Handel: Il delirio amoroso, HWV 99 (Da quel giorno fatale)

For the second Glossa Portrait release the spotlight falls upon the soprano Roberta Invernizzi. It was the inspired choice of Fabio Bonizzoni to involve the Milanese singer in his series of Le Cantate Italiane di Handel, and Invernizzi appeared on no less than five of the seven discs in that greatly-admired series. This 2-disc Portrait draws on those recordings to highlight the delicious characterisations of Invernizzi in Handel’s vivid and visceral portrayals of nymphs and goddesses such as Diana, Cloris, Amarilis, Lidia and Fili, Arcadian characters one and all but nonetheless human in personality.

Roberta Invernizzi is gifted with an ability to master the technical, expressive and temperamental challenges set by Baroque composers such as Vivaldi, Monteverdi and Alessandro Scarlatti and she has also added a scintillating theatrical verve to many of the incursions into Neapolitan opera buffa in the company of Antonio Florio.

Winter & Winter's first audio production with the Freitagsakademie and soprano Susanne Rydén presents Handel in Italy, combining his works with compositions by Corelli and Scarlatti. Handel's successful career in England was based on the reputation he gained as a composer and musician during his travels through Italy. At the age of 21 he had already established himself as a successful opera composer in Hamburg, before he journeyed to Italy in late 1706. He passed through Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice where he met and performed with Italy's composer elite: Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Lotti, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti. The Swedish soloist Susanne Rydén is one of Europe's sucessful sopranos specialising in early music. Her love and understanding of the colourful Baroque repertoire has led her to work with internationally acclaimed ensembles and conductors, recent concert seasons having included Bach's Christmas Oratorio with Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Fransisco, the St. Matthew Passion with the Nederlandse Bachvereiniging, a programme of Handel with Harry Bicket and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Stockholm, Haydn's Creation with the Kölner Akademie, Handel's Messiah with the Bach Collegium Japan under Masaaki Suzuki, concerts with Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Concerto Copenhagen, Mozart Concert Arias with the Australian Brandenburg Baroque Orchestra and Paul Dyer, and European tours with Emma Kirkby as well as Collegium Vocale and Philippe Herreweghe. Recently she was the soloist at the 2009 Nobel Banquet in Stockholm.

"The Swedish soprano Susanne Rydén captivated her audience. The singer's enchanting presentation of the programme proved an exemplary demonstration of how to keep an audience eating out of one's hands." Goldberg

New recordings made in 2009.

Extensive booklet notes and sung texts.

Already available on Brilliant: La Resurrezione (93805), and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (93665).

Handel’s cantatas represent an important but until recently little-known area of his work. Even now newly discovered works are found and performed to much excitement in the media and among lovers of Handel’s music. They were written during his time in Rome from 1707–8, and were intended for private use. They range from miniatures consisting of two arias, recitative and a basso continuo, to large-scale works with all the drama of his operas, complete with named characters, a plot and large orchestral forces. Marco Vitale will record the first ever complete cycle of these cantatas. He has returned both to Handel’s manuscripts, where they are extant, and to many of the intervening manuscripts. He has also taken decisions on the pitch of these recordings as a result of his research into the different tunings that were standard in Rome and Venice at the time of the works’ composition. This was showcased in his successful recording of Handel’s early Roman oratorio, La Resurrezione, which received a glowing review in Gramophone and many other specialist musical publications. Many of the cantatas have never been recorded before and this release is sure to generate considerable interest both in itself and as the first volume of a groundbreaking project.

Handel, a child of his time, was fascinated by the poignant human dramas and emotions exemplified by Greek and Roman classical myths, dramas, and poetry. A theatre composer to his very bones, he devoted himself to the portrayal of human psychology. He had a special interest in those moments when the human psyche is at its most vulnerable: moments of indecision, struggle, despair, fury, abandonment, betrayal, unhappy love, conflict with friends, enemies, and fate, or longing for the oblivion of death.

The oboe was an instrument especially beloved by Händel. It is the unifying element in the anthology of arias and cantatas recorded here.

Bart Schneemann: Handel, that master creator of goosebumps, can juggle emotions with the greatest of ease; he can make you happy, melancholy, resigned, exuberant. A composer who can make two completely different beings, an oboe and a soprano, fall in love, is one of the great ones.

Johannette Zomer: After my first collaboration with Bart (Blake Songs by Vaughan Williams, ccs 18598 ), what struck me was the way our two instruments, oboe and voice, completely fused together. Bart’s way of making music is so pure, so honest, that making music with him in these dialogue-arias raises my singing to a whole new level.