German soprano Simone Kermes has earned plaudits for her athletic renditions of Baroque opera arias, and here she takes on some of the most strenuous of them all: arias composed by George Frederick Handel for Francesca Cuzzoni. This Italian diva (the album title La Diva seems to refer both to her and to Kermes) joined London's Royal Academy of Music opera company in 1718, and then, when Handel became the city's hottest composer of Italian opera, spent several years singing the most difficult parts he could devise. The ...
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German soprano Simone Kermes has earned plaudits for her athletic renditions of Baroque opera arias, and here she takes on some of the most strenuous of them all: arias composed by George Frederick Handel for Francesca Cuzzoni. This Italian diva (the album title La Diva seems to refer both to her and to Kermes) joined London's Royal Academy of Music opera company in 1718, and then, when Handel became the city's hottest composer of Italian opera, spent several years singing the most difficult parts he could devise. The relationship was apparently a stormy one at times, with Handel at one point threatening to throw the soprano out a window if she didn't cooperate. Cuzzoni's fame is attested to by the sheer volume of stories about her that have come down to the present time. One of the most famous of these stories had Cuzzoni duking it out on-stage with a rival diva, Faustina Bordoni; that one is now thought to be a fabrication, but it shows the passions Cuzzoni stirred up in her own time. From Kermes'...
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