I don’t usually recommend any albums on faq-mac.com anymore because it seems some readers were annoyed by it (and anyway, if anyone is interested in discovering new and great music of all styles just follow www.soundtracktunes daily. com), but last night I came across this real bargain (I’m sure it’s a bug and it won’t last long in iTS) and I can’t help but offer you the opportunity to purchase it. It is about the best moments (13 Songs! more than an hour of music!) of an opera (Alcina) by Handel.
Yourselves.
Handel: Alcina (Highlights), by Kathleen Kuhlmann, Les Arts Florissants, Renée Fleming, Susan Graham & William Christie.
€4.49. Buy: link
About Alcina
Alcina (HWV 34) is an opera in three acts with music by Georg Friedrich Händel.
Normally Handel used the summer to compose the operas for the following season, but this did not happen in the case of Alcina, since only a few days elapsed since Handel finished composing it, on April 8, 1735, until it was premiered. , on April 16 of that same year. The premiere was held at the Royal Opera House in the Convent Garden. The work was restored the following two years, and it is documented that it was also restored in 1738 in Braunschweig. From that date it fell into oblivion, like almost all of the composer’s operas, and was only rescued in 1928 when it was premiered in Leipzig.
After Ariodante, which premiered in the same season in 1735, Alcina was the second opera that Handel did not compose for the Haymarket theatre.
Together with the aforementioned Ariodante and Orlando (1733), Alcina forms a triad based on Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. In this case, cantos VI and VII of the poem were used, the love between the knight Ruggiero and the sorceress Alcina. It is unknown who the opera’s librettist is, but it is assumed to be based on Riccardo Broschi’s libretto, L’Isola d’Alcina from 1728.
Taken from Wikipedia
About Handel
George Frideric Handel (Georg Friedrich Händel in German) (February 23, 1685 – April 14, 1759) was a German-born English-born composer of learned Baroque music. Most of his life he lived in Great Britain.
He was born in the city of Halle, located in the center east of present-day Germany. His father was a barber and surgeon and had decided that his son would be a lawyer, but when he saw Händel’s interest in music, which he studied and practiced in secret, he changed his mind and was willing to pay for his music studies. In this way, Händel became a student of Halle’s leading organist, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachau. At the age of 17 he was appointed organist at the Calvinist cathedral in Halle.
Within a year, Händel traveled to Hamburg, where he was admitted as a violin and harpsichord player in the opera orchestra. Shortly after, in 1705, his work Almira was premiered in that same place, and shortly after him Nero. The following year, he accepted an invitation to travel to Italy, where he spent more than three years. In Italy, his works were performed in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice, and at the same time Händel wrote new music, inspired by the music of that country. Above all, he studied and perfected how to combine his music with Italian texts. Thanks to the high quality of his interpretations, he met important Italian musicians and composers of the time, such as Scarlatti, Corelli and Marcello.
In 1710, Händel returns from Italy and becomes the conductor of the Hanoverian court. A year later Rinaldo’s work premiered in London with considerable success. In view of this, in 1712 Händel decides to settle in England. There he is commissioned to create a royal opera house, which would also be known as the Royal Academy of Music. Händel wrote 14 operas for that institution between 1720 and 1728, which made him famous throughout Europe.
In 1727, Handel became a British citizen, changing the spelling of his name to “George Frideric Handel.”
From 1740, Händel dedicated himself to the composition of oratorios, including The Messiah, which in the 19th century would become the choral work par excellence. In 1751, Händel lost his sight while composing the oratorio Jefta. He died in London at the age of 74.
Händel composed 32 oratorios, 40 operas, numerous mass music pieces, 110 cantatas, 20 concertos, 39 sonatas, fugues and suites, and other orchestral works.
Taken from Wikipedia
