Roberta Invernizzi – The Gasparini Album (2018) [FLAC 24bit/88,2kHz]

The latest striking release from soprano Roberta Invernizzi acts as a lightning conductor for this new vocal extravaganza from Glossa devoted to the Italian Baroque composer Francesco Gasparini. Invernizzi finds herself very much home both in the music – which was originally first-performed around the turn of the eighteenth century and which provided “influences” for Handel, who was Gasparini’s junior by some 20 years – but also, so noticeably, with the words: librettos from the likes of Zeno, Piovene or Salvi find this singer exercising her customary intelligence.

Carlo Ipata, directing his ensemble Auser Musici, combines his natural and obvious flair for Italian and music of the time – he has also recorded the opera Il Bajazet for Glossa – with the painstaking demands of the research required to identify brilliant arias from slumbering the various shades of neglect. Gasparini wrote some sixty operas, as well as oratorios and many cantatas. For Invernizzi Ipata has crafted a beguiling selection from this abundance of music which proved so successful in both princely soirées in Rome and public theatres in Venice. Arias come from operas such as Il Roderigo and Amleto and oratorios such as L’oracolo del Fato and Atalia. As well as the cantata, Andate o miei sospiri, composed by Gasparini as part of a challenge undertaken jointly with Alessandro Scarlatti, Ipata and Auser Musici have added an attractive flute concerto written during his time as a teacher at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà.

Tracklist:
01. Astianatte: Se la Grecia s’armerà
02. L’oracolo del fato: Qui ti scrivo o nome
03. Ciro: Nell’orror della procella
04. Il Bajazet: Par che mi nasca in seno
05. Engelberta: I. Allegro
06. Engelberta: II. Adagio
07. Engelberta: III. Allegro
08. Tamerlano: Svena uccidi
09. Tamerlano: Cor di padre
10. Santa Eufrosina: Qui dal porto d’ocean
11. Ambleto: D’ire armato
12. L’oracolo del fato: Se non canti più
13. Cantate da camera a voce sola, Op. 1: I. Andante, o miei sospiri
14. Cantate da camera a voce sola, Op. 1: II. Se vedete il cor d’Irene
15. Cantate da camera a voce sola, Op. 1: III. Ma, di che mi lusingo
16. Cantate da camera a voce sola, Op. 1: IV. Se non v’accoglie in seno
17. Concerto in A Major: I. Allegro
18. Concerto in A Major: II. Siciliana
19. Concerto in A Major: III. Allegro
20. Roderico: Non ha incendio
21. Roderico: Non vo lasciarti più
22. Atalia: Ombre care