of Cavalli’s operas return to the stage. (He is known to have composed 32, of which half a dozen are lost.) What’s here, though, from works such as Eritrea, Orimonte and Veremonda, Muzio Scevola, Scipione Affricano and Pompeo Magno, is more than enough to whet anyone’s appetite. ... Semenzato and Pe are a beguilingly smooth-toned and compelling pair of soloists, always treating the words as if they mean something dramatically, and are not merely supports for Cavalli’s elegant musical lines. Andrew Clements

The Guardian 20 May 2016

This is public opera rendered with private immediacy and intensity, and although some might miss the brass flurries and fanfares of other recordings, there’s such dramatic flexibility in these arias, ariosos and duets that it’s easier to accept a narrower textural canvas. Alexandra Coghlan

Gramophone July 2016