Infinite Refrain – Music of Love's Refuge by Randall Scotting

Various composers

Randall Scotting

Infinite Refrain – Music of Love's Refuge

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212076927
Catnr: SIGCD 769
Release date: 03 November 2023
Buy

1 CD ✓ in stock	€ 19.95	Buy

Label
Signum Classics

UPC
0635212076927

Catalogue number
SIGCD 769

Release date
03 November 2023

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

The first of its kind, this duet album is a musical journey that draws back the curtain which has obscured gay love-stories for centuries. In the 17th century, Venice offered a liberal safe haven of sorts to the gay community of greater Europe. There are accounts of outed artists escaping to Venice to live and work amongst its more permissive culture. Almost 400 years later, we reconnect with this uncommonly tolerant place and time to share a history that is yet untold.

The album includes vivid and charming duets from Monteverdi’s 7th book of madrigals as well as his touching musical love letters (lettere amorose). Additionally, there are four modern-day premieres of works by the little-known composers Boretti, Melani, and Castrovillari; including a moving duet for the lovers Hercules and Theseus as they exit the underworld hand-in-hand. Solo arias by Cavalli and Stradella depict the yearning of hidden love, and the recording culminates with one of the most beautiful duets of all time, ‘Pur ti miro’ from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. This album is a recognition and celebration of gay love that spans the centuries.

Artist(s)

Randal Scotting (countertenor)

Randall Scotting has become a sought-after artist by some of the world’s most esteemed opera houses. He recently made spectacular debuts at The Royal Opera House in London, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Staatsoper Hamburg, with future engagements including leading roles on stage at Seattle Opera, Frankfurt Opera, in Sydney, Australia, and in Houston. Randall’s breakout moment came in 2019 when he stepped in last-minute at the Royal Opera House to perform Apollo in Britten’s Death in Venice singing all performances after opening night. He then joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera and has been consistently working at top-level houses since. He received rave reviews as the Refugee in a filmed version of Jonathan Dove’s opera Flight, as well as praise for the leading role of Adonis in the Staatsoper Hamburg’s 2023 world premiere of Sciarrino’s Venere e Adone, led by conductor Kent Nagano. Future performances see him singing in several Handel operas, including the title character in Amadigi, Ruggiero in three different productions of Alcina, and Goffredo in Rinaldo.
Randall’s debut solo album, titled The Crown: Heroic Arias for Senesino, recorded with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, consists of modern-day premiere recordings of virtuoso baroque arias. For this significant project, led by conductor Laurence Cummings, Randall was praised internationally for his ‘ravishing vocalism’, ‘full, darkly mellifluous voice’, and ‘impressive beauty and warmth’. His second album, comprised of lute and folk songs with Grammy Award winning lutenist Stephen Stubbs, titled Lovesick, received equally excellent reviews declared that the album is a ‘gorgeous release’, ‘skillfully planned and beautifully executed’, and ‘not only beautifully sung, but lived’.
Randall’s past engagements have linked him with major US and European opera houses and venues including the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Detroit Opera, Carnegie Hall, Edinburgh’s Saint Cecilia’s Hall, Italy’s Spoleto Festival, the Göttingen Handel Festival, Boston Baroque, the New York Philharmonic, and many others. Leading operatic roles for which he has received particular acclaim include Handel’s Rinaldo, Orlando, and Giulio Cesare; Gluck’s Orfeo; and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Randall trained at the Royal College of Music in London, the Juilliard School in New York, and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. He made his leading operatic debut in Vivaldi’s Ercole su’l Termodonte with Il Complesso Barocco at Spoleto’s Festival dei due mondi (available on DVD) and Randall can be heard on other recordings including a modern cantata for chorus and countertenor, entitled Dive: A Water Music, and as the title role in the oratorio Santo Stefano primo re dell’Ungheria by Antonio Caldara.

less

Academy of Ancient Music

Laurence Cummings (conductor)

