Medea, granddaughter of the Sun, queen and sorceress, falls prey to the green-eyed monster and bursts forth in rage when it becomes clear that Jason, he of Golden Fleece fame, is canoodling with pesky Hypsipile (at one time queen of an island of women with bad breath, but that's another story). Beginning with Francesco Cavalli in the middle of the seventeenth century, operatic composers began to explore the manifest possibilities of this situation, and French composers quickly followed the fascinating Italians in this ...
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Medea, granddaughter of the Sun, queen and sorceress, falls prey to the green-eyed monster and bursts forth in rage when it becomes clear that Jason, he of Golden Fleece fame, is canoodling with pesky Hypsipile (at one time queen of an island of women with bad breath, but that's another story). Beginning with Francesco Cavalli in the middle of the seventeenth century, operatic composers began to explore the manifest possibilities of this situation, and French composers quickly followed the fascinating Italians in this respect. The locus classicus was Charpentier's Médée (1693), and it's a bit hard to understand why mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac did not include a selection or two from that opera as a reference point. Her program consists mostly of cantatas, but portions of one (at the time) well-known opera, Gianettini's Medea in Atene, are included. Probably the answer involves matters of scale; the works here are chamber pieces that partly depend on skillful interaction between the singer...
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