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Cavalli - La Calisto | Australian Eloquence ELQ4829400

Cavalli - La Calisto

£13.60

In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day

Label: Australian Eloquence

Cat No: ELQ4829400

Barcode: 0028948294008

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Opera

Release Date: 12th April 2019

Contents

Artists

Ileana Cotrubas
Janet Baker
James Bowman
Marjorie Biggar
Enid Hartle
Teresa Cahill
Ugo Trama
Peter Gottlieb
Hugues Cuenod
Janet Hughes
Federico Davia
Owen Brannigan
Teresa Kubiak
Isla Brodie
Glyndebourne Festival Opera Chorus
London Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor

Raymond Leppard

Works

Cavalli, Francesco

La Calisto

Artists

Ileana Cotrubas
Janet Baker
James Bowman
Marjorie Biggar
Enid Hartle
Teresa Cahill
Ugo Trama
Peter Gottlieb
Hugues Cuenod
Janet Hughes
Federico Davia
Owen Brannigan
Teresa Kubiak
Isla Brodie
Glyndebourne Festival Opera Chorus
London Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor

Raymond Leppard

About

Raymond Leppard’s second and more renowned contribution to the modern revival of Cavalli: a classic among Baroque opera recordings which won the coveted Rosette award from the Penguin Record Guide.

In 1651, seven years after L’Ormindo (also reissued by Eloquence in Leppard’s recording, ELQ4829382), Cavalli and his librettist Faustini scored another hit with the hungry but demanding Venetian opera public with a tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The change that all of Ovid’s central characters undergo is in this case suffered by the nymph Calisto, who is rejected by the goddess Diana, turned into a bear by the Furies and back into a human by Jupiter, who finally sets her among the stars in reward for her patience and her love.

Writing as editor of the Musical Times in the summer of 1970, Stanley Sadie observed that Raymond Leppard’s revival of La Calisto - probably its first performances since 1651 - had, like L’Ormindo three years earlier, been ‘rapturously received’. Subsequent decades have furnished us with the more complete and unedited original opera for which Sadie hankered, but they have not dimmed the passionate sweep of Leppard’s conducting. Nor has the singing of Janet Baker, James Bowman and Ileana Cotrubas in the central roles been eclipsed by their successors.

Decca’s top engineering team led by Kenneth Wilkinson were in charge of the Argo recording. As with L’Ormindo, they elected to record not in Glyndebourne’s main house but in the smaller and acoustically favourable organ room, which was the site of the house’s first operatic performances. Much of the cast also reprised their appearances from the previous Cavalli album, notably the French tenor Hugues Cuénod, whom Edward Greenfield observed to be a master of comic timing as well as vocal stamina during the four concentrated days of recording.

‘The stylish, sensitive and totally feminine portrayal of the nymph Calisto by Ileana Cotrubas is outstanding’ - High Fidelity, August 1972

‘Janet Baker is on terrific vocal form ... excellently engineered sound ... the London Philharmonic play superbly well.’ - Opera magazine, April 1972

Cast:
- La Natura:  Marjorie Biggar
- L’Eternità: Enid Hartle
- Il Destino: Teresa Cahill
- Giove: Ugo Trama
- Mercurio: Peter Gottlieb
- Calisto: Ileana Cotrubas
- Endimione: James Bowman
- Diana: Janet Baker
- Linfea: Hugues Cuénod
- Satirino: Janet Hughes
- Pane: Federico Davià
- Silvano: Owen Brannigan
- Giunone: Teresa Kubiak
- Eco: Isla Brodie

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