Handel's oratorio La Resurrezione, HWV 47, has certainly suffered historically by comparison with Messiah, but most of the early music heavyweights have recorded it at one time or another. The work is not really an oratorio in the manner of Handel's famous English works, although he liked it well enough to reuse material from it in several of those. Instead, it is an opera in all but name (opera was banned in Rome at the time, as was the use of female singers). There are five characters: Lucifer, Mary Magdalene, an angel, ...
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Handel's oratorio La Resurrezione, HWV 47, has certainly suffered historically by comparison with Messiah, but most of the early music heavyweights have recorded it at one time or another. The work is not really an oratorio in the manner of Handel's famous English works, although he liked it well enough to reuse material from it in several of those. Instead, it is an opera in all but name (opera was banned in Rome at the time, as was the use of female singers). There are five characters: Lucifer, Mary Magdalene, an angel, John the Evangelist, and Mary of Cleophas. The oratorio was composed in Rome and is an early Handel work, and it has the extreme, brash quality of some of Bach's early pieces. Consider the striking unison accompaniment of the aria "Augelletti, ruscelleti." The English Concert under conductor Harry Bicket is a bit underpowered for this music, whose splendid premiere was led by Corelli at the head of a group of 39 strings, but a performance of this work rests on the singers, who have to...
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