Jorge Navarro Colorado (tenor)

Composer(s)

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi was an Italian composer and conductor, whose work marked the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Moreover, he composed the earliest operas that are still regularly performed today.
Monteverdi worked as maestro di capella at the court of the duke of Mantua and at the San Marco in Venice. He was a famous musician during his lifetime, but his compositions also provoked opposition. The conservative theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi criticized the technical flaws in some of Monteverdis madrigals. The composer defended himself by making a distinction between two styles of composition, the prima prattica, in which the harmony is dominant, and the seconda prattica , in which the music is subordinate to the text. Monteverdi championed the seconda prattica, and eventually broke with traditional Renaissance polyphony and began to employ the basso continuo and recitative to do better justice to the text.
Monteverdi wrote amongst others eight books of madrigals, two collections of liturgical music and various operas. The opera L'incoronazione di Poppea is considered a culminating point of Monteverdi's work. It contains tragic, romantic, and comic scenes and warmer melodies than previously heard.

less

Giovanni Legrenzi

Alessandro Stradella

Tarquinio Merula

Francesco Cavalli

Francesco Cavalli (born Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni 14 February 1602 – 14 January 1676) was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. He took the name 'Cavalli' from his patron, Venetian nobleman Federico Cavalli. He was born at Crema, Lombardy and became a singer (soprano) at St. Mark's Basilica in Venice in 1616, where he had the opportunity to work under the tutorship of Claudio Monteverdi. He became second organist in 1639, first organist in 1665, and in 1668 maestro di cappella. He is chiefly remembered for his operas. Cavalli began to write for the stage in 1639 (Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo) soon after the first public opera house opened in Venice. He established so great a reputation...

Francesco Cavalli (born Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni 14 February 1602 – 14 January 1676) was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. He took the name "Cavalli" from his patron, Venetian nobleman Federico Cavalli.
He was born at Crema, Lombardy and became a singer (soprano) at St. Mark's Basilica in Venice in 1616, where he had the opportunity to work under the tutorship of Claudio Monteverdi. He became second organist in 1639, first organist in 1665, and in 1668 maestro di cappella. He is chiefly remembered for his operas. Cavalli began to write for the stage in 1639 (Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo) soon after the first public opera house opened in Venice. He established so great a reputation that he was summoned to Paris from 1660 (he revived his opera Xerse until 1662, producing his Ercole amante. Franceso Cavalli died in Venice at the age of 73.
Cavalli was the most influential composer in the rising genre of public opera in mid-17th-century Venice. Unlike Monteverdi's early operas, scored for the extravagant court orchestra of Mantu, , Cavalli's operas make use of a small orchestra of strings and basso continuo to meet the limitations of public opera houses.
Cavalli introduced melodious arias into his music and popular types into his libretti. His operas have a remarkably strong sense of dramatic effect as well as a great musical facility, and a grotesque humour which was characteristic of Italian grand opera down to the death of Alessandro Scarlatti. Cavalli's operas provide the only example of a continuous musical development of a single composer in a single genre from the early to the late 17th century in Venice — only a few operas by others (e.g., Monteverdi and Antonio Cest) survive. The development is particularly interesting to scholars because opera was still quite a new medium when Cavalli began working, and had matured into a popular public spectacle by the end of his career.
Cavalli wrote forty-one operas, twenty-seven of which are extant, being preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (Library of St Mark) in Venice. Copies of some of the operas also exist in other locations. In addition, two last operas (Coriolano and Masenzio), which are clearly attributed to him, are lost, as well as twelve other operas that have been attributed to him, though the music is lost and attribution impossible to prove.
In addition to operas, Cavalli wrote settings of the Magnificat in the grand Venetian polychoral style, settings of the Marian antiphons, other sacred music in a more conservative manner – notably a Requiem Mass in eight parts, probably intended for his own funeral – and some instrumental music.

less