Various conductors and performers have put together pastiches of Baroque and Classical-period opera, drawing on multiple sources and weaving them into a single work. Notwithstanding that presenters of the time might have done the same thing if necessary, such presentations are often unsatisfying and serve only to prove how formulaic 18th century opera libretti could be. However, Libertą! is a more ambitious undertaking, and it's well worth your time. Conductor Raphael Pichon, his ensemble Pygmalion, and a sextet of singers ...
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Various conductors and performers have put together pastiches of Baroque and Classical-period opera, drawing on multiple sources and weaving them into a single work. Notwithstanding that presenters of the time might have done the same thing if necessary, such presentations are often unsatisfying and serve only to prove how formulaic 18th century opera libretti could be. However, Libertą! is a more ambitious undertaking, and it's well worth your time. Conductor Raphael Pichon, his ensemble Pygmalion, and a sextet of singers focus on Mozart arias from the middle 1780s, just before the appearance of Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and his other late operatic masterpieces. Some of the pieces come from Mozart's two unfinished operas of the time, and others are freestanding arias; they are woven together into three related "tableaux," with the aid of arias by Giovanni Paisiello, Vicente Martķn y Soler, and Antonio Salieri. The results lack the dramatic integrity that Mozart insisted on, but there are...
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